paroxysmal 2026-10-18 23:23 ♥ 2
Cool game. I like the concept. Well done.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Bumper Cars Guy
By notnasiul
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 25 | |||||
| Fun | 25 | |||||
| Innovation | 25 | |||||
| Theme | 25 | |||||
| Graphics | 25 | |||||
| Audio | 25 | |||||
| Humor | 25 | |||||
| Mood | 24 | |||||
Cool game. I like the concept. Well done.
LOL, I DIDN'T MADE IT PUBLIC XDDDDD It's available now ':D @paroxysmal
Fortunately files do show when they were updated, hopefully it's proof that I did it on time X)
Fun and cute graphics
My best score is 210, this is a little challenging as kids randomly stuck by themselves, even if I take care of the unused cars, and also because they can be unhappy while the ride is over and the next one is not started yet 😄 Fortunately I can help the kids with their cars, but this is still challenging Well done, it's a fun and cute entry!
That's precisely what you are supposed to do, @lereveur! :D In these rides kids usually get stuck (in real life I mean), which is what I meant to capture. You have to jump on their cars and drive them away from the traffic jam! In the GIF I uploaded you see that happening at some point :) Thanks for playing!
Fun, simple and charming 😄
A simple and fun retro-style game that reminds me of my childhood days playing on the NES and riding bumper cars. I initially thought I could only drive my own bumper car, but it turns out I can actually hop into a child’s car and help them steer—that’s such a neat feature! It got me thinking: what if you could pick up power-ups along the way—like becoming larger, faster, or packing a more powerful punch—all while playing in a bigger arena with even more kids? That would be absolutely thrilling. I’d love to experience the feeling of driving a massive bumper car and sending everything else flying!
It’s a very interesting game!!
Innovative and cute. Some more feedback for why boys are happy or bored could be useful, though it's probably hard to squeeze to the pico8 resolution.
@nephem those are cool ideas! Indeed I wanted to add a loop to improve the ride, buying more cars and such. But a larger game about bumper cars in full 3D could be quite fun!
@baturinsky Yes, I fear I relied too much on our own experience riding bumper cars. Frustration when you got stuck and couldn't get out of a large jam, mainly ^⁻^
Nice take on the theme! The gameplay loop works well, and keeps you juggling between clearing empty cars and collecting coins. It would be interesting to use them to buy upgrades, like a larger play area, more or faster cars, etc... Great entry!
What a blast! I never would have thought I'd play a game as the bumper guy operator! So well put together too! Really well done for the pico8 and low-res too! I just felt like everyone smooshed together at the end though, I hopped in the middle cart and couldn't push anyone:
It could be interesting to see each individual kids happiness than the aggregate too, I was trying to get around to each of them. It was a bit tricky sometimes to get in the cart I wanted to. I wonder if I needed a second objective, like to go stop/start the ride power between waves too or something? I can see myself coming back to try and beat my high score of 240.
I love this concept!! Haven't rode a bumper car in years untill a beer festival a couple weeks ago. Still enjoyed them even though the place is a bit too small. Really helpful to have someone solve jams so we can slam harder :) Really fun to play and I actually also spent a bit of time purely playing around by dodging the car and collecting coins. Really nice pico8 style and partical effects. Great job without AI!!!
Got a high score of 260. Cool and interesting idea which you've executed pretty well.
I do like how the game is based entirely around preventing the other bumper karts from ending up in jams so to speak. Cool and readable art as well.
However, I'm not really a fan of how the approval meter continues to decrease when new kids are taking up the cart. Kinda wished that the meter was paused during this moment since there didn't seem to be anything I could do in those moments. I also felt that the game itself could've used maybe another element to it ? As an example, the player getting bumped around was funny, but it also could've used some sort of penalty to it maybe ? Or on the flipside, maybe getting hit would cause the kid's approval to increase ? Just an idea really lol.
All that said, this is still a fun little arcade game. Good stuff.
Just couldn't say no this when I saw it. Nothing to complain. Nice graphics, controls worked and it was nice to get to drive the bumber cards with the kids. Nice entry!
I love seeing games made for Pico-8 due to all possible limitation. Game would be even better if I could drive over kids.
Am old enough to remember the good old days when the bumper-cars ( or dodge-'ems ) had less health and safety haha. 😄
I struggled a bit thinking I could grab/push the cars around as the dude and not actually drive the cars.
Nice gameplay though, easy entry and replayability with the high-score.
Couldn't figure out the kids to sat in the cars between rounds and were still angry. 😠
I can't upload a screenshot as it says my 10kb gif is over 4mb. 😧
High score was ~ 200 most games. ✌️
thank you for the game! well done!
@badpiggy cars hitting the players resulting in approval going up was in my backlog!! But Life got in the way and I released sooner than I wanted :D Thanks for playing!
@ne-aquilon drive over kids? Not sure if it's what you mean but you can jump into their cars and control them! Also play and hit them, which would increase their happiness too :D
@johnnysix they are angry because they are not moving and have to wait for other kids to get to their cars :D
Thank you all for playing!
It's funny! I love pico-8 games.
The first time, I didn't understand the mechanics and just poked around. In the second wound, I decided to read the description of the game and then it opened! I really liked what we have here as the "behavioral mechanics" of interaction between entities (at least that's how it feels). But how these kids love to go to the center, lol! It's just a nightmare!
I didn't have enough mechanics to develop during the game, so I decided to stop at two wounds.
Here's my result (and there were still a bunch of coins that I didn't have time to pick up, so add 50 more points :D)photo_2026-10-22_13-13-43.jpg
Really cute, and always great to see Pico-8! Love the graphics, and the idea of playing as the guy helping the kids is brilliant! The kids' driving skills can be absolutely infuriating though, haha!
@kitmani what do you mean with wounds? the guy is immortal XDD
@liquid Yes, because they are kids! :D
Thanks for playing!
@notnasiul aha-ha, sorry, I mean "runs"
Lol @kitmani xDD Completely changes the meaning. But yeah, it's just a small arcade game! ;)
235 score, that was tough. Anyways, it was rough yet fun game. I think this bumper car is more flexible than what I have years ago. I like how there are coins to add choice to player either to pick coins or assist kids.
Getting in a jam with bumper cars was the worst. Once I figured out driving my own car into pile was not a great strategy it became more fun. Nice and polished!
Playing as the poor bumper car operator trying to save kids from traffic jams is such a brilliantly witty and innovative concept! It’s a fantastic, heartwarming take on the "Old Tech" theme.
I always love seeing entries made with PICO-8, and the retro 8-bit visual style and particle effects here are super charming and polished. I mostly focused on looking at the gameplay loop from the gifs and description because it's a bit challenging to control everything smoothly without a mouse on my setup, but the behavioral mechanics between the cars and the chaotic arcade energy are clearly top-notch! The balance between collecting coins and rushing to push the kids away from jams creates an awesome risk-reward dynamic. Great job writing this in pure Lua without any AI!
Thank you so much for playing and rating my game, and for the great suggestions about adding non-blowable parts and manual rotation — I really appreciate your feedback! Good luck with the voting stage! 🚗💥👦✨
Nice little game!
Kudos for no AI use! :)
This was pretty fun! First couple tries, I didn't realize I could jump into the same cars as the kids, so I was just picking up empty cars and ramming them into the kids' cars, hoping that'd make them happy. Third try, re-read the description and realized I could drive with them, and then figured out they just wanted to go zoom and not stay still. Gets hard later in the game. Seems like jumping into the middle of a jam and driving out is usually the best strategy.
