It take a long time to get used to the controls but later respond pretty well!

It's a faster game (this like me), graphics are simple but great and the idea that you can crash with your "phantoms" is awesome!

Nice job, dude! Congratulations and good luck!

WHAT THE HECK IS THIS! I HAD SO MUCH FUN, WOOOOOOOO~ 6/5 would play again in the future and tell my friend this game is awesome

but sadly every 5th-7th lap i died, NO PROBLEM I STILL CAN PLAY THIS~, oh shoot, work time *sorry, i'm in hyper mood

@magicdidac @keilazu thanks for playing! I just added a hotkey to get to the second level, as I now know that the game is waaaaaaayy too hard... (No time for testing ^^)
So if you had fun, consider checking out the next track by pressing '2' :)

I like the game! The gameplay is a bit fast for me because i'm really bad at this kind of games. I loved the art, simple but effective. I chrashed with myself soooo many times :( Good job!

Intresting, fun and challenging. Good job!

wow, great entry! movement is smooth and graphics fit the game nicely. Took me a few minutes to figure out that the other players were actually me :D fits the theme pretty well!
Thank you for participating!

OMG O-o !!!!!!! If not for 2 important missing things, I would have said "BEST GAME" (I don't mean in the jam. Just best game of all times, of fucking course) :
1. No music ?? Daaaaaammmnn...! You should have asked me x)
2. If there were a leaderboard I would have played this for HOURS... and DAAAAYS... or even CENTURRIIIIIES...!

BIG GG


(PS : go check our game if you wanna have a scare ;-) : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-darkest-light )

The physics of the racer feel great and the graphics are simplistic but effective. The game is pretty tricky though, a repair pickup or a health reset on completing a lap would of been a huge help for terrible players like me :P , as I never got to experience the chaos of having 10+ racers at a time.

This is actually a pretty tactical game and I love it! Like, don't be so superfast at the beginning and slowly get faster. If that makes sense :) Also the ghost sprites and trails are fantastic. And you nailed the theme! Mind to try out our short little game?
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/prince-pixel-our-very-first-game

I like the way you treated the theme : the enemy is yourself,so the more laps you have to more enemies you got.

Graphics are pretty neat , simple and cool , the grey trail is very useful to know where "you" will pass.
I like the feeling of the race but commands are...meh. How does it work ? You have to hold the forward button to drive ? or simply push it to accelerate ?

Unfortunatly i cannot hear audio :(

Great Idea using the ghost racers to this extent. My only complain is the lack of music and sound.

The tunnel in the end is to reconcile the start and the finish of the previous lap?

It reminded me of a game call commute (it actually really different, but the main idea of former runs occupying real space). It surprised me. I feel like controls are a bit awkaward at first, there is a lot of inertia all the time. Missed some music. Nice game.

I really like this game :) The concept of competing with your gosts is great, I also like the responsivnes and the steering very much.

I would love to see controller support in this game - I think it would add more fun than second level for example. :)
Overall I like it a lot

Really nice and simple game. I liked the graphics, the lack of a menu and the simple idea of fighting against your former selves. Some suggestions:
- Sfx and music would make it more frantic and enjoyable. I would look at something close to wipeout themes for inspiration.
- Starts quite difficult, perhaps initially less laps are required, e.g. 5?
- Some random health powerups would be nice, the more of you there are, the harder it is to pick them!

Great job overall!

Amazing! Loved the aesthetics and nice simple concept! Adding a bit of sound would definitely make it more immersive. Also maybe having positions (1st,2nd, 3rd) would be better as it would bring in a competitive factor and give more meaning to the other AI racers. But all in all good concept, great look and feel and I had fun playing. All the best!
Pls feel free to play and rate my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/split

As others mention, is a good implementation of the basic premise. Overall I found it a good game, but it has two main flaws: the lack of music and FX (obvious) and the start point every lap you do. I got frustrated everytime I complete a lap, because your ghosts appear almost the same starting point as you, no matter what speed you have, and that kills me every time, it's the only design decission I found tricky. Otherwise, nice game dude!

Hello! Great game! At first I thought how easy it was to turn on curves and it shouldn't be like that, but this actually gives identity to the game, and the difficulty comes from the shadows, which fits the theme very well. If you want to keep the graphics this minimalist, I wouldn't think as a problem, but people might think it's not this great because of it. I'd ask just to keep an eye on color choices, like, the plain white on the track almost made me blind. Great job!

Very snappy controls, and the concept is really nice. Reminds me of Mario Kart ghost races, but the ghosts actually do something this time.

I really liked the controls. I look forward to play an after ludum version of this game, maybe with some music, sfx and a more balanced difficulty?

First lap: Huh, this should be easy
Second lap: This AI is super crappy
Third lap: Oooooooh. Huh, neat
Tenth lap: FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU-

A wonderful concept. As other's have mentioned, the lack of sound and music is a shame, because otherwise, this game is a complete package. There's no shame in jumping on a message board and saying, 'Hey, I've got a cool game concept and need some sound, any takers?' :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Relly tiny game. I like the graphics: althougt simple, the work quite well for the game. Also, playing agains yourself is pretty cool. Mechanics are difficult to manage, but, overall impression is nice.

The concept is really nice! I liked it a lot, even if it gets a little frustrating at the final laps xD

The controls are smooth and silky! At the same time your ghost path becomes a new obstacle for you. Interesting! Keep it up!

Nice and simple. Nice entry!

Great game! Really cool concept.

Check it out!
https://youtu.be/O5oXa5RHQd0


There are some fundamental issues with the game design. It required to to play like crap at first and slowly start getting better (which actually worked wonders on my first go, but obviously not after that). I didn't find this way to play really that fun. The other way to succeed would be the execute at 100% performance all the time. Obviously this isn't that fun either because the amount of laps needed and even a small hiccup would completely destroy your chances because your previous selves did not make any mistakes.

Do the ghost vehicles take damage when they crash? Is it possible for them to be destroyed? I saw them crash with each other quite a lot but never saw them getting destroyed. Or do they just get reset every lap so they never accumulate enough damage to get destroyed? If so, it would be fair to fill the player health also each lap (this would require lowering the max hp of course). And if they can't get destroyed, adding this could alleviate the issue of perfect play requirement at least a little bit.

So yeah, I kinda cheated on the above screenshot. If you go through the track backwards (and actually going through them clockwise seems more intuitive to me at least), the AI ghosts freak the f out and just chill in the start line or completely ignore the walls drive to the horizon. This is why racing games have checkpoints... :wink:

The look was simple but pretty nice. Wasn't a fan of the crash effect at all. It was distracting and didn't fit the look of the rest of the game really. Also wasn't a big fan of the "menu", I found it pretty clunky and unnecessary. One thing that could have been a nice addition is having a bit of a color variation on the ghosts depending on how old/good they are.

Good job!

**edit:** Yeah, one more thing! Maybe next time don't hard code the keys and use the Unity's (pretty decent) input manager ones instead. Using them, the players could actually change the keys in the startup config dialog, there would be alternative keys for people who prefer WASD and even most controllers would have worked right out of the box.

Really cool game. The game got very hectic towards the later laps with a bunch of your past selves to avoid. The art was minimal but did what it needed to. Some sounds would've been nice. Overall a nice idea and well executed. Well done!

Very elegant and minimalist design, controls very well, and the trail effect is pretty neat!

Thanks to everybody who played the game, you all shared some very helpful feedback!!

First of all, music and soundeffects, or the lack thereof, seem to hurt the game the most. In my previous two LDs I always tried to make a "complete" game, meaning at least some levels, not placeholder art, music and sfx, but sadly I just didn't have time for that this jam.

Some way to replenish health is one of the most requested features in this thread, a feature I again did not put in because of lack of time. I have thought about a way to give the player health each round, but with an additional effect, more on that in a bit.

Controller support is something I really felt like it would fit the game perfectly. The problem is right now I don't own a pc compatible controller, so I have no way to test the game with one. I'll gift one to myself this christmas though, so I hope to use that on this game and in future jams.

@indie-gaming thank you for making a video playing the game :)

@antti-haavikko I'm sorry that you see it that way, but actually playing like crap isn't that beneficial for finishing the race, because you have to overtake the previous racers anyway. So one way or another, the track gets crowded and more difficult over time, so I don't think it really is a flaw in the design.

The ghost vehicles do not take damage, I'll think of a way to telegraph that more clearly (maybe grayed out sparks in addition to grayed out vehicles?). On the topic of sparks, your critique on the current spark effect is definitely valid, since I didn't want to keep the effect that style but, again, ran out of time to change it.

I don't feel like completely resetting the player health each round is the way to go. I did come up with the idea to give a health bonus, depending on how fast the player completes the lap so there's an incentive to go fast and take risks to fill up on health at the goalline. What do you think about that?

Also the collision on the vehicles was very buggy, so one collision with a ghost could instantly kill you, even though it should've been the same damage as hitting the walls...

The menu thing is a question of personal preference in my opinion. I always like when people incorporate the main mechanic of their game into the menu so the player instantly gets to practice what he'll be doing in the game. Also that way you can just reuse everything you've already built for the game instead of coding up a whole new UI system for the menues which saved me a lot of time :grin:

Using Input Axis is something I had only heard about before this jam, but I have now changed the game accordingly. Still need to test it with a controller though.

Now for the most serious point of your comment: you went backwards through the course and the ghosts bugged out?? I have no idea how that would happen, because there are indeed checkpoints in the lap, they just don't care what direction you finish the lap in, all that matters is that you go the required amount of rounds (and that's by design :)). Could you tell me what operating system you're on? Or if you're able to reproduce that bug every time you play? Or how I could reproduce that bug on my machine?

Whew, I think those are all the points brought up in this thread. Until next time!

I'm on mac but I'm pretty sure it isn't a platform specific. It seems like it happens which ever way you go through the lap, if you go backwards (so pressing down instead up).

@antti-haavikko Fixed now :) The problem was that I start recording the players position as soon as the up key is pressed. If you never press the up key the recording never starts and the ghost spawns in a default position. Thanks for the bug report! (The fix is not online yet, I'll release it in an improved post jam version)

https://youtu.be/SQCJrr4uBaw