Thank you for the throughout feedback! And not nitpicky at all, I found them extremely helpful. Many of the issues were risen by others and me already. And writing answers actually brought me some new ideas too, which delayed the answer a little.
Music was nice but at times very repetitive
I agree. The idea is to create distinct audio background for each track, eventually in a procedural way. But it's still very much a work in progress.
Staying on the road was hard as it's not super clear where you can land and if you can take any shortcuts
Combining sandbox aesthetics with clear visualization definitely has its challenges. Unity's terrain tools aren’t ideal, so I’ll likely need to write a custom utility to paint the terrain so it aligns precisely with the track. Adding flashing indicators for track limits and other players' positions at the start of each step could also be helpful.
The game feels slow, the first lap took forever
I was also surprised by how long the races can take, especially with four players. A quick, straight starter track could be a solution. Right now, the engine only supports looping tracks, but that should be easy enough to change.
Maybe there could be some minigolf-like shortcuts that you could miraculously take
At the moment, the track is made from a single spline, so branching isn’t possible, and it will take some time to fox that. However, features like teleporters, no-stop zones, and other elements for shortcuts and penalties are already planned and definitely doable. I also need to make the physics more predictable so players can intentionally aim for those areas.
The ghost cars of other players are shown where the end up, even if they've ended up off-road, almost felt like bug
Yeah, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with inactive cars, so for now I just left them where they are. The ghost car material doesn’t look great anyway, so I’ll probably replace it with a fancier disappearance effect.
Perhaps the power meter could yoyo between zero and max power instead of just going full force if kept pressed for too long
Good idea. It’ll require a few adjustments to the timeout and incoming tiebreaker rules, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. That said, there’s always the risk it could slow down the pace even more.
Maybe a casual setting could be nice, that would automatically adjust the settings to the most beginner friendly options
There aren’t many settings that directly affect difficulty at the moment, but a shorter and easier default track would probably make the game more approachable.
The game looks nice, the pine cones especially were a nice touch
The cones were actually the musician’s idea. More procedural and moving obstacles are on the way — one I’m especially excited about is insects walking around the tracks. Dynamic elements caused a bunch of special cases that weren’t handled well in version 0.1.0, but those should be fixed now.
Thanks again for the feedback — feel free to send more my way anytime! Meanwhile, I’ll add these to my TODO lists for future versions.