Looking for feedback of the racing game that I'm developing

[DragonJam]

Hello everyone!

I'm looking for feedback, suggestions, first impressions and ideas from the gaming community about the game I'm developing at the moment.

My game is called Formula Wincars, and it's some kind of "Mario Kart meets League of Legends" idea. Aditionally, it will be available for PC, and there's nothing like that at this moment.

This is our latest trailer up to the date:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6vi5yTJaSg



But in fact, it's not new at all. We've improved a lot the game since that video más made, new circuits, characters, menu screens, back end programming, sound FX, etc...BUT we are a humble studio formed by 12 people, and if we spend time doing some new promo stuff, we would stop the developing of the game. And considering that our closed beta launches on Nov 2014, we've decided to set the game dev as a priority, and work on new videos later.

We are really excited about our co-op mode TEAMS MODE It's gotta be a cornerstone of the game. 4 vs 4 players teamed up into two different teams, where players will be able to share driver's special skills and where the choice of a common strategy between thousands of possibilities will be a must! These are MOBA games features implemented in the racing genre, that's where the "LoL" thing comes from.

Well, that's all for today, please don't hesitate to ask anything you might feel like, I promise to answer everybody. We are also running a development blog with 2-3 updates per week where we try to discuss how we managed to solve all kind of situations that comes out when developing a game like this.

http://www.formulawincars.com

Of course, if any member of this community wishes to be a beta tester, just register at our site and reach me at javier.bargueno@dragonjamstudios.com and you'll be granted with closed beta access.

Thanks in advance for your attention!!

Here comes some of the latest screenshots of the game: UPDATED 12/9/2014

 

[Elixer]

You would have better luck getting feedback if you had open beta I would think.

 

[mizzou]

Don't take any offense, because if you created this or was part of the creation I think that is commendable and a great feat! I could never dream of making something so complex and I'm sure there are many out there who DO make $$$ on games that can't achieve this.

This game does not interest me. The racing looks boring and rather sterile. I don't like the way the cars move from input action and how the screen reacts to it....reminds me of the driving mechanics in that old simcity racing game.

 

[davie jambo]

Looks like a camp version of Mario kart

 

[mizzou]

There is also some sort of uncanny valley going on with the avatars also D:

 

[DragonJam]

You would have better luck getting feedback if you had open beta I would think.

Yes, we know. We'll sure have an open beta too. The thing is that we got to stick to the development process and its stages.

We want to launch a closed beta first, in order to make sure that everything works properly before releasing an open beta. This is our first serious online project, and there could always appear any unexpected problem that made the game unable to work properly. If we are in closed-beta and one big issue appears, we might get it fixed and prevent us from giving a poor image. In an open beta everything is supposed to work properly even though not all features might be available yet.

Believe me, I've worked as a Quality Assurance Tester ar Electronic Arts in such big projects like FIFA 13, Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 4...and even though those games with such a big number of people working on them, always had some unpredictable bugs at early stages of development.

We are a humble studio and our project is quite ambitious, we need to do a closed beta prior to the open beta.


Anyway, thanks a lot for your comment!!

 

[DragonJam]

Looks like a camp version of Mario kart

Hi davie, thanks for your comment.

Well, we obviously admit our influences. But we do think that we're different enough from Mario Kart. In fact, other titles like Crash Team Racing were much more like Mario Kart than our game, and at the end, they had their own devoted fanbase.

Hopefully, Formula Wincars will end up obtaining his own identity when the players will be able to play it and notice all new features that our game implements in the Karting genre.

 

[DragonJam]

Don't take any offense, because if you created this or was part of the creation I think that is commendable and a great feat! I could never dream of making something so complex and I'm sure there are many out there who DO make $$$ on games that can't achieve this.

This game does not interest me. The racing looks boring and rather sterile. I don't like the way the cars move from input action and how the screen reacts to it....reminds me of the driving mechanics in that old simcity racing game.

No need to apologize!

We don't take things personally, if we're asking for feedback, we got to be ready for bad reviews too!

Besides, you're completely right. The game wasn't still fun enough at the pre-alpha early stage of development, and the controls weren't accurate enough....we didn't even implemented the drifting yet!

Obviously, the video shows a Work in Progress thing, and the game looks much better now. But we haven't got a video that illustrates this progress yet, so it's ok if you don't like what you see in the video.

The Uncanny Valley thing:


Yeah, that's a problem we noticed when we first showed our drivers designs. We are taking this into account when designing our new characters trying to avoid this. In fact, one of them, Valery Sanchez, the chick with a hip-hop style, was redesigned in order to fix this.

BEFORE

AFTER

I think that we should go more in the direction of Pixar or Team Fortress, and that's the intention from now on

Thanks a lot for your comments mizzou!

 

[Stuka87]

hmm, looks interesting. Obviously the video is early, but hopefully more game play elements are added.

 

[moonbogg]

The game looks interesting and fun. I would not mention that you worked on QA for BF4. It makes you look kind of bad IMO since that game has been a disaster and still has issues nearing the last expansion.

 

[mizzou]

The game looks interesting and fun. I would not mention that you worked on QA for BF4. It makes you look kind of bad IMO since that game has been a disaster and still has issues nearing the last expansion.

Well to each their own, I'm having a BLAST with BF4 on ps4

 

[BrightCandle]

I sounds a look like mario cart and I am not really seeing where the LOL comes in really. The differences in skills of the cards (at least from your trailor) didn't seem to be too important, nor do I really get the team aspect of the game from it at all. A genuine team car game which is highly skill based like LOL/Dota 2 is might actually be very novel but I don't feel that what I just watched achieves that vision. For one the handling of the cards seems ludicrously easy and twitchy. To tone yourself towards the skilled aspect of LOL style you would want to change that, otherwise it just looks like a whacky racers game and not a genuine strategic game.

Maybe the trailor is highly unrepresentative of the game, if so you will want to remove it and replace it when you have (because a negative impression is worse than no marketing at all) but from what I have seen I wouldn't be interested in this game. I like LOL/Dota 2 and high skill based games, this to me just looks like a carton whacky racers and not a serious competition game.

 

[werepossum]

Clearly this isn't meant to be a serious racing competition game, and I think that's smart. Such games need major financial backing and programming talent because their customers are extremely picky and they are trying to reproduce real cars. It's also a relatively crowded field. This is just a goofy Mario Karts clone, and I see nothing wrong with that. If you guys can fine tune the handling to the point where it's accessible to everyone but someone who really spends the time can hone her skills to be superior, then you've really got something. If not, you've basically got a goofy Mario Karts clone which is team based. That could be a winner as lots of kids (and some adults) have friends who aren't really avid gamers (or are just uncoordinated) and this could be a fun game everyone could play for a couple hours, being together while being apart as it were. If you can get the drifting mechanics down pat, that would also differentiate your product as something that can be played as casually as Mario Karts but also a bit more seriously, pulling off stunts that your friends will witness and want to duplicate.

If anything, Team Fortress proved that goofy can sell big time. As long as the underlying product is solid, goofy allows people who might not otherwise be interested in games to enjoy gaming alongside people who are very interested in games.

 

[DragonJam]

I proceed to answer everyone!

Stuka87

hmm, looks interesting. Obviously the video is early, but hopefully more game play elements are added.

Yeah, that's it. We'll keep you updated on our progress. Thanks a lot for your comment!

moonbogg

The game looks interesting and fun. I would not mention that you worked on QA for BF4. It makes you look kind of bad IMO since that game has been a disaster and still has issues nearing the last expansion.

First, Thanks a lot for your comment. We do really appreciate your words.

The BF4 thing:

Well, that's your opinion. In fact, I don't think that the game had been a disaster (look, even though in this same thread below someone comes and says he liked it) but I can totally see your point.

I'm very proud of having worked at EA where I met such a hard working team and had the chance of learning so much about the gaming industry. I signed a non disclosure agreement and there are some things I can not openly talk about, but I can tell you that my work was more focused into ensuring that games would pass Certification from first parties (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo....) at first try, rather than looking for functionality bugs. There are thousands of technical requirements that the game must be compliant with in order to be published in each gaming platform.

Of course, we also reported functionality bugs that we might encounter, but there's also a QA team in each developing studio more focused on that matters.

Aditionally, I remember first day when the game came out, fans published a list including all bugs that they had found in the game. We had found them too and reported, but the thing is that such big projects just can not be delayed (because of marketing campaigns already launched and stuff like that) and there's not enough time to fix them all. They do that via patching the game afterwards.

BrightCandle

I sounds a look like mario cart and I am not really seeing where the LOL comes in really. The differences in skills of the cards (at least from your trailor) didn't seem to be too important, nor do I really get the team aspect of the game from it at all. A genuine team car game which is highly skill based like LOL/Dota 2 is might actually be very novel but I don't feel that what I just watched achieves that vision. For one the handling of the cards seems ludicrously easy and twitchy. To tone yourself towards the skilled aspect of LOL style you would want to change that, otherwise it just looks like a whacky racers game and not a genuine strategic game.

Maybe the trailor is highly unrepresentative of the game, if so you will want to remove it and replace it when you have (because a negative impression is worse than no marketing at all) but from what I have seen I wouldn't be interested in this game. I like LOL/Dota 2 and high skill based games, this to me just looks like a carton whacky racers and not a serious competition game.

Well, I would not say that the trailer is "highly unrepresentative of the game" but you must consider that it displays a Work in progress game, at an early stage of development (pre-alpha concretely). Besides, our intention in that video is far from explaining each and every feature of the game. Its purpose is to show the world what we are doing and take advantage of the chance that gaming community feedback gives us to take their opinion into account. You know classic "A game made by and for players" for real.

We don't care that much about marketing, at least at this moment. We are developing the game now and we want to know people's opinion in order to make the game as good as possible.

THE MOBA/LOL/DOTA THING:

Obviously we are not thinking of being so competitive as those titles. Our intention is to take some of those ideas and put them on other different genre. Most times, this is the best way of making up something new, looking at your influences and daring to make something new with them.

Sad to hear you don't like my game at the moment, but I can completely see your point. Dunno, maybe you'll like it more when our launching trailer comes out, and get to give the game a chance!

Thanks a lot for your comment!!

werepossum

Clearly this isn't meant to be a serious racing competition game, and I think that's smart. Such games need major financial backing and programming talent because their customers are extremely picky and they are trying to reproduce real cars. It's also a relatively crowded field. This is just a goofy Mario Karts clone, and I see nothing wrong with that. If you guys can fine tune the handling to the point where it's accessible to everyone but someone who really spends the time can hone her skills to be superior, then you've really got something. If not, you've basically got a goofy Mario Karts clone which is team based. That could be a winner as lots of kids (and some adults) have friends who aren't really avid gamers (or are just uncoordinated) and this could be a fun game everyone could play for a couple hours, being together while being apart as it were. If you can get the drifting mechanics down pat, that would also differentiate your product as something that can be played as casually as Mario Karts but also a bit more seriously, pulling off stunts that your friends will witness and want to duplicate.

If anything, Team Fortress proved that goofy can sell big time. As long as the underlying product is solid, goofy allows people who might not otherwise be interested in games to enjoy gaming alongside people who are very interested in games.

Hello werepossum, thanks a lot for your comment.

I think that you really see what our game is about. We want to make the game easy for starters, but providing as well that accuracy on controls, and game-depth with some strategic options that will allow more competitive players to develop their own thing with the game and have a challenge here.

We'll work hard at that matter, (the drifting, general handling of the car, how different terrains affect the car, each car's own settings...) because as you point out, that's the magic formula that decides wether the game can be both, fun and competitive, or not.

 

[lynna]

You're developing a very revolutionary game! I'm sure it will be played by many avid game players and you'll earn a lot from it. I love car racing game but maybe you can fueled it with more adventures and mystery to make it more exciting.

 

[ThinClient]

I'd rather play Zero Gear.

 

[DragonJam]

You're developing a very revolutionary game! I'm sure it will be played by many avid game players and you'll earn a lot from it. I love car racing game but maybe you can fueled it with more adventures and mystery to make it more exciting.

Hello lynna,

Oh, you flatter us, so great to hear you say that!

In fact, besides of the aspects of adventures racing (knowing each and every shortcut and alternatives paths, finding the hidden emblems and performing special actions in certain spots) there is mystery as well in Formula Wincars.

We've taken care of every driver's background story. There's a reason why they're participating in the tournament and many secrets behind the tournament itself.

How will you find out this?

There are some clues hidden in the circuits. Well, sometimes they're not hidden, you can see it at first sight, but you'll need to tie up all loose ends.

e.g. alien simbology in a ruined church? Yeah, this is our new circuit!

Additionally you'll unlock some text pieces of the plot as you progress in the game. Our intention is to integrate some features of classical story mode into a multiplayer online game.

Thanks a lot for your comment, we really appreciate it!

 

[DragonJam]

I'd rather play Zero Gear.

Hello ThinClient!

Well Zero Gear is a rocking great game too, I undestand your choice. If you like Zero Gear, and in my humble opinion, I think that you could give a chance to our game too.

What I really like about Zero Gear is the soccer mode and those crazy physics of the cars. But when it comes to the race mode, I think that our game provides such a different experience, I'm not saying better (that's up to the players to decide, and also depends on each player's taste), but different indeed.

Thanks a lot for your comment!!

 

[DragonJam]

Lately, we've been very busy developing the game and doing all the arragements for the upcoming closed-beta launch. Nonetheless, we had some time to take this pictures at our workplace and show you how's our cave and what we're currently working on!

Hope you like them!

Not sure if the artists were discussing character's anatomy proportions when we took this picture, or just talking about a DragonBall episode.

Work In Progress Truck I

Good news! Tournaments are already working smoothly. Have we mentioned that tournaments will be one of the game's greatest pillar? Yeah, there will be stunning prizes for winners and it ensures that the community will be constantly challenged.

Angel has been immersed in modeling a high-detailed 3D castle for our new circuit. It will feature many different floor levels, hidden areas, spider webs, blood and a mysterious resident too! We can't unveil much more about that without spoiling the surprise, but for what we've seen so far, we guarantee that it will leave you open-mouthed!

Some stained glass windows designs for the castle. Like most things in Formula Wincars, there's a secret hidden in them....

Jesus smiles after noticing that we've been trolling him adding a Justin Biever song among the FX audio test files.

Looking for inspiration.

This is a work in progress. It shows a Golem Samurai in its higher evolution level. When we said that drivers will have Special Skills we really meant it! Forget about that throwing bananas childish thing!

Finally, the entire team in two different pictures

 

[ThinClient]

Hello ThinClient!

Well Zero Gear is a rocking great game too, I undestand your choice. If you like Zero Gear, and in my humble opinion, I think that you could give a chance to our game too.

What I really like about Zero Gear is the soccer mode and those crazy physics of the cars. But when it comes to the race mode, I think that our game provides such a different experience, I'm not saying better (that's up to the players to decide, and also depends on each player's taste), but different indeed.

Thanks a lot for your comment!!

I've been reading your replies to folks here and, with due respect, it all seems to drip with smarmy ass kissing and smoke blowing. It's clear that your efforts here are founded in marketing. While I can appreciate the effort, as any business needs marketing of some kind, after many decades of gaming I have learned that money-driven marketing cannot be trusted whatsoever.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because you're just doing your job, but the agree-with-everyone-but-hype-our-game veneer over your efforts won't ever convince an adult gamer like me because I've seen it too many times. An opinion without a critical aspect to it doesn't carry any weight because it's not balanced.

I'll wait until I see some Lets Play videos of your actual gameplay to even begin forming an opinion. I'll wait until I see my fellow gamers playing it and talking about it. If you're receiving monetary compensation for your effort to hype / review a game, then your opinion (or your marketing job, for instance) is of no relevance to me and many others. Marketing and hype machines instantly earn my mistrust.

Ninety-nine percent of this forum is gamers who actually play the games. We talk with each other, we share opinions, we yell at each other when we disagree, but at the end of the day we're all looking out for each other like an extended family. It's very rare to get anyone into this forum who is trying to sell their own product. Several times, in the past, those who've tried have been removed for various reasons. Seeing someone come into this forum to sell something, to me, is like having a used car salesman come into my house to try to push his wares. It's unsettling, like how a junkyard dog growls at someone in the yard he doesn't know and is trained to be wary of.

Don't just talk up your game, that's pointless. Get your game onto Steam Greenlight. Get some Lets Play videos going. Get some video game reviews going by players and don't pay them to do it.

THEN I will pay attention to the rhetoric.

 

[DragonJam]

I've been reading your replies to folks here and, with due respect, it all seems to drip with smarmy ass kissing and smoke blowing. It's clear that your efforts here are founded in marketing. While I can appreciate the effort, as any business needs marketing of some kind, after many decades of gaming I have learned that money-driven marketing cannot be trusted whatsoever.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because you're just doing your job, but the agree-with-everyone-but-hype-our-game veneer over your efforts won't ever convince an adult gamer like me because I've seen it too many times. An opinion without a critical aspect to it doesn't carry any weight because it's not balanced.

I'll wait until I see some Lets Play videos of your actual gameplay to even begin forming an opinion. I'll wait until I see my fellow gamers playing it and talking about it. If you're receiving monetary compensation for your effort to hype / review a game, then your opinion (or your marketing job, for instance) is of no relevance to me and many others. Marketing and hype machines instantly earn my mistrust.

Ninety-nine percent of this forum is gamers who actually play the games. We talk with each other, we share opinions, we yell at each other when we disagree, but at the end of the day we're all looking out for each other like an extended family. It's very rare to get anyone into this forum who is trying to sell their own product. Several times, in the past, those who've tried have been removed for various reasons. Seeing someone come into this forum to sell something, to me, is like having a used car salesman come into my house to try to push his wares. It's unsettling, like how a junkyard dog growls at someone in the yard he doesn't know and is trained to be wary of.

Don't just talk up your game, that's pointless. Get your game onto Steam Greenlight. Get some Lets Play videos going. Get some video game reviews going by players and don't pay them to do it.

THEN I will pay attention to the rhetoric.

Hello again ThinClient,

I can understand your point of view but IMO you misunderstand some concepts.

Of course, please don’t take this personally, but since you bring up that I’m using some ass kissing language, I feel the obligation of speaking more directly.

First, I don’t think that I’m ass kicking, I’m just keeping a positive attitude. My personal experience has shown me that it’s always better to look on the
bright side of life, and avoid whining and complaining.

I ain’t no Online Marketer. In fact, I’m in charge of QA testing and Community Management. I don’t know anything about marketing, business development or something like that.

Let’s be honest here, how many people do you think that is going to register at our site because I’m writing in this message board?

Don’t know…2?, 5? 20? 100?

Do you know how many players does a F2P game like ours need to be financially solvent?

In case you don’t know, it’s about 50,000 – 300,000 at least (depends a lot on how much money spends each player). Just in case this was a marketing campaign, it would be the WORST marketing campaign ever!

An Online Marketer wouldn’t spend the time I do on forums asking for feedback to the gaming community, taking the time needed to say thank you to everyone who contributes with his/her opinion or suggestions.
We’re here because we do care about our game, want to make it as good as possible, and we’ve got a compromise to hear players’ opinion from the very first day.

It’s funny that you talk about getting video game reviews, doing more trailers and that kind of things. That’s exactly how big companies do the Hype. You’ll never see guys from AAA titles asking for feedback in a phorum. They spend the time doing trailers where they use renders, stating that they’re using in-game footage, lying on purpose, knowing the fact that the game will look worse than that when it’s finally released.

We do exactly the opposite thing, we make public our pre-alpha builds trailer, even though being aware that the game will eventually look better and some people can get a bad first impression. We do not care about that, that’s the price we pay for hearing the community and take their opinion into account while developing the game.

On another subject, if you felt that I spammed or something like that, I just can give you a meaningful apology, it was not my intention. But believe me, If this was a marketing action I would be writing PR to media and not directly talking to gamers.

FYI I’m 32 and never stopped playing since I was 5.

Thanks a lot for you comment!

 

[DragonJam]

Hi everyone!

We're still working hard on doing all the arrangements in order to launch our closed-Beta. Still don't have an exact launch date, but we're estimating like 2 months from now.

We're focusing on many aspects of the game: gameplay, polishing models, creating new content like vehicles, drives and circuits, fixing bugs.....

Besides, we have a great news this week and received some media coverage for it, like this for example:

http://www.gamersftw.co.uk/javi-diez-write-music-formula-wincars/

Javi Diez To Write Music For Formula Wincars

DragonJam Studios confirms that the upcoming release of its multiplayer racing title will feature original music by rocker Javi Diez from famous rock act Mägo de Oz.

Javi Diez combines his career as a professional and successful musician with his other passion, video games. He’s been playing every single game he’s been able to get his hands into since he was a child. Some of his favorite titles are The Secret of Monkey Island, American McGee’s Alive or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

“I always wanted to write music for video games, but it wasn’t until a year ago that I decided to go for it”, says spanish folk-metal musician, who mentions among his influences Adam Skorupa from The Witcher saga, 80’s video game classic soundtracks, and above them all Shadow of the Colossus’ soundtrack “utter madness from the beginning to the end”

Special Guest appearances

Javi Diez won’t be on his own as he will be supported by some of his bandmates from Mägo de Oz when time comes to record the music composed for Formula Wincars. Thus, the game faces its final development stage announcing its Closed-Beta launch in December calling players to be active participants by registering on their site.

The Spanish videogame Formula Wincars has been under development from more than a year and during that time it’s been able to get attention from the press and players alike thru its fresh take on the racing game genre, introducing lots of innovative features based on online multiplayer gaming, where not only driving skills will be important, but also strategy and tactics will be critical.

They were first acknowledged by the media when they launched their crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, and the title will very likely be one this year’s pleasant surprises.

We're more than happy with these, Mago de Oz is such a huge band in Spain and South American countries, having sold millions of copies of their records, and it will surely help us reaching a bigger audience. Besides, we've heard some tunes he's written already and THEY ROCK! :twisted: :twisted:

Here's a picture of Javi Diez visiting our studio for the first time:

We've also uploaded a video showing some animation tests we've working on, in order to prepare the Drivers Selection screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zufMvmE7nJE

Just let us know what you think about our progress!!

 

[DragonJam]

Hi again!

We've made this picture displaying some of the cars which will be available in our game, and there will be many more than these!

What do you think of it?

 

[Subyman]

I think you have the right idea of shifting away from normal circuit racing on roads to doing crazy environments. The last half of the trailer reminded me of an old racing game called Speed Busters by Ubisoft. Came out in the late 90's and I remember having a blast playing it. I believe you bought cars and upgraded them and it even had damage. There were a lot of weird locations to race through. Might be worth glancing at it.

 

[DragonJam]

I think you have the right idea of shifting away from normal circuit racing on roads to doing crazy environments. The last half of the trailer reminded me of an old racing game called Speed Busters by Ubisoft. Came out in the late 90's and I remember having a blast playing it. I believe you bought cars and upgraded them and it even had damage. There were a lot of weird locations to race through. Might be worth glancing at it.

Hello Subyman,

Yes, your completely right on this. We started doing something more like resembling real-life circuits, and as we kept developing the game we got more into the fantasy-themed circuits, allowing every crazy idea that came to our minds, to go into the game.

At first, we were a little afraid to do something like that, because maybe it would end up looking a lot like Mario Kart. But, we've found out own way of doing this, and also noticed that it's what we do better than anything else.

Didn't know Speed Busters untill you mentioned it. I watched a video and I get your point. Cool game indeed!

Thanks a lot for your comment!