Klone Karts by ABRDs

You have been found guilty of your crimes.
Your punishment? To race the loop, until dead.
The infamous Klone Karts arena creates lesser versions of you to keep costs low, and to ensure that you do not make it out alive. You are doomed, but you might as well not your name be forgotten. Don't forget. Klone see, klone do.
WASD/Arrows: Movement Space: Use Abilities Clones repeat your previous laps, using power-ups included Green Blocks: Swap obstacles on track Blue Blocks: Get Random Power-up

| Youtube | https://github.com/abr-designs/LD_Jam_47 |
| Youtube | https://bieere.itch.io/klone-karts |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/klone-karts |
Ratings
| Overall | 211th | 3.583⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 231th | 3.447⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 376th | 3.139⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 96th | 4.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 66th | 4.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 237th | 3.278⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 214th | 2.875⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 212th | 3.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
I love driving/combat mashups and I love drifting in the mud, and from the screenshot/gif it looked like this game was going to be ***** METAL!!
And it was fun -- but I didn't feel the METAL. I felt like it needed a few tweaks. I'll go a little deeper on what I was hoping for and some issues I ran into, not because it's a bad game but because it's good and could be great.. I hope this is constructive:
First problem is the main design challenge of any driving game: you have a discrete input (keyboard) controlling a vehicle usually controlled by a continuous input (steering wheel). With a steering wheel I can turn a little bit left, or a lot, and express any precise angle I intend. But with a keyboard, I can only press or not-press "D". How does a driving game create the ability for a player to express their intent for turning angle? This game doesn't have an answer, and so what happens is the classic problem: every single turn is at exactly the same radius. Extra-unfortunately in this game, that radius is not well-matched to the radius of the track's curve, and every turn goes the same way: gradually out toward the wall. You can see this problem happening in your gif.
There is no perfect answer to this design problem, but here are three ideas you could try that might improve the feel of this game: Letting go of "W" while holding "D" could sharpen the turn. Or I could have a brake/drift on space that I can tap (and weapon goes to another key). Or at least the car's turning should be TIGHTER than the track and not looser, because then I could use quick bursts of releasing "D" to realign with the track. In this game, I can't press "D" enough, so I always go into the wall which isn't very METAL.
Second problem is the killing. I was pretty excited for it, but I struggled to get satisfying kills. The best ones were purple-box items rocket and land mine, which were both satisfying. I could have used a 10 or 20x increase in how often I can use those features. The smoke screen was always a disappointing pickup because it meant "no fun kills this lap." I didn't find the green boxes worth it, they just slow down the driving for me as well as the Klones, so I rarely got them... perhaps I just misunderstood their use?
Since the weapons of war were so rare, and I wanted to get my METAL combat on, I tried ramming people into wrecks or into the wall. But it was hard to line up rams, and when I did get into position for a ram what often happened is that I hit the wall and died. So I felt a little discouraged to experiment with rams.
Anyway, if I could steer better, drift a little, ram people, and get 10x as many weapons, I think would really get into this.
The basic idea is great, and there's something really special about the badass way it looks and *almost* feels.
Hope that wasn't too much critique! I definitely had some spikes of intense fun with it.
The music didn't seem to work for me. The sound effects were working and I made sure the music was selected before starting.
Overall, great work!
My game is actually kind of similar, except without powerups and traps, just driving.
Sorry to hear that the music was giving you issues, and weird that it was just the music! Could you give me some information on what browser & versions you were using?
I will definitely check out your game @pekuja interested in seeing how you approached a similar idea!