Circuit Escape

co-authored: @hsnavarro, @lucbarr
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.80
Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.15
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.46
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.13
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.39
Ahoy, fellow game devs (again)

Circuit Escape is a top-down, time-trial racing game. You keep looping until you can beat the time... But the escape is not so simple, and the circuit gets bigger after every successful lap. Also your past versions keep looping in the past circuits and may be a problem to you.

We built another game from scratch, this time we used C++ and SFML, nothing more (we've done a very simple particle system, physics, tilemap creation and rendering, etc).
This time I invited a friend that was starting to learn about game dev, so we went for a more simple/friendly framework using OOP instead of a high performance/data oriented approach. Few people joined the team,so we didn't have enough time for good graphics and or learn how to create music.

If you want to see the mess we have done, source code is available on GitHub.

Have fun!
It only has 7 levels, we made it a bit easier to not be frustrating.

Music from Tobias Weber. We didn't have time do create music, so we are out of the audio category (we did the sound effects though :D).

EDIT: we should be out of the audio category. Don't vote for audio if you see the option. For some reason some people see the option to vote for audio (maybe we accidentally forgot to uncheck it)



GIFs:



PS.: Linux version is linked dynamically against SFML (we didn't have time to link statically). So install SFML 2.5.1 to run it (on Ubuntu 20.04 you can just `sudo apt install libsfml`)

PS.: I like to document the progress with some GIFs/PNGs. You can check the devlog at GitHub

Small edits: updated the links since music was not looping and add +1s to circuits to make it not so hard

screenshot
Tools: SFML

Comments28

walaber
walaber6 Oct 2020, 05:16
sooo fun! I will definitely come back to this one! what a simple, great idea!
josephdevelops
josephdevelops6 Oct 2020, 06:33
Super great concept! Love it. Would love to see it developed more. Maybe some procedural generation?
JHax
JHax6 Oct 2020, 23:32
This is awesome!

The handbrake turn has a great feel to it and having the speedometer in pixels per second is a nice touch.
Wallaby6 Oct 2020, 23:38
Great game! Love the concept! Good job!
hsnavarro6 Oct 2020, 23:56
@jhax Thanks! We really put an effort into the movement mechanics
Lazenman7 Oct 2020, 00:03
I got to the fourth loop but I can't get under like a second or two lol. I like this game
hsnavarro7 Oct 2020, 00:12
@lazenman Have you tried the version with larger time limits? The first version was really difficult haha
kogyblackauthor7 Oct 2020, 04:29
@walaber Thanks for playing. I was watching your stream and commenting, it was fun to see your daughter try to get under 8s and you just jumped in and got 4 levels in a row haha
Really great to see that you liked it very fast. Thanks for playing on stream
kogyblackauthor7 Oct 2020, 04:31
@lazenman actually we added 1 second or more on each level. Maybe it's still too tight haha but thanks for playing and for the feedback
Arad HamidSamiee
Arad HamidSamiee7 Oct 2020, 09:00
This game is sooo underrated and I don't know why. This game is mostly polished, light, has good music and audio design, satisfying gameplay, and it's challenging. Unlike +50% of highly ranked games of this jam, this game actually represents the theme perfectly. I hope it gets more recognition.
KaisenTheGreatOne
KaisenTheGreatOne7 Oct 2020, 12:39
Nice game. Game + Cars + Speeeeeeed = Great. Awesome concept. Simple and catchy. That one moment you cross the line at 21.11 instead if 21.00 :D great gob. Big big big thumbs up :thumbsup:
OddSocks
OddSocks7 Oct 2020, 15:23
Great game. I'm shocked at the polish you managed. It was a simple idea, buy you've really made it work. Fantastic LD entry... mahoosive congrats! :raised_hands:
smiley
smiley7 Oct 2020, 16:21
You really captured the car driving feeling.. that was really nice polished. And nice work with the break marks.

Extra points for using C++ and not an engine :)

You said you are out of the audio category. But I could still vote for audio.
Animaster
Animaster8 Oct 2020, 09:33
I'm a fan of trackmania, and i liked this game much. It has the same feeling, when you repeat the same level until you manage to finish it just right. Great game.
kogyblackauthor8 Oct 2020, 17:51
@arad-hamidsamiee Wow, thank you very much for the kind words. Really glad you liked it xD
I think to get to the top we need an artist and also our own music. This jam was superb though, we really dedicated to do a very good game based on our idea and I think it ended up pretty well
kogyblackauthor8 Oct 2020, 17:54
@smiley This jam was very smooth (we almost didn't sleep, though haha), we refactored the physics multiple times to have the feeling we wanted.

I'm not sure why the audio category is there. I'm pretty sure I unchecked it. I'll edit the post and ask to not vote on audio. Thanks for the heads up.
kogyblackauthor8 Oct 2020, 17:56
@animaster Trackmania is great, totally agree that the feeling is the same haha I'm also a fan of it and I really enjoyed looping around to improve my timing. But I watched some friends playing and being really upset to not be able to complete the levels (even after adding extra time), so I think for a jam we could add some difficulty levels or a dynamic time limit to help people finish the game without repeating too much
Arad HamidSamiee
Arad HamidSamiee8 Oct 2020, 17:57
@kogyblack good thinking, maybe adding buildings and trees near the tracks and filling the green empty space could attract more people to the game. well, I hope to see your work again in the next jam :thumbsup:
Ryano9 Oct 2020, 11:00
Great little game. Clever use of the theme and the controls felt great. Well done. Thanks for the game!
Somogy
Somogy10 Oct 2020, 01:10
What an incredible game! I loved it, great job
kuviman
kuviman11 Oct 2020, 11:28
Very cool game! The only missing part is resetting the loop if you know you are failing current one.
Maor
Maor11 Oct 2020, 11:41
Nice game it was a lot of fun. There were two things that I thought could be improved. The first was that the picture quality should be made full HD compatible. Secondly, I thought it would be better to add a reset button. It's a pain in the ass to have to go around every time you make a mistake in the beginning and think you can't clear the game anymore.
Mackandrius11 Oct 2020, 18:39
That was a lot of fun, the controls were smooth and I got hooked quite quickly. Although I am not sure about those blue cars, as the game is hard as it is (well at least for me lol) and in the later levels one collision makes the lap obsolete and then I need to spend half a minute to give it another go to then again be struck by one of those reckless driving blue... bas.. drivers :laughing: It might be just me though. In any case excellent job!
Thooom16 Oct 2020, 12:45
Love it. Just like my childhood favorite computer game Slicks 'N' Slide (yes two of these '). I love the px/s too xD Nice touch!
saurterrs
saurterrs17 Oct 2020, 04:07
Yeeeeeah, like the old days. Liked it very much :D

Controls on arrow keys though would be a better choice imho
kogyblackauthor18 Oct 2020, 03:48
@saurterrs Actually I completely forgot about using arrow keys haha I have a 60% keyboard, so I don't have arrow keys, and after some hours coding the rest of the team just got used to WASD haha Sorry.
Thanks for playing :D
Lyje
Lyje24 Oct 2020, 14:34
Feels great to play, really solid driving mechanics! Very, very tough after a while though - the later time limits feel very stringent!

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