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ESC from Space Bar's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #81 | 3.579 | 3.579 |
| Overall | #151 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
| Gameplay | #163 | 2.895 | 2.895 |
| Innovation | #202 | 2.789 | 2.789 |
| Audio | #237 | 2.737 | 2.737 |
| Theme interpretation | #273 | 2.684 | 2.684 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/Ionox-studios/GravitySurfer
Game description
Play as a mysterious surfing robot enslaved by a mysterious corporation.
Battle 4 rival riders on 3 unique tracks with two possible endings. May the best racer win!
Note: the web embed only works in full screen.
< Controls >
[ Enter or LMB ] Attack. (Why race if you can fight? 3 hits to kill.)
[ C ] Gravitational pull-down and rotate down. (Helps if you're too high.)
[ Space Bar ] Jump! Save thyself.
[ E ] BOOST. Gotta go fast.
[ T ] Self-destruct/Return to track. (Helps if you're lost or stuck in the colliders. Take damage.)
[ Esc ] Exit during gameplay
Known Bugs:
If you get a memory crash, try restarting from the level select. If you have camera jitter on the web-build please try the download build!
Theme interpretation
The main character is a surfer and waves are there to support the player if they fall off or miss turns, allow shortcuts, speed you up, and maybe even find a true ending.
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Comments
Really cool entry! The maps and game was way bigger than anything I expected! Something I would recommend (or maybe I'm just bad at racing games) is either have some sort of drift mechanic or make it more obvious when a tight turn is coming. I also constantly had flashes of light when turning some corners that made it hard to see the course. Other than that, this is a really good product!
This is a really enjoyable and large game, especially for a jam like this! You really get to feel the speed when you race, even though I suck at these kind of games I had a blast with this one. Riding the waves was really fun!
Wow you made this in 30 days? Amazing! The size of the maps (plural!!) is impressive and visually it is looks great for a game jam game. I particularly liked the neon trails, both because they looked good but they helped localize the other racers. Im also impressed how it was possible to navigate even while airborne (even though the navigation was a bit tricky).
I was never able to utilize the attack mechanic, because I was only close to the other racers in the beginning, then I never saw them again. Maybe that is because Im not very good at racing games, haha! Summary: Cool game, super impressive for a game jam!
Thanks for the kind words!!! And thank you for the comment about the neon trail. That was added last minute for the reasons you mentioned, so the work that Ionox put in had paid off!
And no, you're doing fine! :) All of us who has played it gets yeeted off the tracks nearly every run, and that is certainly due to the flaw in the track design and terrain design that one of us (me) didn't fix. Thank you so much for appreciating our game! <3 <3
Its incredible that this game was made in 30 days. That was a very bold idea to attempt and you delivered 3 huge maps with very unique visuals and mechanics. Loved the long light tracks the racers emit. It was hard controlling the surfer at first but I got the hang of it and it was a lot of fun. Congrats!!
Thanks for the comment. Yea we went back and forth on leaving it kind of wobbly and arcadey or grounding it more but after playing it a lot hoped people would enjoy the weirdness of it.
Honestly we lucked out. We'd never made a racing game before and found out Unity has an extremely robust terrain system and someone else had written a really fun road editor and one of our team members went ham on designing roads and terrains (and crashed unity about a dozen times in the process), then it was just designing enough textures and skyboxes to fill it out. If we had to spin up our own roads system it would have been a much less productive month. Funny enough the small effects on each level: the procedurally generated buildings on L1, the billboarded cactuses on L2, and the slowly expanding middle and multiple exits/story directions on L3 were the things that causes us the most most pain.
You told me that 3D work is difficult, but you've done a great job with this short-term jam. I loved the gameplay.
The idea of skating around the High Tech City on a skateboard is really cool. The sounds are unique. While playing the game, I was thinking, “I wish I had a boost,” and it's actually there. :)
Development note: Adjust the UI section; you can't touch the UI section when you enlarge the screen.
If the rays coming out from behind your skateboard change color when you press boost (E), it adds variety and beauty to the gameplay.
You could add a pause button to the game. Pressing Esc shouldn't close the game immediately.
You can really tell a lot of effort went into it.
Having a story mode in the game is really nice.
The mini-map feature is clever. Congratulations. I liked the idea of racing with a tech-savvy surfboard. Good job.
Good luck in jam.
Thanks for the nice feedback glad you enjoyed it!
The UI thing plagues us constantly we really need to figure that out. Last year it actually broke our game. Hopefully this year it was possible to at least start it even at weird resolutions. But yea how we lock items to parts of the screen has issues. One thing we really struggle with on Unity.
Yea making boosting vs not boosting more readable would be a nice addition that's a good way to do it.
My bad about the pause thing. I had set it up that way during development and forgot to fix it as we got near the end but good catch.
Cool game idea, the story was pretty funny and I liked the art in the story slides.
I think there should be more contrast between the text and some of the backgrounds for the story slides.
Sometimes it was hard to follow where I was since it looked like the terrain was clipping and it was really easy to get thrown off the map and get confused.
Some vfx for the Boost (vignette, FOV change, etc) would go a long way to help with immersion and communicating to the player.
The 3d models were really cool and the three different maps felt unique and were viusally striking.
Good Job overall!
Yea strongly agree about the terrain issue. Because of LOD clipping and the terrain being one-sided it was very possible to end up in a place where you can't exactly see where to go next and even lose the whole level especially with the fixed camera. The self-destruct button was a last minute patch for that but even then it's not great as it has it's own bugs and can be disorienting. Good point about the boost, original we used the particles turning blue that is too subtle. I think the trail swapping for a different color or a camera change would have made it much more clear when it stopped/ran out.
Thanks about the maps, we had a lot of fun with sky boxes road design.
This is great feedback. Thanks!
This felt like a fever dream hahaha but i liked it
I'd say that's a fair descriptor of what we were going for! Thank you
this is such a fun and creative racing game! it took a while to learn the controls but once i did i found it super enjoyable. the audio was hilarious as well, 10/10
Thanks! I was worried about the mouth sounds but it's something we always wanted to try and we were running out of time so we went with it. Glad it was fun!