Hey!
Sorry for the lateness of my reply, I'm quite busy these days.
Ok, so I tried the game and the first thing that struck me is that I spent most of my time falling off the track. I had a hard time learning how to use the controls in order to win. The input was simple but it's interpretation in the game world wasn't. You could say that I wouldn't have that much trouble with it if the tracks had walls but in my opinion, the problem lies in the gameplay.
I found the gameplay really shallow. All I could do is roll and jump and I felt like jumping was almost useless. I think the game would truly benefit from some advanced techniques, like corner cutting, speed boost, super break, drifting and elaborated bouncing effects (since the characters are in spheres). Of course, knowing that the game was done in a rush, it's understandable that you don't have that, but it would have been crucial to have at least one advanced gameplay move. Right now, it makes the game look repetitive and challenge-less.
I've played mostly on the first track and it felt a bit annoying that all shortcuts had been disabled in some way. It's important to let the player skip some challenges. Your goal as a designer is to allow this, making the player think he's smart because he found a hole when in fact it was intentional by the designer and the game is not broken when he uses this shortcut.
The speed boost sections on the tracks felt annoying to me. I feel that most of them give a good boost but I always seemed to end up in a position where I lost control of my sphere. Speed boosts are great if you have a long stretch but you have to make sure it's not too close to a curve, unless you are in a very advanced track. I think that the first track should not place these speed boost sections too oftenly and make sure they are always useful.
The directing arrow on top of my character annoyed me for two reasons. One, I should not need this kind of constant information in a racing game. There are very few cases in which this kind of constant hand-guiding is acceptable and I didn't feel like it was the case in this game. It felt like this arrow was added as a crutch to the fact that the map could get confusing. Now, I kow it's normal to have this kind of decision when the schedule is tight but this is really bad in pro games. Whatever you do, you have to make sure that every part of your game is solid on it's own, without using "cheap tricks" or adding a simple non-playable mechanics on top of it.
I thought the character design was original and that you guys did a decent job for the time you had. I felt it was unfortunate that the game you were developing was a bit generic but featured really interesting characters that could be fun to see in their own world. You know like, understanding where they come from, why are they stuck in spheres, why do they race, etc... Like, I wouldn't mind playing a game with these characters and play a racing mini-game in it.
Well, keep it up!
Take care!
