Hi everyone! This update initially started out as just improving the graphics and optimization, but eventually turned into something bigger with new gameplay mechanics, quality of life changes, and improved level layouts. Feedback from reviews has been tremendously helpful and inspiring, so huge thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts!
Gameplay-wise, the biggest change is the poojectiles, which now have more uses to add variety and new strategies. Some stages have been made easier as well. Keep reading below if you're curious about the details.
New Gameplay Features and Changes
- If you drop a poojectile behind yourself (press the shoot button without holding a direction), it gives you a small boost forward.
- When you successfully hit another character (or yourself) with a launched poojectile, your top speed increases for the rest of the race. This can be repeated and stacked infinitely.
- Made the spin boost mechanic easier: if you release the spin drift button too early, you now get a tiny boost instead of no boost.
- Significantly increased invincibility time after a player gets hit by a poojectile.
- You can now charge spin boosts without turning, but it charges slowly.
Graphics
- Every stage has improved visuals, and some have completely new designs.
- Added cube map reflections, so smooth surfaces (like a wet road, or the eyes of a character) reflect the environment.
- Added baked lighting, so lighting in the stages looks more natural and realistic.
- Added global illumination, so characters and objects are affected by the lighting of the environment around them.
- Implemented many performance optimizations, so the game will run at higher framerates than before even with the new graphics features!
Other Notable Changes
- When a poojectile locks on to a racer, a crosshair briefly shows on the targeted racer and a sound plays.
- Improved the tutorial; it now forces players to use moves mentioned on nearby signs to progress, and there are now video screens that show the player how to perform specific moves.
- Made several levels easier, especially the last four. There are wider platforms, fewer obstacles, and alternate routes that catch players that fall off. However, the fastest routes remain mostly the same in almost every stage.
- Made the cpu controlled opponents slightly easier, especially on the casual difficulty.
Other Minor Changes
- More stages are now unlocked in time trials and online multiplayer by default, but you still have to unlock them in grand prix mode by earning trophies from the previous cups.
- Reduced overall game volume by 50%.
- You can now also boost land when hitting bumpers (the big red spheres). The staff ghosts have not been updated to use this technique, making a few of them slightly easier to beat than before. The staff ghosts will not be updated to be more difficult.
- When using a keyboard and mouse to play, you can now also brake/squish/fast fall by pressing shift instead of just ctrl.
- Adjusted Sushi's design to look more similar to a fish and to fit in with the other characters better.
- Adjusted Moo Moo's fur pattern design.
- Adjusted the wings on Chirpy and Hootie so they look less awkward while rolling around.
- Slightly raised the checkpoints and respawn positions in Skyway Sprint, making it impossible to get pushed through the ground by other characters while respawning.
- Fixed invisible gaps near the edges of the colliders for some platforms in Skyway Sprint.
- Characters now continue to animate/breathe while braking/squishing.
- The countdown at the beginning of a race now has simple scaling animations to give players a better visual cue for timing a boost at the start of a race.
- Added a graphical effect when performing a fast fall to better communicate that it's a slight boost.
- Modified spawn positions so that all characters spawn evenly spaced out facing forward at the start of a race.
- Changed how race times and lap times are calculated so they're more consistent and accurate.
- The game now reads the raw input values from analog sticks and WASD keys instead of smoothed out input values; this may be unnoticeable, but it should result in slightly more responsive controls.
- There's a gameplay mechanic where if you press jump right when you hit a spring (or slightly after), you'd get some extra height; this has been made slightly easier and more consistent.
- Springs have larger colliders, so small characters can no longer miss them by going perfectly between two of them.
- The red arrow that appears when charging a spin boost no longer slightly stutters at framerates above 100fps.
- Improved the appearance and behavior of the yellow arrow that points towards the next checkpoint.
- Various minor animations that were slightly affected by framerate are now more consistent regardless of framerate.
- Buttons in menus have had their animation scaling amounts reduced, making them easier to read.