For the past year I've been working on Geo Racers, a free to play web game where you have to race from one side of the world to another just using public transport. It's inspired by the BBC show "Race across the world".
It's early stages but any feedback on the game it's greatly recieved.
Really like the game so far. Here's what I noticed and what I'd like to see after my first play though:
1. There should be an 'easy mode' where your money goes into the red, but you're still allowed to spend whatever to get to the end. It would be nice to see I'm $-14,952 in the hole, but I made it (with the ultimate objective to get to the destination while in the black).
2. The bottom overlays overlap. I was taking a ferry from Dublin, and tried to queue up walking to the hotel. The hotel overlay popped up under the "Skip this Ride" message. I don't really care if I can queue up actions, but the stacked overlays were unsightly.
3. I would say LEAVE THE SURPRISES. It was enjoyable to get blind-sighted by having to change my currency in the UK and the fact I lost an hour due to time zone changes.
I think an easy mode is a good idea, I will explore that. I'm glad you like the surprises, I do think they add another layer to the game and makes it more stategic.
Hi! I got stuck in London. I walked around to a bunch of train stations at around 10PM on Monday night and there was nothing showing up in the timetables. Same for the next morning. I then walked to Portsmouth and the Portsmouth harbor also showed no boats. The API call was https://geo-racers.com/api/boats?from_id=43128&time=07:02&da... seems odd to me?
I love this, but I'm thwarted. Apparently there are no trains from London Waterloo (one of the UKs busiest railway stations) at 1902. I've been stuck there waiting for trains for so many years I can tell you that's not the case :)
I do wish I could do some in-game research—like show just train/bus stations that have international lines. Perhaps identify hotels with general affordability (€, vs. €€€).
Would love to be able to change to a transit map. The map display is in "car mode", which makes it hard to use. There is no rail diaplay at all. In apple and google maps I normally use the transit mode.
Worried it gives the wrong impression that using trains is hard, when it's super easy in real life. I am actually sitting in a train right now.
Or if you want to double down on making it harder, you could use a satellite image view.
I had a lot of fun :) . Cleaning up the leader board would be appreciated though. Seeing adolf hilter everywhere is ... something.
There also seem to be a bug where the game doesn't always spawn you where it should. Selected Galeway to Roma and was put in scotland with only euros and no banks around. Probably how some people manage to get was seems to be impossible score
So cool! Couple of minor bugs - I can click banks / hotels and use them without being near them, also many hotels in ex Paris do not show up as usable, neither does the Paris metro. Still, super fun to play.
Very fun game, thanks. When you try to change the speed of the game on mobile using firefox, it glitches and keeps opening the speed modal. Pretty much crashes the browser. Also +1 to the taxi fare not being paid in the currency of the country, but in some other currency. More jobs would be great! Appreciate the difficulty of not knowing exactly where you'll be taken, but without consistent jobs sometimes it's really punishing (or at least feels really punishing). I was thinking it might be cool to add stamina, and fancier hotels may replenish more stamina. An incentive to splurge ah.
- it took me a long time to work out how to buy a ticket. It doesn't really make sense that you can't click on the coach icon, you have to click the circle around the coach icon.
- I mistakenly clicked "get off at the next stop". (I interpreted it as "jump forward to arriving at your destination). It really needs a confirmation - I wasted a huge amount of money.
Fun, if buggy. There's a real-world version of it as a British reality TV show, it's entertaining.
I crapped out in my first play: I boarded a bus in London taking me to Dover, it went to Folkestone then travelled at warp speed to Doncaster which is more or less the opposite end of the country.
The lack of information about routes from your destination adds a nice bit of randomness and luck. Quite liked that part.
EDIT: I'll definitely play again, sorry if my tone sounded negative because it really wasn't supposed to.
How do I ride public transport on mobile? I've managed to get the timetable to pop up a few times by clicking around randomly, but there's no obvious button or action for this. I take it you have to actually be at the station to be able to see them?
Love this! One piece of UI feedback - on mobile particularly I often found it very difficult to access the departure timetable once I'd arrived at a station. I walked to Bercy Seine in Paris (so I could try and find a bus out) - but even when I had arrived I couldn't trigger the departure timetable....
Some timetables are very wrong unfortunately. e.g. there was no ferry from Plymouth to Santander at all (which I relied on). It'd be good to be able to see the timetables before I get to the station (otherwise, it's hard to plan)
For the past year I've been working on Geo Racers, a free to play web game where you have to race from one side of the world to another just using public transport. It's inspired by the BBC show "Race across the world".
It's early stages but any feedback on the game it's greatly recieved.
1. There should be an 'easy mode' where your money goes into the red, but you're still allowed to spend whatever to get to the end. It would be nice to see I'm $-14,952 in the hole, but I made it (with the ultimate objective to get to the destination while in the black).
2. The bottom overlays overlap. I was taking a ferry from Dublin, and tried to queue up walking to the hotel. The hotel overlay popped up under the "Skip this Ride" message. I don't really care if I can queue up actions, but the stacked overlays were unsightly.
3. I would say LEAVE THE SURPRISES. It was enjoyable to get blind-sighted by having to change my currency in the UK and the fact I lost an hour due to time zone changes.
Good work. Keep it up.
Worried it gives the wrong impression that using trains is hard, when it's super easy in real life. I am actually sitting in a train right now.
Or if you want to double down on making it harder, you could use a satellite image view.
There also seem to be a bug where the game doesn't always spawn you where it should. Selected Galeway to Roma and was put in scotland with only euros and no banks around. Probably how some people manage to get was seems to be impossible score
– Checking/unchecking some items does not appear to toggle their visibility. (Safari, MacOS).
— As another pointed out, walked to a hotel, could not enter hotel (too far off road?).
Hit a wall going to Plymouth when I should have gone to Portsmouth, but had no way to check which one had the ferry I needed.
I couldn't get the "Walk Here"/"Taxi Here" tooltip pop-up to stay open on Firefox when clicking on a train station, but it's working in Chrome.
I gave up.
Also, an introduction explaining what the game is would be good rather than just asking for a player name and dropping the user into the game.
Two UX feedbacks:
- it took me a long time to work out how to buy a ticket. It doesn't really make sense that you can't click on the coach icon, you have to click the circle around the coach icon.
- I mistakenly clicked "get off at the next stop". (I interpreted it as "jump forward to arriving at your destination). It really needs a confirmation - I wasted a huge amount of money.
I crapped out in my first play: I boarded a bus in London taking me to Dover, it went to Folkestone then travelled at warp speed to Doncaster which is more or less the opposite end of the country.
The lack of information about routes from your destination adds a nice bit of randomness and luck. Quite liked that part.
EDIT: I'll definitely play again, sorry if my tone sounded negative because it really wasn't supposed to.
Some timetables are very wrong unfortunately. e.g. there was no ferry from Plymouth to Santander at all (which I relied on). It'd be good to be able to see the timetables before I get to the station (otherwise, it's hard to plan)