i dont get exactly how you play it. Are you supposed to change gears? When? I'm not a driver so I maybe am a little more clueless. I got all the way down to 0.5 seconds of nitro snd still didn't manage to beat the other guy for some reason. Can you me which posting a gameplay vid on the "progression" Tab on discord? I'm admin-brahma there. I'll rate it after you send me the gameplay cause rn, I'm clueless good art style and music but I maybe just a bot at the core gameplay :D
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Thanks for the comment! Glad you like the art and music and agree that teaching the player how to play is a priority for future development.
I have a confession: I've never driven a car in my life, not even a lesson! Does that mean writing the code for car physics for the entire first day of the jam was a crazy idea? ...yeah, probably! 😅
Anyway, for now here's some tips: in order to win the race, you need to make it further than the rival on the same fuel tank + one nitro boost.If you just go straight for the boost, even if you time it well, you won't make it further because you didn't get any distance out of your regular fuel tank. In order to change gears in that initial section, you need to accelerate to a certain speed before switching up a gear or the engine will stall (it plays a sort of grinding sound effect and you slow down), but in order to hit your max speed you need to shift up the gears.
To start with, try holding accelerate until your speed stops climbing and the needle on the RPM counter (big gauge) is in the red zone, then press UP to shift to the next gear, and repeat that until you hit 5th gear. Don't start your boost until you're almost completely out of fuel (small gauge). Then, to improve, you can try to time it so that you switch gear before hitting the max to make the absolute most of your limited fuel.
Perfect gameplay would be:
1. Switching through your gears efficiently to get to gear #5 ASAP without stalling.
2. Using you full tank of fuel, with the nitro boost starting as soon as it hits empty but before you come to a stop.
3. Timing the boost well down to the last possible moment.
Note that the power of each boost scales inversely with the random timer you get assigned. A short boost time will be faster to make up for it, so in principle it's not too RNG-dependent (in practice, I'd like to test this some more and see how in plays out.)
For this jam version, I set the rival a set behaviour to play decently well but not perfectly, so it should be winnable once players roughly figure out how to play, even if they don't perfect it.
I'm not sure what you mean about sharing the video, because the "share-your-progress" channel is locked, but I hope this helps you (and anyone else feeling stuck) get a victory! ⭐ Good luck! 💛