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[AeornFlippout]

Hey all, I've posted here a few times about Race the Sun before. Some of you may know, we launched a Kickstarter about 25 days ago.
It got off to a *really* slow start, and so what we did, was go back to the drawing board with the game's core content and tools, and essentially rebuilt all the content from scratch these last two weeks.

Here's an updated gameplay trailer:




Let me know what you think!

[CowBoyDan]

It looks better, however I feel the core is still "dodge left and right around a bunch of random junk that doesn't seem to have any purpose for being there".  I've played this a few times since what I think was the first version, the core still feels the same.

[Nasawa]

This looks amazing. Makes me think of the later levels of StarFox on steroids. I wish I had some money to contribute to the KickStarter. Either way, keep it up, and keep us updated!

[Jisho]

Presentation looks pretty cool.

However, I wish you would have shown more extended shots to give a better feel of what to expect from the game. Going from one shot, to another shot, to another shot, doesn't give a very good idea of what to truly expect from say playing a level.

How the environment reacted was cool overall, I though the shot at 0:59 looked really cool. Though if shot 1:06 is any indicator it seems like your game isn't all smooth sailings frame rate wise...

[AeornFlippout]

Hey all, thanks for the feedback!

@CowboyDan - true, the core controls haven't changed. I guess we're not so concerned about giving things a "reason for being there" as we are with just making a fun experience with simple controls. With the new dynamic elements though, we feel the game really takes on a new depth.

@Nasawa - thanks! Don't worry about not being able to contribute, I know the feeling

@Jisho - It's a fair point, we'd like to have more extended gameplay footage. This was put together pretty quickly, and we had a lot we wanted to fit in and not much time. As for the framerate issue - we do have a few hiccups at the moment, but our plan is to run at a smooth 60 fps even on older PC hardware. These past few weeks during our Kickstarter, our focus has been on rebuilding the game

Here's a little bit more of a detailed tumblr post about how we arrived at where we are now:
http://thesunwins.tumblr.com/post/43730978474/how-a-slow-kickstarter-launch-saved-our-game

[Ant]

Yeah I agree with CowBoyDan there in that it does visually look a lot more interesting, but the core gameplay still feels flawed to me for two reasons. Firstly the controls are very sluggish and the perspective makes it difficult to judge approaching hazards when moving hard left/right, which combine to restrict the gameplay to a very narrow corridor. Firstly I'd experiment with making the ship a lot more responsive, and look at altering the view code so when shifting to the edge of areas the ship doesn't remain in the centre of the screen, instead it goes slightly off-center which means there's slightly less of a perspective change.

[AeornFlippout]

Yeah I agree with CowBoyDan there in that it does visually look a lot more interesting, but the core gameplay still feels flawed to me for two reasons. Firstly the controls are very sluggish and the perspective makes it difficult to judge approaching hazards when moving hard left/right, which combine to restrict the gameplay to a very narrow corridor. Firstly I'd experiment with making the ship a lot more responsive, and look at altering the view code so when shifting to the edge of areas the ship doesn't remain in the centre of the screen, instead it goes slightly off-center which means there's slightly less of a perspective change.

Wait - how are you guys judging how the core gameplay and controls "still feel flawed", based on a 60-second teaser video of unreleased gameplay?

We've actually tried the look-ahead thing with the camera for turning, and it didn't quite feel right to us. We may come back to it at some point...

[Ant]

well this is the feedback forum so would expect the video to be indicative of the gameplay, otherwise what's the point in posting it here?

[AeornFlippout]

well this is the feedback forum so would expect the video to be indicative of the gameplay, otherwise what's the point in posting it here?

Haha yes, your feedback is appreciated, and I assume you've played the Kongregate version and this is what you're basing the gameplay critiques on?

I just found it a bit funny to see people jumping on the controls and "feel" of the game based on a 60-second teaser video.

[Ant]

If you want more comprehensive feedback then I'd suggest posting more than a teaser next time, we can only base opinions on what were given. But yeah I've played the old kongregate version and judging from the video it doesn't look like the controls have changed. Super Hexagon is a very good example of how to do fast-avoidance well, quick and responsive controls are absolutely paramount.

[CowBoyDan]

I just found it a bit funny to see people jumping on the controls and "feel" of the game based on a 60-second teaser video.

From the teaser, move left, move right, don't run into random objects, try to collect glowing things.  Crash, rinse, repeat.  Which is cool and all don't get me wrong, but its still pretty much the same game.  If you want to get people to cough up your kickstarter money you need more than left, right, dodge until you crash, then repeat.