Downhill Derby
Downhill Derby is a combination between a racing game and an incremental game! The Downhill Kids set up a derby to decide which car is the fastest! Build the fastest car with the random assortment of parts in this Backpack Hero inspired game!
Manage your budget, build up your car, and play to the strengths of your character, and watch your car compete in the Downhill Derby! Let the fastest car win!
The Downhill Tournament consists of 9 races, split among 3 different environments! Every third race has a modifier to spice up the game. Is your build goodenough? Even if you don't win a race, you may still compete in the tournament; only the final standing matters, so don't give up!
Tips
Tip 1: Make sure to read the part description to know what they do and where to place them! The race description will let know what to expect!
Tip 2: Some parts (Nitros, Gadgets) have an "On Activated" component; they can be activated by clicking on them during the race.
Tip 3: You can press the arrow on the right to double the game speed.
Tip 4: You can rotate parts by using mouse wheel while you drag, or clicking (or tapping) on them in one of the storage slots.
Mobile Friendly
This game can be played on mobile. Yes, I'm aware that the graphics look funny.
Theme Of The Jam (sort of): The Perfect Loop
Buy parts, build your car, race, repeat. That's the perfect loop of the game. Each race is a short 20 second sprint to the finish, then you go back to the shop. Over and over and over...
This game was submitted for the Back In The Game Jam, it is inspired by the classic Cartoon Network Flash Games. I would have loved playing this back in those days!
Comments
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became so fast i crashed the game lol
wheels are busted
The game definitively has great potential. This was as close as I got to infinite speed, I hope someone breaks the record. The selection using the mouse seemed to d-sync sometimes leading to a lack of consistency within the selection/activation of turbos/gadgets and other clickable objects. 5/5 would go downhill again
I got past the integer overflow with speed, so much so the game broke and crashed. I used just two orange cat stickers but got a bunch of cooldown items that let them activate almost half a second, instead of their usual 3 seconds
Edit: Managed to do it again! Surprisingly simple once you know what you need
Haha neat! I'll look into it once the jam is over!
The game has great potential! Of course it needs more work and polish but I think it’s a great starting point, I can definitely see myself playing this, I love inventory management games (such as Backpack battles).
It took me way too long to figure out that I can expand my slots with the expansion items, as I was mostly looking at the images and quick scanning the info panels. Maybe a thematic item groups would help (for ex. for wheels it works, I could instantly tell what the wheels are, do and their limitations). But for other item families, not so much.
Also, some games that rely on this kind of shop randomness do a clever thing under the hood where they boost the appearance chances for certain items, so you have more opportnities to combine them. For example, I think I got only a couple of level 2 items at the beginning, and then I was just waiting for more of my items so I can combine them, but they never came. And I didn’t have enough space to cram more different items, so from the 1st position I just got lower and lower towards the last runs because I couldn’t upgrade my gear.
Thanks! I'll definitely add an explanation to the tutorial as to how you can expand your ship, and make the whole thing more intuitive.
That's also a good idea! Items and drops can make/break the game so they'll be a main focus; I just didn't have enough time for the jam
Short overview: I like the concept but I think the UI could use a bit of work. Try to make it more immediately understandable to the player without them having to read to much. "Show, don't tell".
Aside from user feedback and an intuitive teaching system, I really think some sound effects could enhance the experience.
Long review:
Starting off with the "pick a racer" screen, I think the stats could be displayed a bit more intuitively. Some stats are listed for all players, some are not.
Ie all players have the "Starts with $" attribute, and all are $30 except Devon who has $50. So maybe if there were just a graph in that spot with a $ icon and Devon having a green +$20. It'd make that perk stand out more quickly flipping through the characters. While the other characters have the same stat but no visual indicator of a perk.
I'm a bit bias for console like controls. Personally I think click-to-view-character followed by click-arrow-to-start feels a bit clunky. I'd prefer cycling through characters with left/right arrows, confirm button to select, confirm again to start, cancel button to back out. That's mostly assuming the game itself would also be controller-friendly.
First play I chose Kevin. I just hit the "go" button because I wasn't really sure what anything else did (and wasn't sure if any of them were accessible. I saw the other kids moving forward, but I didn't know how to move myself. Then the kids started moving backwards, not sure why. Also both the "Devon" characters have a layering glitch where their hoodie is on top of the stack.
Second play I realized I could drag the items from the bottom. I wasn't sure where to place them. I think this is a good place to have a player tutorial. On the first play while my cart was empty, the game should have MADE me chose something and given me suggested place to put it.
2nd play I can sort of see the dry auto-propelled me, though it actually caught me off-guard because it didn't at first. I didn't really noticed what the bunny did at first. I think graphic interfaces would be better than a text box. Like a list of vehicle stats, maybe even just portrayed with icons, gets a colorful stat increase to it when you hover over a certain optional part. Kind of like how RPGs will show how switching an armor or weapon will change your stats compared to what you already have equipped.
For the 3rd I clicked on the extra hair dryer even though it said "lock", assuming that there was something else I needed to do to unlock it. I was surprised I actually was able to select it anyway and am wondering if it was a glitch?
3rd play I noticed the gauge over my character for the first time and how quickly it dropped from 100% to 0%. It's not clear what that gauge is, or how I should increase it. It wasn't until going back to the menu and noticing some of the text for the first time did it sort-of make sense. Despite the extra dryer, I got the same placement, so I don't know if it actually did anything.
With my 4th playthrough with a second bunny and a blender added I .... Still got the same 3rd place. So I still don't feel like my decisions are actually influencing anything.
Thanks for the comprehensive review. Now I have a better insight what someone without any knowledge about the game experiences.
Unfortunately, onboarding and sound had to be cut because of time constraints. I'll try to add them in the future versions.
The ui feels cluttered and not very intuitive, but myself an not a fan of redundant icons. I'll think about how to cobvey information through the UI better!
The opponents get faster each race, so you need to upgrade your car to keep up with them!