This look very promising !
Here's some feedback (I'm going to state very obvious things that are probably already planned, but I want to be thorough) :
- Collisions is the biggest problem now. They obviously need to be penalising in a game like this, but right now even slightly touching a wall with the back of the car makes you lose all your momentum. Also it needs some satisfying feedback, it's super important to make mistakes still enjoyable in some way. Some spark effect would be a minimum, and while I guess car deformation is outside of the scope of this game, maybe we can get some basic texture swapping ?
- The second biggest problem is the speed. It's not just a "sensation" issue (FOV, sound, visual effects...), if think you could easily speed every car by 20% or so. Maybe it's because you've tried to use realistic values, if it's the case then forget about realism, it's not what your core audience will be after.
- Not adding a handbrake button is an interesting move. It takes a few corners to get the handling, it's not deal breaking, but I'm wondering why you decided to do it this way. Is it because you wanted to use an analogue trigger for drifting ? It's not really a complaint, but I just want to understand.
- Not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but sometimes I can't shift down. If it's supposed to simulate something, it should at the very least made more intelligible, but I would suggest just removing it, it just feels bad to have basic controls removed.
- Some cars are just awful to drive. I'm all for having widely different cars (in fact I suggest to go for quality over quantity), but for example the Impreza can't drift, but can't turn either, it just feels like a tractor.
- Probably a controversial take, but I would advice not wasting time creating AI opponents. It would take a lot of development time to make them actually interesting, when you could spend this time improving everything around time attack (adding an in-depth ghost feature, an online leaderboard with different leagues, timed event competitions, sending challenges to your friend list...). If you haven't, try Lonely Mountains: Downhill or Parking Garage Rally Circuit to see what I'm talking about.
- An example of a simple missing feature for the time attack mode would be to add checkpoints with intermediate times.
- The art direction is perfect, with just the right amount of nostalgia versus "smoothness", it looks gorgeous. My only gripe would be the tracks are lacking points of interest. Not only it's a bit bland, but having these would help memorise the tracks.
- I think the tracks are slightly too long, especially the second one. I would suggest not going over the 2:30 mark for the average duration (and even that should be the upper limit).
- Going over-rev should feel more visceral, you know with that super annoying and aggressive sound. Also I'm not sure why the rev counter stops so low, you basically can't get the needle to go to the last 30%.
- This is a very specific feedback, but that you can take more broadly, I think the exhaust flame effect lacks a bit of ooomph !, you know like in CMR 2. It's probably not super realistic for "regular" cars to have massive exhaust backfire, but it's like having huge muzzleflashes on guns. Again, spectacle>realism.
- Just in case the pause menu low-framerate is made on purpose to simulate a retro-game or something, it's really unpleasant, don't do it.