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A kart racer?! On PC?! with Steam Workshop support for tracks, racers, and more?! Playable offline or online, with friends or otherwise!? Yeah, you're not dreaming; this is real!

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KART Devlog 5

Mar 11

Hi guys! Long time no see!!! I'd like to do more regular dev logs but as it turns out writing UI systems isn't very interesting work... But despite naysayers[steamcommunity.com], this project is making nice headway! Before I start, just wanna say the game is in a VERY playable state now. You can load into a game, play it, collect coins, and go back to the main menu to unlock stuff to do it all over again.

First, some visual stuff. Improved underwater things: screen distortion should now work for multiple players, and the light caustics are now obscured in shadowy areas.

"But developer!!!" I hear you say, "What about the MENUS? Video games are all about MENUS!" First of all, stop yelling, I got you covered. Secondly, that's what a lot of my efforts have been toward, and it's grueling work. I want the menus to not be dreadfully boring, so I'm putting a lot of effort into them. So here's what happened with those gachapon machines...

Sorry to you guys who love watching the dream feet video in the background, had to pause it because it makes the gif file sizes really big...

Anyways, you can spend the coins you've collected in races! Pretty awesome, I think. There are gachapon machines for racers, vehicles, figurines, horns for honking, tracks, and then one for just random stuff. All of them cost 10 coins right now, but I'll probably adjust the economy later on.

The gachapon machines are intended to be the "easy" way to unlock stuff, in case you didn't want to hunt down collectables in the tracks. Ideally you could probably completely ignore the machines if you really wanted.

Anyways, let's see how buying something looks...

Wow! A new kart?! This one is for the strawberry fella, Ichigogo.

Mod authors can opt in or out of having their content unlocked by default, unlocked in the machines, unlocked in stages, or unlocked via a password. (Password screen not yet available...)

Also did you catch earlier I mentioned "figurines"? What are those?

These are figurines! They're sorted by "series". They're pretty much trophies from the Smash Bros. games. These are nice to have, because every model takes some development time, and characters are supposed to have their own world lore, so I thought it'd be nice to pay homage to a classic and allow people to read details on their favorite tracks and characters. Just like anything else, people can add figurines through mods. These are easy to implement so there ought to be a lot of them.

Regarding these, expect some cameos from other indie devs; I'd really like to collaborate with as many as I can. If you are a dev or know any who might be interested, let me know!

Now something a little more gameplay-oriented. How are tracks made? Here's a peek at some track tooling. Nothing crazy, just an idea of how it works.

Basically you can dictate how AI racers "see" the track by setting the width it along the path. The CPU racers feel out the curvature of the track and determine whether or not they should drift it. Racers can also be smarter or dumber and their behavior will change based on that. It effects drift usage, and can be used to determine whether they'll take certain shortcuts. Aggression is also a factor; some racers may be more quick to use items against you.

But yeah, alternative paths are also feasible! Pretty satisfying to watch the traffic split...

Along with new features, there are also old bugs... There was previously an issue with the kart's orientation code. It's a bit technical, but the kart used to orient itself like this:
It used to check the slope under each wheel, and match it. This is a problem because if the slope was drastically different for one wheel, but elevation was not, the kart would inappropriately tilt. Likewise, if the elevation was different but the slope was the same, the kart would inappropriately NOT tilt. It looked like this:

EW!!! Bad! See that jitter? There should be no jitter if the ground is not moving...

But I fixed it! Here's how it looks now:

So much better! The kart should now glide over imperfections really nicely. Basically what it does now is check directly below the kart, and get the elevation to the contact point of each wheel, and rotates the kart away from the high elevations and toward the low elevations. In hindsight the old method was kind of dumb. But hey, I never claimed to be Einstein!!!

I also discovered an interesting bug where if you hold accelerate and decelerate at the same time, you can drift in place... Thinking I might just give this functionality, because it is pretty cool. I think it will probably end up giving you a massive instant boost the direction you're facing. Kinda feels like Kirby Air Riders!

Where might you see this stuff? Well, perhaps in an actual track! Here's the track select menu, excuse the fact there are only two crappy unfinished tracks available.

One of the neat things about my track selection system that I don't think I've seen before is the queue. You can basically create a custom "cup" by queueing multiple tracks in succession. You can see it in the top right of that gif. I'm not 100% sold on this track selection screen right now but it does the job fine. I may come back to it! I'd also like to have some sort of cup selection screen, but I need more tracks for that...

When you play through the track, there's also a results screen. Man, how do I think of this stuff?! Well here's how that looks; mega gif compression incoming!

And that's pretty much it for now!
I still have a lot of work to do, as you can see, but there's actually a game loop! So that's really important. Among the things I have to set up is an actual multiplayer menu with separate player cursors and stuff, but all the infrastructure is ready for that. Also, a way to select your horn. For the most part though, a lot of the work left to do is adding content!

Thanks a bazillion to anybody keeping an eye on the project and especially so to anybody who has wishlisted. I'm actually baffled this many people are looking at my game. Hopefully soon there will be a place for you guys to gather, even if just a Twitter page? Only because I'm not sure how immediately I'll be interested in doing community management alongside developing this AND working my day job. Sorry to anybody eager to engage, but I promise I'm still cracking away! I'll get this in your guys' hands as soon as it's ready.

Please don't be shy to leave some comments if you have any suggestions or questions!

Thanks again, and I'll see you guys soon!

KART

Wow

This game is dead confirmed on reddit by the podcast "Kart Homies with Chevy Chase"

The Man In The Upstairs Bathroom

Feb 27 @ 6:03pm

General Discussions

KART Devlog 4

Sep 2, 2025

Heeey!!! Been a good while, sorry about the silence! Even though I've got a couple folks helping, it's still primarily just me cracking away at this. Got a new work from home job, so my exhaustion shouldn't deter me from working so much anymore. Let's get into what's new!!!

Well, since we last spoke, I've improved midair physics a bit, so there is a lot more stability!

There's also some nice lean to your turns now! (was implemented literally 3 days ago)

Just for a moment I'd also like to show off some of the SDK capabilities, using a Vampire Survivors skeleton as an example! (We have no association with those devs, but I'm a big fan. (poncle if you ever hear about KART please let me make a Vampire Survivors track(s)...)) Also, sorry in advance about some of the gif compression on these. Someone once mistook it for an artistic choice.

First of all, say hi to Sid! He's a 2D character, based on old original Gameboy graphics. Art direction for this game is going to be a bit weird, so bare with it; we're intentionally going to mix a lot of art styles together. He's of course riding a bike. We can talk more about that later.
So what are you looking at exactly? Well, these skeletons are made by using 100% modding tools! They are made using things you'll have access to. Here's a breakdown of what the skeletons made of:

- Roamer (script to make them move around a point)
- Spawner (script to make multiple of them spawn)
- Detection zone (script to detect the kart and do things...)
- Speed filter (to detect player speed)
- Damage zone (only hits players beneath a certain speed)
- Flinger (flings an object depending on how fast the racer is going)
- Coin effect (to give coins to a racer)
- Timer (waits to respawn the skeleton)
- Tagger (tags players when they kill a skeleton)

That last one feeds into a larger tagging system. You can selectively effect racers by applying tags to them. So, in theory, you could have alternate routes in a track designated for players who have achieved something in particular. You can make the tag visible (see the skeleton tag near the coin counter?), or hide it for more subtle effects.

The tools I'm making will be able to be mixed in matched to create very cool stuff!

Anyways, too many words not enough pictures. Here's some UI in progress here. (The background is a placeholder, unfortunately.) I wanted to make sure the UI was as speedy to navigate as the game is.

Also busted character in progress there, don't worry about that.

Here's something fun too: when playing local split screen, your icon at the bottom of the screen is interactive. This way, you can show all your friends how impatient you are by mashing buttons.

"Me and my friends only have enough money for one copy of KART..." no problem bro, maybe get a job, but otherwise just invite up to 7 friends over to play.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get audio working for 8 players. A lot of time was poured into that over the last couple months. I tried a lot of stuff, and eventually wound up with something pretty good here. That said, it's still a lot on the processing end, not sure if all systems will be able to handle it, but you're welcome to try.

You may notice the top left player is someone we haven't seen before. His name is Ichigogo, little fella is based on Sanrio characters & art. I think taunting has been in for a while, but it's a good opportunity to show you here.

You can perform a taunt by pressing jump while you're at the peak of your midair time. If you keep mashing it, you can drop coins as a flex on your haters.

Ichigogo is a strawberry jam salesdog in his regular life. You can learn about him through the collectable figurine unlockables around the tracks, OR just be a quitter and buy them with the coins you've collected.

Other unlockables will include racers, vehicles, tracks, and sound effects you can use as horns. Probably also skins, but not in the "buy the season pass!!1!1" sort of way. Just fun alt costumes. The whole game is sort of getting a chaotic air about it, and that's kinda the way I want it. So, to encourage the chaos, I'm allowing players to animate the text in the in-game chat.
Online stuff is in the works. I initially planned Steam Workshop for hosting mods but if we ever want to move to a console, we'll want a mod system that is cross-platform, so we're thinking hard about that. There's other little touches and flourishes I've got going on back this way, but I'll keep it in my pocket for now.

I love you guys! Thanks to anybody who has wishlisted KART so far, it's been a long journey but hopefully before long we can laser focus in on some environments and really show you what we've got.

Take care! I'll try not to take so long on the next devlog this time!!!

KART

KART Devlog 3

Oct 22, 2024

Hey guys! Hopefully you're enjoying this spooky season!

Just wanted to keep progress updates coming here, so I'll show off some of what I've been working on. First thing, I made water look a little prettier, that includes the hydroplaning and underwater visuals.

Still gotta work on some splashy effects when dipping in and out of water, but I think this is a good start.

Also, worked a lot on AI! They can almost do everything you can, and also they can be dumber or smarter than each other. They can drift, use items, look for interesting things on the track, and so on.

Another thing I've been working on is a track creating tool! I know I said I won't have an in-game editor, but this thing is pretty wacky. You'll be able to access it from the modding SDK I'll be releasing with the demo. Basically it will allow you to drive freely in all three dimensions, and place track behind you. You can tilt, pitch, and change the width of the road. There's also lots of navigation tools like toggling the platform, warping to the start of a segment, and exporting to a file that you can modify in other modeling tools, like Blender. Or, if you aren't satisfied with the mesh it outputs, you can also just export the path data and edit that.

There's also two drive modes in the track editor. You start in Anchored Mode, which is a lot like ModNation Racers' track creation controls. You can toggle Free Mode which allows you to lay track in any way you like. There's also two acceleration modes! First is True Acceleration Mode, which means you're basically just moving around as you would in-game. Alternatively, is Time Acceleration Mode, which you're always travelling at max speed, but the acceleration button controls time rather than your kart's speed. This means you're always laying track as if you were at max speed. This is also based on ModNation Racers' track creation tool.

Anyways, for now that's it! Hopefully everyone has a happy Halloween! I'm going to keep working hard and try to get this thing into your hands soon as I can guarantee it's playable and fun. See ya next time!

KART

about the release date or price

i just wanted to ask if the game have a release date or a price because this game really look interesting and i want to be maybe a tester

cha malo

May 9, 2025 @ 5:31pm

General Discussions

Is there a Twitter or Discord for this game?

So I just randomly found this and I gotta say this game looks SICK. As someone who just started modding another kart racer a few days ago, racers with mod support make me bounce up and down in my seat like an excited child. That excitement brings a question though, is there something like a Twitter to follow development more, or is it just the Steam page for now?...