Amazing concept and great controls. I can see myself putting some time into this one. Question before I buy, would you say that this current prototype is close to what the finished product will be? I like it as is, and so I'm trying to get a bead on what your vision for the finished game will be? Thanks.
It's probably around 15% done. It'll be a while, probably a few more years off and on to finish it. Here's my todo list at the moment, and I'm sure this will grow.
- Track stops rendering after a few transitions
- Enum-ify track names so tracks can be added/removed/shuffled without breaking things
- Options menu
- Balance, balance, balance
- Render & export more cars
- Boss fight AI
- 3 bosses per zone
- Boss map graphics
- Show boss on the map
- Map preview on relevant screens (treasure, shop, etc) to inform decisions
- Make battle maps feel better - new battle map only enemies?
- Fix aiming on shots
- Music
- Pause menu
- Ascension system
- Progress tracking & saving
- Multiple starting cars
- Car select screen
- Fix engine audio
- More SFX
- More weapons?
- Bigger bullets for player
- Performance improvements
- End of race / battle UI element (like drop-down starting lights)
- Player taking damage, potential to actually lose runs
- More relics
- More mystery nodes
- Decide if I should bump from 3 to 5 acts?
- Secrets - secret act?
- Improved cheat menu
- Improved glossary
- Better writing - descriptions on relics, mysteries
- Map screen - ability to read descriptions of stats & relics
- Credits
- Manual - digital and printable
- Box art
- Cart art
- Itch.io graphics
- Better title screen
- Attract screen
- Victory / end of battle screens / etc
- Game over screen
- More tracks
- More battle maps
- tutorial / driving school
- Improved HUD
- Improved map screen
- Transitions between screens
Looks like it's still there, looks pretty cool. While it's a driving game, oddly enough I would say my inspirations right now are largely the modern run based card games or games adjacent to that: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Peggle, FTL, Power Chord, etc. I thought "Why not combine one of those with Mario Kart?"
The visual style and visual theme is mostly me leaning into what I think the Genesis is good at, plus what I can get done myself. I can't do sprite art, so I figure why not pre-render a lot of the content?