The Mental Wheel by T1h4n

[raw]
made by T1h4n for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

You participate in a driving gameshow extravaganza, where your broken ride becomes a frankenstein of other cars! Also, to add to the instability, the host randomly adds crazy modifiers to your experience, to make it harder to get to the end! Try getting through the track as fast as you can!

Ratings

Overall 1382th 2.929⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1328th 2.804⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1303th 2.714⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1004th 3.25⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 721th 3.643⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 781th 3.074⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 745th 2.907⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1196th 2.944⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 33🗨️

Feedback

WYL TEAM
05. Oct 2021 · 09:29 UTC
The car handles oddly, but the visual style is cute.

Like for Tesla)
legionGrifst
05. Oct 2021 · 11:58 UTC
The car is controlled of course specifically, but as I understand it, this is such an idea. There was a very lack of music, but what was there was not very suitable.
elmismopancho
06. Oct 2021 · 20:14 UTC
Great graphics. This concept is very interesting, would love to see more mutations (I only got 2, drunk nad muscle man)
DevUndead
06. Oct 2021 · 20:21 UTC
I realy like the concept and the art of the game. But the car is very hard to drive, as it don't turn and no "drift" when braking and full steering. The game needs some essential animations in the wheels (profile in model and rotation to see some motion and also some steering). Without the necessary animations and steering feedback it feels like a hovercraft.

Would love to see and play a racing game with this concept. It would fit nicely to my most liked racing games like Blur and Split Second, as they also had some crazy concepts for a car game.
LDJam user 258863
06. Oct 2021 · 20:24 UTC
Nice! I will admit I played most of the game with a naked car because of how often I got knocked out, also would have really liked a "quick restart" button or some sort, so if I got turned around I could press a button to restart my car facing forward.

More obstacles/turns and making the controls less floaty I think would help a lot. But I understand the controls were probably made floaty to make the game difficult in a short period of time. But still, cool game!
Kyrell
06. Oct 2021 · 20:27 UTC
Overall a cool concept! I did experience a bug where the car flipped over and then was just stuck there convulsing, so perhaps the addition of a reset button in this case would be nice.
AwesomeAlliterationAlliance
08. Oct 2021 · 16:56 UTC
I really dig the art style. Those shiny materials look awesome! I think everything 2D could use a little bit of finishing touches. Cool that you managed to put in a settings-screen but I couldn't play on a widescreen monitor.
Dev Dennis
08. Oct 2021 · 16:56 UTC
You added RTX for this ? :D Maybe a bit overkill. Nice graphics, didn't really understand the setup or why to do race, had to read about it. What's with the mushrooms? I feel like this needed to be grounded a bit more and add some story or mechanics that makes sense.
Alexofp
08. Oct 2021 · 17:07 UTC
Cars look nice as is the enviroment, its pretty stylish. I liked that you were getting less music for each lost part though it could be made more smooth I feel like, a bit jarring to switch to no music suddenly. Could use some main objective, like do 3 laps or something. Car physics are eh but you probably know it, controls are not drifty and nor precise, very understeer-y. I like the hidden car jump you added to shift key ^^
JPGFG
09. Oct 2021 · 18:19 UTC
Car is a little hard to drive but vehicle controls and physics are honestly pretty hard to program. Good entry!
Quoc
09. Oct 2021 · 19:23 UTC
Cool game.I like the graphics and the environment. Was fun to play
LDJam user 233347
09. Oct 2021 · 19:46 UTC
Was fun while it lasted, driving physics takes some getting used to.

the background audio made it worth wile though :slight_smile:
Emkani
10. Oct 2021 · 11:00 UTC
Hmm bit of a longer comment here and some maybe harsh criticism.

The game itself is fine, I can see the idea and the "unstable" of it. The graphics are great and clear. The announcer was also an excellent and very polished addition.
But when I saw the number of people credited I honestly became a bit disappointed, the game has a lot of smaller "issues" which I believe would have been easily fixed, due to number of people available to work on it and playtest.

A lot of smaller polish I feel is missing (again, taking into account the amount of people), the wheels don't turn or rotate, the driving is very rough and floaty. Some of the 2D visuals look "fine" but also could use a bit of polish as they feel very different in terms of fidelity from the 3D visuals.

The biggest flaw I feel is in the overall "game flow", there is no real direction or anything, even with two people credited as the "Game Designer", what is my goal and how can I "see" it? No opponents or highscores etc.

I think maybe you got caught by the whole "team work" thing, too many people and you lose a lot of time on communication and people don't _really_ work together, just deliver each part individually, as some parts really are good.

Good entry, I don't hate the game itself or anything, I just expected more :)
Falawiska
10. Oct 2021 · 11:04 UTC
Cool looking game, the driving behavior is difficult to control but managed nicely in the short time.
bassguitarbill
10. Oct 2021 · 11:04 UTC
A timer or a percentage-done indicator or a minimap, any of these things would help the player understand that they're not on an infinite procedurally-generated rainy racetrack. Having chunks of the car fall off after a collision is a hilarious touch, and the voiceover is top-notch. The UI is pretty confusing: in video games, "red and white spotted mushroom in a box at the top of the screen" means "you have a powerup available to use", not "a debuff is being applied to your car", which is why I was slapping my keyboard like an ape trying to find the "use powerup" key. I have heard that car controls are really challenging to implement, so considering these controls are mostly functional, I think you didn't do a bad job in that regard.
Scrawach
10. Oct 2021 · 12:57 UTC
Very nice! Awesome graphics!
Terabyte
10. Oct 2021 · 18:11 UTC
Хех=) Хорошая идея=) Управление тяжеловато, но видать так и задумано, чтом машина почаще крашилась. Большую часть игры проехала с голым каркасом. Ну рукажопая я малясь=)
PashaLoban
14. Oct 2021 · 12:06 UTC
Cool game
SleepyStudios
17. Oct 2021 · 14:58 UTC
Really cool modular car system. I liked the overall visual style and the voiceovers but like others have said, the car controls were way too slippery.