Sneek Peek on new Big Update

New Race GameMode!

Since the day I released Troskias Island, I've been fully focused on integrating a new game mode. To be honest, I wasn’t too happy publishing the game with just the "Time Attack" mode. I really wanted to include races, I mean, this is a racing game after all, right? But at the end of the day, adding races was out of scope, and I prioritized launching the best game I could make, no matter how simple it ended up being.

However, after releasing the game, it gave me the perfect opportunity to work on an update and add these races. So, I'm excited to announce that by the end of this year (2024), this update will be fully playable.

This new game mode will let you race against up to 15 opponents, and support up to four players in local split-screen multiplayer on a completely new map that’s more suited for racing. You'll also be able to choose from 4 different cars, though all of them will have equal power.

Let me show you some of the progress so far:

This video is from September 11th

At this point, I had a solid foundation for the new game mode. The race itself was working — the game knew who was in first, second, and all the other positions. It knew when the race ended and had the final standings for all racers, but none of this was being shown to the player yet. The UI was pretty basic at this stage. The AI was also quite simple; it could race around the track but was slow, and needed to have a significantly overpowered car to even try competing against a human player.

This video is from October 5th

This is the current build of the game. The flow of the new game mode is fully integrated. You can select the race mode from the menu, which will take you to the Lobby screen. Here, it detects how many controllers are connected and creates a car selection for each player. You can choose between different cars, and once everyone is ready, you can set how many laps you want and how many AI opponents you’ll race against. After configuring everything, you can load into the race.

The UI is now fully integrated, though not yet skinned. In the race, you'll start after a 3-second countdown. Once the race is over, the final standings are shown, along with your placement. After all racers finish or a 15-second timer runs out, you’ll be taken to a podium screen where you can restart the race or return to the main menu.

At the end of the day, it’s a simple concept: a race.

So, what’s left to do?

A lot, actually! But to be more specific:

Presentation, Mechanics, and Audio

• Presentation: 
  • Skin: Some screens are still not skinned, and the Menu and Lobby need a better 3D environment too.
  • Track and new Cars: The track is just a layout right now, so there’s a lot of work left. I want it to look a bit nicer than the Time Attack map, maybe adding more details. The 3D models for the 4 available cars are almost ready, but some still need UVs and textures.
• Audio: Honestly, there’s no excuse for the lack of audio in the game at this point. This will likely take a lot of time to get right, and I'm not sure if it will be ready for this update, but I’m confident that the game will feel much better once it’s implemented.
• Mechanics: This is the weakest part of the game right now. A racing game without any innovative mechanics is just another simple racing game. So, I’m working on designing some new mechanics to tackle what I see as the common problems in arcade racers. The mechanics will still be simple, but I want to see more people playing the game to make tweaks and possibly adjust the overall game design.