Play game
Bigmode Jam Kart 2023's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #145 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Theme | #234 | 3.117 | 3.117 |
| Presentation (graphics, audio) | #235 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
| Originality | #309 | 2.767 | 2.767 |
Ranked from 60 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game represent Mode?
This game is a kart racer where you can swap back and forth between hover mode and wheel mode during the race. Hover mode is faster but wheel mode has a tighter turning radius. In order to beat the Hard Mode rivals you will need to employ hover mode wisely.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Very fun! This is extremely well made and has easily some of the smoothest controls I've experienced in the jam. Implementing so many options, tracks, and characters in such a short time is very impressive.
I love the nod to the SNES era Mario Kart when the camera rotates around the players at the beginning of the race! brings back such good memories :P. This game is jampacked with content - 8 characters and 3 stages?! Fun and very challenging when you get into the harder races. You really have to use both modes which makes them feel deliberately designed and necessary. Great job!
Great mechanic with the mode switch that allow for a really neat gameplay. Some races get really dynamic even without things like drifting or jumps. Clever way to do a lot with little. Good production with menus and tracks!
haven’t really seen any dedicated racing games yet this jam, so this was a fun change of pace! the abilities you’re given in the game are really cool, they make for some really neat gameplay i’ve never really seen elsewhere. seems like there’s a super high skill ceiling with them (judging by your unbeatable-by-my-standards hard mode racers :P), which is awesome! i’d love to see a multiplayer mode for this, and to see people go face to face with these mechanics in real time. i also liked the selection of characters a lot (malmos gang wya), they fit the game well! nice job!
Thanks a lot, that's awesome feedback! Glad to see another member of the Malmos gang appear so I'll reveal that Malmos was directly inspired by these similar blobby things in the latest Miyazaki movie the Boy and the Heron. I saw it in theaters during the jam and knew I wanted to make a character like that right away. Glad you want to see a multiplayer mode, I originally envisioned this game as multiplayer so I hope to add that for sure. Going to check out MOWED right now, been looking forward to it for awhile now
Solid kart racer with some fun characters and solid music
Thanks for playing, games with looping engine sounds where Q toggles fast mode, represent!
Really fun game! While I didn't have the chance to play it with a joystick, the keyboard was super responsive! It's impressive the number of characters you managed to add to the game. Congrats for that!
Thanks a lot! Glad to hear another vote of confidence in the keyboard controls since I know a lot of people have struggled with them, I appreciate that a lot. And thanks, I spent about 3 days of the jam making a custom character editor for myself that let me preview the rotations in real time, glad to hear that paid off for you since it helped me crank out the characters!
Hell yes, solid racer. Only thing lacking for me in this game is in terms of the visuals. Some more particles to make the wheels on the road feel more tangible, some fuller backgrounds , maybe a bit more camera shake, and I think this will feel like a very fleshed out game.
Hey thanks, all excellent points!
Awesome job on creating a full racing game in such a short time! I loved the mode-switching and the responsive controls (even on keyboard!). The tracks designs are great but i wish there was more checkpoints. The art style and characters were adorable, and the music is bangin' ! Well done!
Thanks a lot! Big agree about the checkpoints, I'll pass on your music compliments to the composer, he'll love to hear that. You gave awesome feedback, glad you were able to have fun with the keyboard controls, that's great to hear!
This is really fun, i like the variety of characters you've managed to include and the multiple maps
The only thing is i noticed i was holding down drift a lot, maybe an option where its down by default and pressing the button is release would be a nice addition
Thanks for playing and pushing through the busted How to Play page! That's a great suggestion, yeah I pretty much held right bumper constantly while playing at the hard-mode skill level, so having it be a toggle or inverse-activated instead would go to far help with finger strain, especially on the straight-ahead sections.
Really impressive making a full racing game for a jam! The controls felt pretty good on controller and I like the idea of switching between modes to maneuver around the map - the tracks do a good job of promoting that mechanic. Love the cast of characters and the art style gives the game some charm. I'm a Norman Feetus main ;) Would love to see this with polish in the track details, cart stuff, but you have a solid foundation. Nice job!
Thanks a lot! I'm a Norman Feetus main too, that's how he got to be on the Start Screen :) Glad you liked the controller controls, that's definitely the way to play it. Definitely hoping to come in and keep polishing this foundation after the jam!
Great job! This is a wonderfully engaging and fun racing game, the movement and controls feel great! Nice work!
Hey thanks a lot! Big fan of Bobby, great music!
Thanks! So glad you love the music, I had a lot of fun making it!
I think this this is a fun racing game with a good and varied cast of characters, pretty good music (I can tell that Bryce put a lot of effort into it) and nice and tight controls. In the case that you want to expand from this game, here are a few things that I noticed (please mind that I am playing on a keyboard):
The drifting didn't quite work sometimes. It would block the directional input sometimes and sometimes not get activated.
I didn't like that the environment sprites were facing the camera. I feel like it removes a bit of perceptive depth.
I think for any racing game, having hidden or hard to execute shortcuts is pretty fun and adds a higher skill ceiling.
Thank you for this fun entry to the game jam!
Thanks a lot, for playing and for the great feedback! All great points, yeah the drifting should be smoother with a controller but that's no excuse for poor keyboard controls. I feel you about the environment sprites, especially when they're really close up. I threw all of those in at the last few hours while furiously drawing them up so they're a little janky for sure. Also big agree on the hard-to-execute shortcuts, I had that going on in the final course, Corner Causeway, where you can drift+boost+skip across the corners, and that was my most fun part of the game. I imagine that pulling those off is only really feasible in controller mode though.
I love the 2D and 3D mashup style of this game. The movement is super intuitive and the karts have really solid movement. I could tell the track designs were well-tested/planned out. My fav buddy was Malmos!!
Thanks a lot! It's awesome hearing when people like a certain character, I honestly didn't know if Malmos would get any fans, love to hear it!
I'm a sucker for games where everything has eyes. The billboard sprites in the 3d game really brought it back to old Mario Kart. Also it was very clever to record yourself for the AI, thats an awesome technique!
Thank you so much!
the images cover the how to play text:
happens in full screen as well
Yep, that's what I get for only testing the game in Firefox. It works fine in Firefox but Chrome and probably other browsers will have it unreadable unfortunately.
Here is how it's supposed to look/looks in Firefox
I’ve always loved Mario Kart so the controls felt very intuitive. Having a ghost to race rather than just a time to beat is great, and seeing a hard mode ghost let me figure out the “wiggle directions while drifting” tech (which is also in Mario Kart!). It’s a shame you couldn’t get more frequent respawn points working, perhaps some “offroad” terrain around turns and corners could reduce some of the brutal-ness of going off-track.
Thanks for playing and glad you liked the controls! Really glad to hear that the ghosts taught you that you could do the drift wiggle, that's exactly what I was hoping for! Great idea about the offroad section, I'll also probably try and add some fences like Rainbow Road has in MK64 especially for earlier/easier levels if I develop this into a full game.
As others said, I too liked the usage of sprites in 3D. Especially the drivers looked super fun sitting in the 3D-modeled car when you get the full turnaround in the start. The diff drivingmodes felt meaningful and it was fun trying to find a balance between in using the modes and when to slide and boost or not.
Only one small issue: I coudn't turn left while drifting. It worked for WASD but it was hard to then use Q and E then so I drove with the arrow keys. Might be just my keyboard is bad. I'm sure its better with a controller though, didn't have one rn.
Thanks for playing! Yeah, great point, the keyboard controls aren't great unfortunately. Someone pointed out that I should have made drift be Left Shift and I agree. Hopefully if I develop this more I'll add some kind of control-customization feature. Once I added controller support I never went back to using the keyboard, and I have years of weird Q/E + WASD strafing under my belt from playing WoW so I never considered how hard they keyboard controls would be for most people (including my Dad, should have had him playtest before the release...). Thanks again!
Edit to add: The "How to Play" doesn't mention this but you can also use Arrow Keys for steering/gas/break and still use the Q and E keys for mode swapping and drifting, that may make it easier although it's still quite not as good as using a controller.
I loved the overall aesthetic of the game with the 2d sprites and 3d world. Clean UI too. Love the characters. The cart controls very well, still trying to beat some of the tracks on hard! Great job!
Thanks a lot! Great feedback, very glad to hear that you're working on the hard tracks, I wasn't sure if anyone would stick with it that long to try and beat those guys. Once you master the very specific wiggling-drift-boost playstyle it becomes easier, although the falling until you learn your limits can likely get annoying, pausing and restarting will be key. I was playing as best as I could when I recorded the hard mode rivals, but I made sure that I could still beat each of them afterward.
simple but charming i like the 2d sprites in a 3d environment
Thanks for playing, I think that's my favorite part too
It's so cool to see another racer on here!!! It looks like we actually had similar core concepts but went in totally different directions with the whole hover vs driving mechanics.
Your game has such tight controls. I really like the way that you demonstrate the mastery that you can gain with your car with the LIVE ghost that you actually race against. That is such a cool way to do difficulties in a way that actually lets the player know what is possible with the systems in your game. I immediately jumped in against the hardmode cpu and got totally lapped haha.
It's also cool that everything reads so clearly with your animations. I like the sparks to tell when you are drifting, the color shift when the boost is ready, and the different models for which mode you are in.
Graphically I'm a total sucker for some cute 2d art on billboards. I liked how you really could tell what your guy was doin in the car from the little lean they did.
Great racing game!
Oh wow that's some marvelous feedback! You definitely picked up what I was trying to put down with this game. I was definitely hoping that people would see the ghost rival's techniques and try to copy them. Going to try your game right now, it looks awesome!