It's time for me to try out Arcade Colony's first racing game, Moonkarts. I've initially seen it played by Aftersound in his past livestreams but never really got the chance to try it myself. I personally like the concept behind Arcade Colony but I was still building my position on Splinterlands and not had the funds to dive into a new game.
I think it's worth it to note that when I first searched 'moonkarts' on my search engine, the actual landing page for the game was not on the first page. There was the Gitbook of the game, but when I browsed it, there was also no link to the game that I noticed. I finally got in when I typed in arcadecolony.com.
The website itself looks clean and professional. I immediately checked the NFT marketplace and saw a few categories on sale. I first thought that the NFTs would be for cars and drivers only. But there also those for car parts as well like wheels and engines. This reminds me of Top Gear and other old-school racing games. I guess this adds further customization that's not present with Mario Kart. The NFTs are also low-priced despite having low circulating supply, with some epics within the 2 to 3 dollar range.
Next I tried the actual gameplay. I guess it's a browser-based game with no download required. It took a few minutes for it to load up on my end and it's probably because of my internet speed.
I chose single player to see if there's a trial game. I don't have any assets yet but the interface looks nice and is consistent with the overall theme design of Moonkarts.
And it looks like you need at least a kart in order to play.
Luckily the cheapest one, Astrokart, is only about 14 cents. The driver was around 13 cents so just a quarter to start a single player game.
Now for my impression on the actual gameplay, the handling of my kart was a little hard. It's not as responsive as I'd like it to be. I'm having a hard time to do tight turns and the speed is a bit slower than what I expected. Now it may be because I chose the cheapest parts available and better NFTs could possibly translate to better and smoother driving experience. If that's the case, then I hope there would be a trial or practice mode where you can test the highest optimized karts so we can have a preview.
If I would make a critique, I think the kart and driver designs are a bit monotonous. Racing games like these should have wacky characters like octopus-like aliens or robots. That would make the feel of the game more exciting for sure. I know Moonkarts is still in the early stages and I am sure it would improve a lot over the months. I'm going to try the multiplayer experience next and see if it's a fun experience as well.
