The floor is lava! Live your childhood dream-races around the house in this fast paced easy to pick up arcade racer.
Crazy Wheels is a fast paced, action packed arcade racing game. Over a decade ago, I was in the Virgin Megastore in London with my family. Going through the alleys looking for games, we stumbled about 2 isolated machines running a new car game: Micromachine V2 Turbo. The machines were free so my brother and I decided to give it a try. By the time we finished, there were many people waiting in line and our love for this game was already unconditional. We picked it up and played it over the years, giving us some of the best multiplayer memories we have.
Over the years, we played a few other excellent games: Ignition and Revolt to name my favorites. Crazy Wheels was borned from the memories of these gaming sessions and the intense fun it provided us, playing at 4 on the same keyboard.
If you also fondly remember this golden time, then Crazy Wheels is for you! It aims to bring back the same fun moments and intense races, while adding its own elements and uniqueness.
About this game:
Collect and customize 20 vehicles and race around a wide variety of dynamic environments such as the kitchen, bathroom, garden and kid’s room (the kid didn’t clean…). Use makeshift journals-ramps, ironing table-jump pads to get around the jam-packed (literally) maps, avoiding the slippery ketchup stains, the sticky eggs and much more! Master five unique game modes such as the classic arcade and time trial modes, or the unique and action packed stalk the ball or stay visible game modes.
Pick up and use a wide variety of powers to get an edge on your opponents, including the shockwave, mine, electrocutor and many more!
Race up to 4 human players, in split screen, local, online or a mix of these modes, either in teams or free for all.
Crazy Wheels, will also come with an integrated level editor, because community is very important and the fun will never stop.
Gameplay Features:
– Up to 4 human players split screen or on the same screen for more intense action
– Treacherous tracks in (Bathroom, Kitchen, Bedroom, Campground…) filled everyday house items
– Various game modes, allowing the players to either play in split screen or on the same screen
– Various unique powerups (Speed, mines, push away, zappers, missiles and others)
– Free for all or Team games with powerups for the occasion
– Single, Local and Online multiplayer
– Multi-platform: Windows, Mac, Linux and possible consoles after release
- An integrated level editor so you can create your own maps and play with your friends
Since starting Crazy Wheels, I was using Unity's built-in Render Pipeline. It was looking fine, and I had on my task list to update it to using their new HD Render Pipeline. After focusing on the gameplay, I was mentioned that I should look into it. Seemed it was time to take this 8 month old ticket and bring it to the top of my list.
For comparison's sake, here are a couple of screenshots of what Crazy Wheels used to look like under the Build-In Render Pipeline.
Updating to HDRP was actually not that difficult. Unity provides a tool to update all the shaders and fairly thorough documentation. There are also quite a few tutorials around to help with the process. It took less than a month of work to get it working well, and another month to get the details worked out.
There were some specific things that were not that straight forward. I had to rework the see through shader, as well as update the water package (actually completely replace it since it doesnt support yet HDRP).
Here are a few screenshots from the HDRP version:
With all the changes and updates to the game, it was time for a new trailer, and updating all the promotional resources:
Unfortunately, moving to HDRP is not a perfect solution. A lot of assets on the unity asset store don't support HDRP yet or have a different version to support HDRP. I needed to replace or let go of a lot of those.
HDRP is not compatible with every platform. It doesnt work on mobile or on switch which can be a pretty important limitation, and it's not possible at this time to switch between Universal Render Pipeline and HDRP depending on the platform or have both in the same project. This will be a very interesting challenge to look at in the near future. (I already have an idea how to deal with it, even if Unity doesn't support it yet)
But in the end, seeing the results, I am impressed at what the game looks like now, and how far it's come. My future project will definitely be started in HDRP, and I have already started moving my other project to HDRP.
Time to get back to work.
Crazy Wheels - First Update for Early Access now available
Crazy Wheels - Available NOW in Early Access on Steam.
Crazy Wheels comes with a full fledge Level Editor. Here is how the first iteration works.
Crazy Wheels demo is now available on STEAM for Windows, Mac and Linux!
PreAlpha Demo for Windows. The demo contains 1 game mode (arcade mode), 1 unique map and 2 powerups (speedup and push away). It allows up to 4 human players...
PreAlpha Demo for MacOS. The demo contains 1 game mode (arcade mode), 1 unique map and 2 powerups (speedup and push away). It allows up to 4 human players...
PreAlpha Demo for Linux. The demo contains 1 game mode (arcade mode), 1 unique map and 2 powerups (speedup and push away). It allows up to 4 human players...