First playthrough: let's put it on easy to see what this is about... Meh simple enough, let's start again in Hard... OMG this is crazy why can't I do this!?!?! I finally got it after 20 mins of gameplay!! It was either that or going crazy lol!! Great job, simple and very addictive! :) Missing music and good sound. Simple graphics were really cool though maybe some particle effects could have given a nice effect. Great job! :)
When I first saw this, I was expecting maybe a minute or two of familiar and easy play, so I was amused and only slightly optimistic about "hard" mode.
Twenty-odd minutes later, and I have a much greater appreciation for the value of level design & controls. It's just one level, but it ramps up the difficulty well, with nicely-interspersed breaks, and is small enough that it keeps looking conquerable after killing you thirty times in a row. The delay after death is just long enough to do a quick mental reset and not a moment longer. The trails & screen shake are nice touches, too.
Excellent job squeezing so much out of such minimal and familiar-seeming content.
Pretty clear and appropriately challenging on the faster speed. I could tell immediately that my must-beat compulsion was kicking in against my will. Normally I avoid games that produce that experience because life is already full of enough frustration as it is, but I know that plenty of other gamers enjoy that experience, so I'm taking it as a positive sign. :-)
I was left wondering how the game would feel with a bit more physics instead of a constant-rate turn and constant speed with no inertia or sliding. Maybe not better, but the curiosity did cross my mind, for what it's worth.
Powerups or non-lethal obstructions (mud pits, for example) could help liven up the courses.
It was only upon reflection that I realized that the route trace is actually kinda cool. I wonder if there are ways to draw the player's attention to it once winning (or even after losing). Obviously outside the scope of a jam, but it'd be the perfect sort of thing for a leaderboard. Let people compare their trace against the best scores.
Or maybe color code the trace after a race according to various factors (distance from wall, distance from top player's route, distance from pre-computed optimal route), using something easy to visualize, like the standard green->yellow->orange->red to signify good/bad (or something more colorblind-friendly).
The hard course was pretty challenging(managed to beat it after 5 tries and that was before I found out about the turnaround bug) but this was a rather fun entry plus the free mode feels like some sort of Etch-a-Sketch.
Comments14
I'll have to leave it like this for the jam but the next iteration will have it fixed.
Thanks for your feedback :)
Twenty-odd minutes later, and I have a much greater appreciation for the value of level design & controls. It's just one level, but it ramps up the difficulty well, with nicely-interspersed breaks, and is small enough that it keeps looking conquerable after killing you thirty times in a row. The delay after death is just long enough to do a quick mental reset and not a moment longer. The trails & screen shake are nice touches, too.
Excellent job squeezing so much out of such minimal and familiar-seeming content.
Freestyle mode was fun, drew a few different things :)
Also trying to draw Olympics logo in free mode could be game on it's own.
I was left wondering how the game would feel with a bit more physics instead of a constant-rate turn and constant speed with no inertia or sliding. Maybe not better, but the curiosity did cross my mind, for what it's worth.
Powerups or non-lethal obstructions (mud pits, for example) could help liven up the courses.
It was only upon reflection that I realized that the route trace is actually kinda cool. I wonder if there are ways to draw the player's attention to it once winning (or even after losing). Obviously outside the scope of a jam, but it'd be the perfect sort of thing for a leaderboard. Let people compare their trace against the best scores.
Or maybe color code the trace after a race according to various factors (distance from wall, distance from top player's route, distance from pre-computed optimal route), using something easy to visualize, like the standard green->yellow->orange->red to signify good/bad (or something more colorblind-friendly).