Nightmare Kart mixes horror with racing, sending players down gothic streets at a breakneck pace as they blast the other monstrous drivers on the track.
Game Developer spoke with Lilith Walther, the game’s creator, to talk about the unintended benefits that came from releasing the game for free, how they wove each monster’s story and personality into the kart they would drive, and how they adapted a Bloodborne-like countering system into kart racing.
Nightmare Kart mixes playful racing with hunting monstrous creatures. What drew you to bring horror to racing?
For those who don’t know, Nightmare Kart was originally a Bloodborne fan game before it was rebranded. Bloodborne had a community in-joke about a kart racer spin-off, and that’s where I got the inspiration from!
What interesting elements did horror bring to the idea of a racing game?
I loved how a health bar changed the entire feel of the game. Most kart racers don’t have health, so seeing racers get beat up by power-ups before exploding in a gruesome death definitely contributed to the game’s identity.
In what ways do you feel this mechanic alters the emotions players go through while playing? How does it alter the feel of the racing play compared to other racing games?
The simple act of having a health bar that can result in death in a kart racer makes it feel more visceral. It makes players feel more fragile, seeing as a death sends them to the back of the pack or gives them a Game Over during boss fights.
Nightmare Kart offers an array of grisly beings and unsettling beasts as racers. Can you tell us a bit about how you designed the various characters and the opponents we race against?
The enemies that weren’t directly inspired by Bloodborne were pulled from the “generic Halloween spooky” side of culture. Things like walking skeletons, mummies, or evil corvids felt appropriate.
Images via LWMedia.
Likewise, what ideas went into creating the equally unique vehicles in the game? How did you create such a variety of vehicles that all felt on-theme?
Each kart is “owned” by one of the characters. When I designed the karts, I designed them as an extension of the characters. For example, Mistress Marie, keeper of the clocktower, rides a clock-themed kart.
What thoughts go into creating unique karts based on the type of monster that rides them?
I viewed the kart that was assigned to each racer as an extension of them. Mistress Mary of the Great Clocktower needed a kart and making it clock-themed made sense! The Outsider’s story was that he restrained himself on an operating table before he turned into a werewolf, and that’s where the operating table kart idea came from.
This game is not just about going fast, but also attacking your fellow racers. Can you tell us about how you chose the weapons for the game and how you developed them to be used and aimed by someone racing around complex tracks?
Of course! The first power-up that I made was the pistol. I liked the idea of using “rated M” weapons for a kart racer, as that is uncommon, and I wanted to make weapons that fit the horror theme. They, of course, were originally based on Bloodborne weapons, but even then, the idea of having a blood-soaked axe, a giant rusty razer, or a lever-action shotgun felt appropriate to the theme.
What ideas went into the other things players could do while rushing around (shooting beasts to increase speed, doing tricks, etc)?
Most of the ideas came from using Souls-like mechanics and grafting them onto a kart racer. It was kind of like how Smash Brothers uses the mechanical identity of their characters and translates them into a fighting game.
Images via LWMedia.
Can you tell us about some of the Souls-like mechanics you brought into this racing game?
The countering system is what comes to mind immediately. In Bloodborne, attacking opens the player to countering by an enemy bullet. This means that randomly flailing around constantly is disincentivized and forces the player to be more considerate of their approach. In Nightmare Kart, it’s drifting that opens players up to countering via enemy bullets. Drifting is one of the core mechanics of kart racers, so it felt appropriate to make it vulnerable to countering in this “Souls-inspired” kart racer.
What thoughts went into how the weapons would operate (aiming, firing) while racing around a track? What thoughts went into things like weapon effects, firing speeds, trajectories, and the like when your battle arena involves racing around complex tracks?
The first power-up I made was the pistol. I wanted it to be similar to Bloodborne, which skipped manual aiming and simply had the hunter fire toward the lock-on target to keep the pace of combat from slowing down. Skipping manual aiming and having the racer shoot toward an auto-lock-on target also keeps the player focusing on racing.
When it comes to deciding the balance of the power-ups and levels, it’s a simple example of testing the game over and over again and “adjusting the dials” (so to speak) when it comes to effects, speeds, etc.
Nightmare Kart features boss battles as well. What ideas go into designing a boss fight in a horror racing game? How did you create interesting boss battles for your game?
The idea of boss battles was born from the Souls-like mechanical inspiration, but they also offered an opportunity to house all the unique ideas I had. Ideas like a platforming segment or a maze for players to get lost in (which normally wouldn’t work in the “race/battle mode” dichotomy the game exists within) could work in a boss fight, as those operate under a unique rule set.
Images via LWMedia.
Horror is often dark and gloomy, but having to fire weapons and race around opponents requires visual clarity to know where to drive and shoot. How did you create a world that felt bleak and foreboding while preserving the visual clarity players would need to keep things from being frustrating?
Luckily, due to the dark environment, creating a gameplay overlay was relatively easy: just make it bright! The lock-on icon is a white glow, the power ups were white flares, guns shoot white bullets, etc.
What drew you to use a PSX visual style for the game? How did this affect the look and feel of the experience? How did it affect the design of the game?
My previous game was a PSX demake of Bloodborne, and seeing as this was originally Bloodborne-themed, the assets carried over from that project. I am personally a big fan of the low-poly look, and it also made asset creation slightly easier as well.
What drew you to make a low-poly remake of Bloodborne in the first place?
I was first introduced to the concept of video game demakes via a Neo Gaf forum in 2017 where people were making mock-up fake screenshots of popular games on older hardware. My favorite game is Bloodborne, and I had fond memories of the PS1 era (and it felt like it would fit Bloodborne’s aesthetic the best). The rest is history!
Images via LWMedia.
What drew you to release the game for free?
The game was always planned to be free, seeing as it was a fan game. Now that the game is an original design and IP, I could have put a price tag on it at the last second, but I felt like it might leave people feeling like they were bamboozled. So, I kept it free.
On that topic though, releasing the game for free released a lot of pressure on the players’ side. A lot of discussion around a game is intrinsic to its perceived value compared to its actual asking price, and if the game is free, that all goes out the window. As a result, discussion around the game felt a lot more laid back (in a positive way!), and I still got money from it due to Itch.io’s “pay what you want” payment method, so it was a win-win for everyone!