Description

You are a driver trapped in a bizarre synthwave racing world, you’re only method of escape is a single ramp, but first you have to build up enough speed by racing through the ever-changing track.

This is Racing. this is Out-Loop.

Made in 72 Hours for Ludum Dare 47

About the Project

Made with: Unity

Role: Programmer & Gameplay Designer

Project Length: 72 Hours

I made Out-Loop with a team of 4, where I served as gameplay programmer and designer.

The theme of LD 47 was “Stuck in a Loop” which we discussed for a bit of time and eventaully settled on wanting to create some kind of racing game with an evolving track that you had to escape. I had never made a racing game before but I had remembered that kenneyNL made an arcadey car controller using a physics ball so I decided to start by recreating that and getting it to feel right. Once I had something nailed down that felt pretty good, I worked on creating the evolving track, I whipped up some basic obstacles (inspired by games like Mario Kart) that would build up each time the player went around the track. After that I tuned the ramp and jump length the playe would need to hit to escape to the next track. When it was finally done, I wasn’t really happy with the result, I couldn’t figure out how to make the jump interesting and we had already spent a lot of time making 1 track, making more in the time span we had would be tough. I made the call to cut the scope of the game to 1 track, change the jump from a binary you win/ you fail mechanic to a high score (similar to home-run contest in Smash Bros), and add a timer to pressure the player. This made the game a lot more interesting as players now had to decide whether they wanted to play it safe and jump with time to spare, or risk another lap around the track for a better score.

Our artist conceptualized the aesthetic of the game and made some great voxel models for all the car and track elements of the game. Our audio guy made some sweet synthwave + retro tracks that really tie the voxel aesthetic with the colors and style of the game.

Lessons Learned:

I would say that spending more time in the ideation phase would really have benefited us as everyone had a bit of a different idea of what the game would be like, which led to some challenges later down the line. I should spend more time in this ideation phase in the future and really consider what the player interaction will look like and what will make the game fun.

The person who organized the team wasted a lot of time going after features that were way to big for the scope of the jam, and made some questionable project management decisions. I didn’t say anything at the time though I realize now that if I had trusted my instincts and made my thoughts known we could have made the game a lot better. In the future I will make sure that I give collaborators my honest views and insights and take a more active role in the team.