I tried it out.
1. I don't like the menus. Too plain, and menu text is too small. Would look better with a blue background than a white background. It looks like an application, not a game. It needs something animating in the background too. Stuff flying by, or spining lines... anyhting.
2. It's too hard. This is not because the other players are too fast, but because you don't seem to have the kind of "drafting" effect that games like Mario Kart have where you go faster when you are farther behind so you can catch up. In your game if you make one mistake at the start of a race, then you have no chance of winning.
This is also because the tracks themselves are poorly marked. The first time I played I got last place because I went off the track into the water right at the start because I couldn't see a turn coming up.
And this is because the jet boards are much too sensitive to turning inputs from the keyboard. If I press the arrow just breifly, the board turns a lot. You need to implemnet accleration in the turning input, so that when you first start turning it turns at say, 90 degrees per second, and over the course of half a second this accelerates to 180 degrees per second. This allows for fine adjustments, while not bogging the player down when they want to turn sharply.
3. It would be more fun if instead of starting out with three nitros, you either had to pick up the nitros, or if you started out with no nitros, but got one additional nitro each lap. I suggest the first approach though.
4. The character select screen does not show you which players are not available in the shareware version until you attempt to select them.
5. The level selection screen does show this, but only with a big red X. It would be better to tell the player "not available in shareware version" or "register to get this level". Because I'm not even positive that those X's aren't there because I haven't completed the test track in first place. But I'm guessing that's not the case.
6. You really need more than a total of 5 levels. You really should have more like 10 levels and give the player 2 in the shareware. Of course, it would be far better to have 15 levels, 5 each per "circuit" and give the player one complete circuit in the shareware. You could also offer an additional bonus circuit with 5 more tracks for an additional $5. People will pay for that.
7. When I finish a race and press fire I hear new music, and menu sounds, and can start a race, but I don't see a menu.
8. You need a title screen. An in game screenshot edited in photoshop would work fine. You just need to set a camera up from a low angle, pointing up, pointing towards a dfirection which the players will come from and then take a screenshot witha bunch of them and one guy really close. That would look cool enough. And as a bonus, you could overlay the main menu over that with a transparent black square and that would look pretty cool.
9. You've got an awful lot of logos at the start of the game, and some of them go by pretty fast. It would be better if you could keep the number of logs down to three tops, two would be better.
10. Providing a little more feedback to the player when turning, by showing little side jets firing would be good.
11. As epicboy suggested, having jumps would be cool. You don't need to have the players do tricks of course. The jumps could provide a short cut or something. Like in Mario Kart 64, on Koopa Troopa Beach, jumps allow you to grab items in the air (like those nitros I mentioned) or to jump over boulders.
Don't make the mistake of deciding the game is "good enough". If you're not selling 20 copies a week, the game isn't "good enough". And you CAN sell 20 copies a week. But you need to add more stuff to the game.
1. I don't like the menus. Too plain, and menu text is too small. Would look better with a blue background than a white background. It looks like an application, not a game. It needs something animating in the background too. Stuff flying by, or spining lines... anyhting.
2. It's too hard. This is not because the other players are too fast, but because you don't seem to have the kind of "drafting" effect that games like Mario Kart have where you go faster when you are farther behind so you can catch up. In your game if you make one mistake at the start of a race, then you have no chance of winning.
This is also because the tracks themselves are poorly marked. The first time I played I got last place because I went off the track into the water right at the start because I couldn't see a turn coming up.
And this is because the jet boards are much too sensitive to turning inputs from the keyboard. If I press the arrow just breifly, the board turns a lot. You need to implemnet accleration in the turning input, so that when you first start turning it turns at say, 90 degrees per second, and over the course of half a second this accelerates to 180 degrees per second. This allows for fine adjustments, while not bogging the player down when they want to turn sharply.
3. It would be more fun if instead of starting out with three nitros, you either had to pick up the nitros, or if you started out with no nitros, but got one additional nitro each lap. I suggest the first approach though.
4. The character select screen does not show you which players are not available in the shareware version until you attempt to select them.
5. The level selection screen does show this, but only with a big red X. It would be better to tell the player "not available in shareware version" or "register to get this level". Because I'm not even positive that those X's aren't there because I haven't completed the test track in first place. But I'm guessing that's not the case.
6. You really need more than a total of 5 levels. You really should have more like 10 levels and give the player 2 in the shareware. Of course, it would be far better to have 15 levels, 5 each per "circuit" and give the player one complete circuit in the shareware. You could also offer an additional bonus circuit with 5 more tracks for an additional $5. People will pay for that.
7. When I finish a race and press fire I hear new music, and menu sounds, and can start a race, but I don't see a menu.
8. You need a title screen. An in game screenshot edited in photoshop would work fine. You just need to set a camera up from a low angle, pointing up, pointing towards a dfirection which the players will come from and then take a screenshot witha bunch of them and one guy really close. That would look cool enough. And as a bonus, you could overlay the main menu over that with a transparent black square and that would look pretty cool.
9. You've got an awful lot of logos at the start of the game, and some of them go by pretty fast. It would be better if you could keep the number of logs down to three tops, two would be better.
10. Providing a little more feedback to the player when turning, by showing little side jets firing would be good.
11. As epicboy suggested, having jumps would be cool. You don't need to have the players do tricks of course. The jumps could provide a short cut or something. Like in Mario Kart 64, on Koopa Troopa Beach, jumps allow you to grab items in the air (like those nitros I mentioned) or to jump over boulders.
Don't make the mistake of deciding the game is "good enough". If you're not selling 20 copies a week, the game isn't "good enough". And you CAN sell 20 copies a week. But you need to add more stuff to the game.