Same here about the multiplayer stuff. Having a bandwidth cap is the pits. I hardly play my steam games because of it. But..thanks for the game, Chazzo..it really looks cool.

Thanks Chazz, the game looks very good; pity it doesn't have a single player. My online racing days are long over. I'd be last in every race. Apart from the latest games that enable you to control the AI to the point where you can balance them to your own skills, I do very badly, for example, the Race 07 series. I rarely come anything but last and usually am lapped by virtually all of the AI cars. lol. That said, I've just got my racing wheel working after purchasing it last year from a charity shop. I spent ages looking for drivers then discovered an old Thrustmaster disc I had from a previous wheel actually worked , so I'm going to try it out on some of the more recent racing games like Driver San Francisco or the Need for speed series of games. Hopefully using a proper wheel and pedals will help instead of using the keyboard. mode. :)

Krautscape (16.5Mb)

Here’s one to look out for in the coming year! It’s a multi-player racer in 3D, where the track is procedurally generated, and the leading player constructs the next part/section of the track! The download is for the Alpha 3 version (It’s been completely re-written for Alpha 4, but because of an application for funding, the consortium involved doesn’t allow publication of the latest version as yet).

As such, it’s a bit rough around the edges, with occasional stability issues, but will give some idea of what the finished game will be like. The graphics are likely to be improved, and hopefully will when finished include a proper online mode, rather than just being able at present to use a LAN. There are also likely to be added elements to gameplay and other graphical features added such as flocks of birds and such-like. Your car/craft also has foldable wings, so if you go off the track you can extend wings and fly back on, or try to take airborne shortcuts.

The curve of a track is determined by the leading player’s position on the road when crossing the white line, and they can use the up and down arrow keys to change the pitch of the track up or down before the next piece of the track is laid. A wireframe pattern shows what kind of track will be built next before the first vehicle crosses the line. If you lead, you can control the track direction. If you keep driving on the right side of the road, the next track element will be a right curve. Drive on the left side and it goes left.
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It would be good in the final version if some cars or even a single computer car was available to race against, but we’ll have to see, so it might just stay as a strictly multi-player racer.

Because each racetrack is generated afresh, and the leading player can decide how to extend the track, each race is going to differ completely from previous races. The only downside or disadvantage of course is that you can’t practice tracks. Playing does take more than a bit of practice with steering/floating etc. You can set up the number of checkpoints and hence length of the race when setting up a server. The game can result in long complicated spaghetti type race tracks. Great fun!

The menu is mouse driven, and controls are ‘A’ key to accelerate, ‘Y’ key to decelerate, hold ‘Spacebar’ to extend wings and float, and ‘L/R’ arrow keys to steer. It’s also gamepad and joystick compatible. To start playing on your own just click ‘create server’ and ‘start server’. The ‘Esc’ key returns you to the main menu, and the ‘Tab’ key resets your car.

It plays Windowed or Full-screen in Windows, and you can set the graphics detail from low to high in a range of steps, depending on your computer and graphics setup.

It’s a super new concept in racing games, and I’m looking forward very much to when it goes Beta, and well looking forward to the final release of the game. It’s a bit like Scalextric on steroids, plus wings! Go grab your pals and get racing!

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXGmlvwThrc
Download http://www.gamezone.com/downloads/krautscape

To buzz or not to buzz, that is the question

This is a high quality game with excellent graphics and a style that I really like. Tt's simple yet interesting at the same time. I do think they should improve the title page though; unless they were after a retro look from the 90's.

Thanks WR, btw you can turn off the 'droning' sound, in the options menu if you wish! Bzzzzz! or Not! :)

This looks very interesting. Thanks for posting Chazzo.

I purchased one of the developers games via Reflexive arcade some years back Chocolate Castle, a decent puzzle game tht involves moving shapes around from point A to point B, much like the traditional sliding puzzle but created in a more interesting way. I played it a lot about 5 years ago with my children. They liked it because of it's name, lol.

Swarm Racer (< 1Mb)

This is a 2D top down ‘action’ racer with quite a difference. You are in charge of a swarm of bees rather than a single racer, and the idea is to collect all of the purple gems while racing around the tracks as fast as possible. Keys change the shape of the swarm and sometimes you will need to fly in close formation while at other times you will need to open out the swarm to collect all of the gems quickly.

There are 8 standard tracks plus 4 custom tracks and there are 8 gold trophies to try to collect. The tracks are timed and as well as being very varied, have obstacles to avoid, or which slow you down. Red blocks blink in and out of sight, trapping your bees when they appear, green blocks bounce your bees like off a trampoline, making it hard to keep your swarm together, and yellow blocks (honey?) can only be moved through very slowly. And nice funky music to race to! Being busy bees, there are sometimes a lot of gems to collect!

It’s a colourful game with nice retro graphics and plays very well . It records your play if you wish to view the re-play. A sequel ‘Swarm Racer 3000’ is under development and is likely to be released sometime fairly soon. For a such a small download, with Swarm Racer you get an excellent game! Wish it had a level editor!

The game plays windowed or full-screen (via options in menu), in XP, Vista and Win 7, and Mac OSX, and uses the ‘Arrow’ keys to move, ‘Z’ key to expand the swarm and ‘X’ key to contract the swarm (which is something you’ll do rather a lot!). ‘R’ key to restart a level, ‘Esc’ key to quit.

It is a little on the short side, about half an hour’s worth to play right through, though you’ll be very hard pressed to win all eight trophies! There's plenty of replay value as you try to beat your previous best time for each track and grab as many trophies as you can! It’s decent game and very different from any other game you are ever likely to play. Very definitely worth some of your time! Get Bee busy!

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AQsI8kCt9g

Download HERE

i get "Memory access violation" when i try to run...and believe me, my machine runs todays latest games..

When I start the game there is only a black screen, no error message, no sound, nothing. After several tries only hard reset make my PC usable again.

AMD Athlon64 2800+ (running on 2.2 GHz)
Ati Radeon 9550 SE (it is a DX9 capable card)
768 MB RAM
DirectX 9 installed
WinXP Pro SP2

Usually, I haven't troubles with games, this is the first one that doesn't work after long, long time.

dont know, this is my system:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ (2x 2,2GhZ)
ATI Radeon X1900GT 256MB
2048MB RAM 667mhz

EDIT: ofc there is a HDD and all the other stuff in it to, but this seems to be most relevant info.

Maybe you video card does not support it.

hi all!
i have a problem starting Trabi racer, when i try starting it it just gives me a error saying

'unable to create 3d scene"