TempAnon and Qwerty gave some good feedback already.
For now, I won't focus on graphics, only on gameplay elements. Overall, I love where this is going to.
- The length of the track is just fine in my opinion. It's not repetitive, so 1 minute is not an issue for a 3 laps race.
- Lack of contrast and difficulty to understand where the road goes next the first time you play are problematic in several spots as already pointed out. I understand that outside the castle the road on the rock and the rock on the sides are made of the same thing, but it's really important to make the difference clearer. Lack of contrast between road and off-road is XR591's biggest issue and it's very noob unfriendly.
- I don't see the point of the speed boost on the jump before the broken bridge, especially followed by a slow down texture.
- The corkscrew and the broken bridge make for challenging gameplay, very good
- The ball spikes obstacles are very good. Dynamic in nature, yet fair to the player (good visibility, predictable pattern). I think Qwerty's idea of not having them all in sync has potential. A 4th ball spikes in that section could also be considered. Avoiding one or two is easy but you need to stay focused to pay attention to what's coming afterwards, so the 3rd ball ups the challenge and a 4th would even more (a lot more than it would if placed in an easy part of the track where it's alone)
- But the hitbox from the ball spikes seems to be slightly bigger than the ball. At least, I got this impression from repeated testing. Of course we don't want the kart to go inside the ball, but the sphere defined by the farthest point from all the spikes is too large for a hitbox, it needs to be closer to the main surface.
- Having dynamic obstacles in other spots of the race would be nice, too. I don't have a better suggestion than more ball spikes right now. Maybe something to do with lava, but without going over the top crazy with random fireballs that make no sense...
- It's possible to completely cut the corkscrew by jumping to the left to the road down below. Auto-rescue planes and checklines will be needed to deal with this.
- There are severe rescue issues in spots where the rescue puts you back over "nothing" and you fall back down the lava. But it's not fundamentally a track issue, as the engine has no proper way to deal with this for now. The unique drivequads used for guiding AI + minimap + rescue management are proving to be a limitation. The AI needs to understand that the parts of the broken bridge are connected, but on the minimap showing it broken would be nicer, and the rescue system definitely needs to know where to not put the kart back.
- The lapline will need to be clearly marked on the ground. And a lap arch + a lapline on the ground would be even better.
- The 15 seconds section from the castle entry to the ball spikes hall is boring. It feels like Abysses : sure, the road is moving left and right, but it's wide, the curves are not challenging at all. I don't mind necessarily having an easier section (also, there should be multiple spots where using a zipper is ok in a long track), but that should be maybe a 3-4s easy straight without any obstacle and just some collectible item boxes to relax before more challenge. 15s is too long for such a section.
- The broken bridge section is not compatible with reverse mode. Reverse mode is a cool feature, it needs to be supported. Before the "cobbles" between the start line and the spikes hall the road isn't at the same level which is causing issues too.
QwertyChouskie {l Wrote}:- I'd like to maybe see some more anti-gravity stuff. The road that will run through the castle could be a good candidate, especially if there's lots of machinery in there..
The road towards the castle already has a lot of vertical movement and banking (which is good), do you mean more of this or straight-up an upside-down road ? Height variation and banking make for a much more interesting track than a flat layout, but upside down is gimmicky outside of O loops with boosters (but that's not suited to this track's theme).
Mario Kart's gimmicky anti-gravity and bizarre layouts make me sensitive on this.