hckrnws

Hello I'm Chris the creator!

For the past year I've been working on Geo Racers, a free to play web game where you have to race from one side of the world to another just using public transport. It's inspired by the BBC show "Race across the world".

It's early stages but any feedback on the game it's greatly recieved.

Really like the game so far. Here's what I noticed and what I'd like to see after my first play though:

1. There should be an 'easy mode' where your money goes into the red, but you're still allowed to spend whatever to get to the end. It would be nice to see I'm $-14,952 in the hole, but I made it (with the ultimate objective to get to the destination while in the black).

2. The bottom overlays overlap. I was taking a ferry from Dublin, and tried to queue up walking to the hotel. The hotel overlay popped up under the "Skip this Ride" message. I don't really care if I can queue up actions, but the stacked overlays were unsightly.

3. I would say LEAVE THE SURPRISES. It was enjoyable to get blind-sighted by having to change my currency in the UK and the fact I lost an hour due to time zone changes.

Good work. Keep it up.

I think an easy mode is a good idea, I will explore that. I'm glad you like the surprises, I do think they add another layer to the game and makes it more stategic.

I think the "limited budget" mechanic should be scrapped - instead make the budget unlimited but rank the submissions based on the lowest budget.

Well, my run-through had no banks in the UK that I could find, so that was tough.

It's realistic then ;)

Would love to be able to change to a transit map. The map display is in "car mode", which makes it hard to use. There is no rail diaplay at all. In apple and google maps I normally use the transit mode.

Worried it gives the wrong impression that using trains is hard, when it's super easy in real life. I am actually sitting in a train right now.

Or if you want to double down on making it harder, you could use a satellite image view.

I do wish I could do some in-game research—like show just train/bus stations that have international lines. Perhaps identify hotels with general affordability (€, vs. €€€).

Hi! I got stuck in London. I walked around to a bunch of train stations at around 10PM on Monday night and there was nothing showing up in the timetables. Same for the next morning. I then walked to Portsmouth and the Portsmouth harbor also showed no boats. The API call was https://geo-racers.com/api/boats?from_id=43128&time=07:02&da... seems odd to me?

I love this, but I'm thwarted. Apparently there are no trains from London Waterloo (one of the UKs busiest railway stations) at 1902. I've been stuck there waiting for trains for so many years I can tell you that's not the case :)

I had a lot of fun :) . Cleaning up the leader board would be appreciated though. Seeing adolf hilter everywhere is ... something.

There also seem to be a bug where the game doesn't always spawn you where it should. Selected Galeway to Roma and was put in scotland with only euros and no banks around. Probably how some people manage to get was seems to be impossible score

My wife thinks it looks like stress.

– Checking/unchecking some items does not appear to toggle their visibility. (Safari, MacOS).

— As another pointed out, walked to a hotel, could not enter hotel (too far off road?).

This rules! What a fun idea.

I couldn't get the "Walk Here"/"Taxi Here" tooltip pop-up to stay open on Firefox when clicking on a train station, but it's working in Chrome.

Sorry about that. Should be fixed now

So cool! Couple of minor bugs - I can click banks / hotels and use them without being near them, also many hotels in ex Paris do not show up as usable, neither does the Paris metro. Still, super fun to play.

Some other features I'd love to see: - Ability to check transit timetables without going there - Metros / Tubes / Subways for in-city transit

Hit a wall going to Plymouth when I should have gone to Portsmouth, but had no way to check which one had the ferry I needed.

In BBC's "Race across the world" you aren't allowed a mobile phone to check timetables, so I guess this is in the spirit of that game.

Yeah I didn't implement that as in the show they don't let you look anything up but quite a few people have mentioned it would be useful. I think I will add

- A minimap to all the timetables that show visibly where the transport goes - A tourist information center in town and city centers you can use to find out other information

That'd be cool! Or maybe just going to any train/bus station gives you the timetables for all of them, so you don't have to add another thing.

Def ran into issues on my second play - there were no trains from Waterloo, nor any boats from Plymouth or Portsmouth.

Shows a lot of promise. Can't wait for it to improve some of the core systems just a little, will be very addictive.

Too bad apparently you can't ride bus and metro in London, Paris, etc.

No hotel accepts cash nowadays, there is absolutely no need to exchange currency basically ever. I would remove that part of the game.

I highlighted a train station, clicked "walk here," and nothing happened. I sped up time and I did not move.

I gave up.

Also, an introduction explaining what the game is would be good rather than just asking for a player name and dropping the user into the game.

It's a really fun game! One frustration - and probably a realistic one - is that there aren't nearly enough jobs and they don't pay well enough to break even with the hotel costs.

How do I ride public transport on mobile? I've managed to get the timetable to pop up a few times by clicking around randomly, but there's no obvious button or action for this. I take it you have to actually be at the station to be able to see them?

I managed to make it through most of the UK, but I ran into an issue in Portsmouth. On the map, it appeared there were a whole bunch of shipping lane options, but when I tried both, one only had two cryptic options, and the other had none. Possibly, it would also be nice to have some sort of toggable pda that had an itinerary of all the tickets you have purchased, but haven't used yet.

The game has increased my appreciation of the airplane as a mode of transport, unfortunately

I'm surprised how walkable Galway is, tbh

Love this! Got stuck at Gare du Nord in Paris though. Despite being Europe’s busiest train station, no tickets going towards the South, only North. Seems suspicious! What’s the ticket logic? Is it founded on reality? Or just totally faked?

Hi, yes the Gare du Nord (ie North Train Station) mainly has trains going to the north. For the south, you'd have to go to the Gare de Lyon, Lyon being a city in southern France :)

In Moscow there's the Kazansky, Yaroslavsky and Leningradsky stations. They're next to each other but serve lines going to different cities.

I think that's correct. Gare du Nord only serves stations north of it. You want to go to one of the stations in the south

Indeed. It's an absolute pain in real life trying to go south to Gare Montparnasse when you've just arrived at Gare du Nord - your options are: to walk, which takes forever; to take a bus, which is still rather slow and awkward with luggage; or to take the Metro, which is only a bit faster and even more awkward with luggage - there aren't any lifts at the Montparnasse Metro station!

Just remove the work part man. It's incredibly frustrating when you run out of money. Add some credit card loan or something and your final score is the amount of money you have left. Also, add teleport button—I clicked the big red button thinking it would transport me instantly. Only to be dropped off to in the middle of nowhere. And when you select a departure from train station, it should auto-select the end-stop, so you don't have to scroll down and click it (which is non-obvious btw that you have to)

The reason you have to work is because the game is based on a BBC show called "Race across the world" where you have to race from point A to point B with the money equivalent of an air fare for the journey.

If you run out of money in the show or your funds are running low you can work to earn more money. So that's why I added that feature. I do think it adds a extra layer to the game as it's something you always have to think about

This is really fun!

A possible bug though: I managed to finish Inverness to Gibraltar, and the top three spots on the leaderboard somehow had negative time durations!

I love the game thus far! I will say it is difficult to find work. I nearly went bankrupt cause I travelled to a large city thinking I could find work, but it didn't pay enough for a hotel room. Knowing how much it costs to get to a city via train/bus/taxi would help a lot.

I love the idea, but the whole interface is very twitchy for me. Tried Safari & Firefox on my MacBook Air M1.

A few feedback bits:

* At Dublin ferry port, only port 5 was clickable. * Card payments should be an option. Nobody would use cash like this. * Banks aren't open at 10PM. In fact, banks are hardly open at all. * You can change money at a Post Office or supermarket.

Please respect the silence setting on mobile, thanks!

and desktop!

When I select a destination at a bus stop or train station the listings only show the specifics but not the city itself. This kind of defeats the whole purpose as its essentially randomly clicking around

idea is absolutely lovely, but it is really hard to plan ahead without consulting with google maps about possible directions from your next stop - I understand this is part of the challenge, however some QoL changes like visualizing 1st or 2nd tier connections could be super helpful

I'll be keeping an eye on this one!

Neat game! I would like the map to have a scale bar though. It would also be useful to see train station timetables while somewhere else to plan ahead.

Floating points for currencies :/ "You only have 306.99999999999994 GBP, you can't exchange 307. "

Bought a ferry ticket, it told me I am close enough to board. The usual popup for advancing time to leaving time didn't show up. Decided to speed up time and wait it manually it just kept going without getting in until 2am when out of hotel triggered game over.

Hmm, that's not good. Where was the ferry from and to?

One of the 2 terminals in Cherbourg France, the city you reach by traveling from Dublin to France, but not the one I arrived in. It only had routes to England.

Took a ferry to France, got a screen saying "Welcome to France", then it dumped me in the middle of the channel.

I started Galeway-Rome but when I toogle Bus Stations they don't disappear.

They do disappear together with with the toggle for train station. I.e. I can't view train stations only.

Really conveys the stress and horror of traveling by public transit.

I think it's kind of fun. It's the sport of it, good chap. I mean, the 1000's of transfers mate.

Transcontinental road/rail/sea transport would probably be a lot better if the airplane didn't exist

Its all the same to me. An airport is probably the last place i want to be at and driving in a foreign country is something i find more stressfull than utilising the public transport there.

It's the 5000 transfers that I am talking about.

Before the "Special Military Operation", there was a train from Berlin to Moscow.

London to Paris, Paris to Berlin (I think this connection exists), to Moscow, Trans-Siberia to Vladivostok, and you're a ferry ride away from Japan, and there must be a Shinkansen straight to Tokyo...

What an incredible idea! Love it, will spend some monopoly money on it!!

This was great fun. The race to Rome says it's to the colosseum, but it's actually pointing to a roundabout near Termini station :)

How on earth are people managing in 5 hours though? I had £95 left after a bus, ferry, train, and bus, taking me to 2.5 days; the ferry alone took nearly a day.

Huge login form for a landing page without as much of a video of what's going on is a shot in the foot

There's a 'continue as guest' option at the bottom of that form. But yeah that was also my immediate impression.

You can just enter any name to play as a guest

This is fantastic fun. Cheers!

It's like JetLag the Game, but without ever leaving your house!

The login screen overflows my screen, and it won't pinch zoom smaller.

Was on an overnight bus and ended with game over

Similar thing here. Was in a ferry from Ireland to France and got a penalty for not being in a hotel. How is 20 hour ferry not considered an overnight transport.

Yeah i was an hour from boarding my overnight bus and it seems i got game over for not being at a hotel.

>There are just 2 rules 1. You can't fly 2. You must be in a hotel by 2am unless you have overnight transport

Guess the "have" doesn't work as i thought.

Nitpicks :

* If there's a time limit, there's no way to know. I'm currently on my 3rd day travelling :) * I was waiting for my bus and I had forgotten the exact time. There is no way to know until it starts :) * While riding the bus I can't seem to be able to push speed over 100x. A Paris-Barcelona bus ride is long, even at 100x :) Later on a second bus, I could. Weird... * You should explain that "banks", "bus stations" etc are special game icons, not actual banks and bus stops on the map :) I was in Paris trying to change money in the "money exchange" at Gare du Nord, and I tried a while to do something until I understood that you can only use the special "Bank" icons. * In Almeria, the busses look like the regular city network. I tried taking one, but the game is now frozen... It's time for my bus, but nothing happens.

I loved the idea. Playing around

Nice job! It would be helpful when using public transportation to see the names of places overlaid on the map.

Just did Galway-Rome and enjoyed it! I'll check back in a while when you've had time to implement the minimap and tourist center, as you wrote elsewhere.

What was weird: Paris did not seem to have any public transport - I had to walk from one train station to another for 70 minutes, and the only bus I could find was an overland bus, not an inner city one.

Also, it's a bit unintuitive that the "Journey Details" at the end start at nine hours — to me, when I begin my journey at 9 'o clock, that is hour zero.

Love the idea!

So here I am, it's frozen there: https://demo.intellique.org/nextcloud/index.php/apps/files_s...

You can see several problems : I've deselected bus stations, boat stations, etc but they're still displayed. Time is frozen, my bus isn't coming, I'm stuck in Almeria, too bad !

Here's what's in the console:

    Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "geometry", xe is undefined
        lr App.vue:984
        callback App.vue:2183
        rr App.vue:894
    App.vue:984:25