The Demo for Real-Time Tactics Racing (first devlog)

Stealth Kart now feels like a neat vertical slice to me. It's a complete game in a way, with ten levels and a boss fight. Yet I feel like I need your feedback to work out the kinks. As soon as everything works, we can look at new features like online multiplayer and 100 levels in 10 biomes or the vs mode...

If you did not check this game out for a long time, then you will immediately notice how everything changed. But don't fret giving it a try: It still has simple and small levels. Odds are you can 100% the whole thing in 20 minutes.

There are all new levels. There is a boss fight.

There are little portraits and characters now. It's fascinating, because stealth games are surprisingly connected with character portraits. My main inspiration is of course COMMANDOS 1, and how you switch between characters by clicking on portraits. This is also the case for my other "switch characters"-inspiration, Lost Vikings.

Yet even MGS 1 has portraits in the codex dialogues. One could argue that my driving style inspiration, GTA2, has portraits for the phone calls. All classic portrait uses are merged in my game, as the "pick your character"-portraits also have little dialogue boxes. Yet the biggest effort here was actually coming up with the characters - before the portraits, the cars were not driven by any beings! I can recommend Clayxels for novice character designers.

If you checked out the game a few weeks ago, the most recent big difference to you will be the new colors.

New:

Old:

I struggled a bit with the visibility of the new look. Feedback showed that headlight-lit grass is a bit too similar to the water. This required me to rework the headlight lighting a bit - it's rather purple now. In fact, everything in the game is now lit with ambient purple lighting. I tried it out on a whim and it fits surprisingly well. Purple has always been the stand-out color for this game. Maybe it was because of the Simpsons' car, or maybe because of Wario's car... But I think it makes Stealth Kart easy to identify from a glance. Also: there are rarely purple floors, so the player cars stand out.
Speaking of easy to identify: There are now extra spot lights on the goal, and on the pushable buttons. Just guiding the player a bit.

Also: The boss fight is now simpler. If you could not beat it before, here's your chance.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you give it a try and let me hear what you think in the comments.

Oh, Streamers and Youtubers are extremely welcome to try out the game.