Not very fun:

I submitted this game to the 2025 GMTK game jam, and acquired ton of comments containing praise about my game. Unfortunately, I didn't score very high on the rankings. 

Why?

 In my game, the goal is to drive laps around tracks after fast as possible. Many people commented that turning was quite difficult as the turns on the track were too tight. A few comment suggested also adding a "best lap" message after the end of each lap. I posted my game to play played by a few streamers, most of them played through the game and liked the idea. 

There was this one streamer who quit halfway through the game because they did not like that the game was not an expression of skill and found it quite infuriating to play the game and not be able to turn like in other car games. This is what really caught my attention, as I thought the game was fairly nice although it was made in a short amount of time. The streamer was also a bit surprised that this was not in fact my first game jam submission. 

This is very good feedback for me and it means I still have a lot to learn. I had a deep thought after this stream, and three things clicked: 

1.) The game was not fun and enjoyable. It did have basic movement controls and a goal, but that was really it. There was not drifting, no clear way to improve your time, and consistently bumping into walls. The problem was that the level design, as well as player controls as intuitive as they were did not incentivize the player to learn more or do more in the game 

2.) Learn your audience: For which group of people are you making this game for? I usually make small games for a group of friends, but game jams are much different. People critique you on things you did wrong in their eyes, even if you think otherwise. Streamers often only have a certain amount of time to play your game, so making the game tailored to them is important too. 

The streamer linked me to this youtube channel which has important game development lessons and explanations to help me improve my work: https://www.youtube.com/@Gdconf/featured

I've also had plenty more comments with constructive criticism (controls being too floaty, the course being hard to navigate due to 90 degree turns, sounds feeling too harsh, inconsistent pixel sizing). I learnt a few very simple lessons but they have a lot of applicability in all my games.

Game improvements:

- A complete overhaul of the graphics: The track is now 3 tiles wide, contains curved corners (with a bit of mud to help the player turn), New player sprites, New decoration sprites, New checkpoint and lap sprites. This also makes the sprites have a more similar pixel size.

- A new popup dialogue which displays your lap time and best lap time. If you lap time is your best lap time, it will show green text.

-  Fine-tuning of car movement to make the car feel a bit less floaty.

- Checkpoint markers are now visible to the player, along with a better looking lap banner.

More to add:

These are features that are not currently implemented, but will be in a future update.

- Make the car feel more dynamic (revving sounds, skidding sounds, collision sounds)

- Make hitting the edge of the track more forgiving

- A nicer looking menu screen with scrolling shaders of different colours

- A system to save level times.