Thanks a lot for playing and your review! 🙏
And yes, being good at the game/races is much about memorizing the tracks but also about reacting to different (mostly random) situations like being pushed away, trip over carpets - or being knocked off 😉 I know that it can be punishing but at the same time you're only stay half as long knocked off than the AI opponents and the AI opponents have also a higher probability of tripping over carpets... I felt like this would dampen the punishment of falling off and was also required to not be too frustrating.
The "health" mechanic was a reaction to many earlier criticism where players asked why you could even get off the chair or not start on the chair right away. I want to have that "rumble for the chairs" at the beginning because I think it adds to the fun - and for that, I had to come up with something to make it more interesting 😁 Maybe I'll add the possibility to refill the hearts in a future update... We'll see!
The blue energy bar and energy drinks you can collect is a kind of stamina. When you run out you'll slow down until it's being refilled again.
The "looking ahead"-mechanic is the same amount of pixels in every direction. It might be due to the perspective that some directions feel like looking further than others.
I have some questions as well: did you try out any of the other seasons? What about secret codes (see community posts 😉)? Did you find out that you can use some of the environmental props? 😉
Anyway, thanks again for your review!