Endless Racer

CapeOfGoodGames

Check out our latest game called Endless Racer for iOS and Android. Made by Cape of Good Games using Unity3D.

www.appstore.com/endlessracer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.capeofgoodgames.endlessracer <-- Might take a few hours to show up

Let us know what you think.

dislekcia

So I gave this a try, seeing as its free.

Played on an iPad 2 and I gotta say it was pretty slow and unresponsive to menu inputs a lot of the time. While I sympathise (seeing as I'm working on that exact same problem myself right now), it does feel pretty bad to use. It was most obvious in the car select menu, where scrolling to the right got really, really slow - especially when displaying the boat models. What's up with that, are you loading those models from scratch every time? Also, why isn't that a carousel that you can swipe through?

Anyway... Leaving off whatever your specific freemium implementation might be (yay ads and sponsored ad views - I've heard a few iOS devs saying those work really well for them) the game itself starts out pretty confusing and the controls weren't immediately obvious. While the ^ and v arrows seemed to be speed up and slow down, I sort of assumed the whole edge of the screen would be a button. I also didn't see the problem with being very slow, yeah there was flashing red text, but nothing else seemed to happen - it took me a while to realise I wasn't collecting score. The game would hitch when loading sounds and it dropped frames really badly when I eventually decided to crash. The accelerometer controls didn't feel bad and after Ridiculous Fishing, I had no trouble dodging cars. Collecting money didn't feel that good though, there wasn't a lot of juice going on. I saw a few cars disappear and a couple of times cars would suddenly stop in front of me, causing me to crash.

The post-game menu was really confusing too - the round buttons at the bottom could have done with labels to explain what they were going to do, plus the bottom of the menu area was obscured by an ad, so I wasn't sure if clicking near it would trigger the ad or not. It didn't. The game also didn't seem to remember my best scores when starting a new game, it just kept saying "Best: 0" no matter how many km I apparently drove. Could have done with an introduction to the controls on the Tap to Start popup.

Why would I try to get one of the other cars? What's the point of upgrading the current car?

CapeOfGoodGames

Thanks dislekcia. Your comments are very constructive.

The car select menu lags when loading the boat models, probably due to the water getting loaded. I didn't use a carousel because I wanted to show different backgrounds because different vehicles have different levels.

I'll add some more instructions. I often make that mistake of not including them because I feel the game is self explaining. But not always. I could also add some effects when you collect money and more score opportunities when dodging cars etc. In regards to cars disappearing I need to check the code for why they are doing that.

The point of upgrading your vehicle is to get a better score. Unlocking other cars unlocks new levels that go with them.

Here's my email if you have any more input for me: stefan@cogg.co.za

dislekcia

CapeOfGoodGames said:

The point of upgrading your vehicle is to get a better score. Unlocking other cars unlocks new levels that go with them.

Ah. You should probably tell players that somehow then ;)

Might be able to add in a score tip onto the game start popup, so while it's explaining the controls in a simple picture, it's also saying "Earn score as fast as you're travelling!" and then on the upgrade button, add a "score ++" to the speed upgrade.

The backgrounds are just meshes too, right? You could simply include them in the carousel :)

FanieG

Nice write-up in this month's NAG on this game.