Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great and enjoying the new content in the Blue Hour DLC. If you haven't installed it, please check it out, it's free after all.

I'm publishing a minor update, v1.3.1, which fixes some historically problematic things and, sadly, removes a feature. But it's for a good reason.

Feature removal: MP3 support.
I'm not sure how many players use this feature, but Slipstream allows you to add your own music files to the game. If you put a music file in '[user config dir]/ansdorGames/Slipstream/music', it will be playable during gameplay and treated like any other song in the soundtrack. Up until now, the game has supported three formats: ogg, wav and mp3. When I rewrote the game in version 1.2, I switched the underlying game library from libGDX to FNA, and FNA does not have native support for MP3. For the whole v1.2 cycle and v1.3.0, I used SDL2_mixer as an alternative, but this created new problems, mostly on macOS. Supporting the macOS version is extremely hard for me because I don't have a Mac computer and the OS isn't trivially virtualized like Windows and Linux.

In this new version, I removed the dependency on SDL2_mixer, so now the game only requires FNA and should run exactly the same on every PC platform. But, sadly, MP3 support had to go. The game still supports user-provided music, but only in the OGG format. If you use this feature a lot, I suggest you to convert your Slipstream playlist to the OGG format, it's a free format with many conversion tools available for every system. If FNA adds support for MP3 in the future (maybe I'll add it myself, if I have the time), I'll bring back support. But for now, it's goodbye to MP3. This should fix the recent audio problems on macOS. If you still have problems, send me an email.

Audio Improvements, Engine Sounds
The whole audio system has been refactored, and this brings back a feature that was lost in the v1.2 update: The engine pitch shift. Now the car engine sound is slightly more realistic and a lot more pleasant to the ear.

Leaderboard Improvements
The leaderboard system was one of the last things I implemented in Slipstream v1.2, when I was already tired of the whole rewrite and far beyond what should be my deadline. It's always been buggy and weird. Now I took the time to rewrite it properly and it should work better in general. One tangible improvement is that it doesn't show "Leaderboard Empty" when you don't have a entry on the Leaderboard.

Also, two tracks from the Blue Hour DLC, Transylvania and Pompeii, had a bug that prevented them from being added to the Leaderboards system. That is also fixed, and the Blue Hour Cup now has its own Leaderboard too.

UI Change: Navigation Arrow
The in-game radar now displays an arrow, like a compass, indicating the direction of the next curve. This should improve QoL on low-visibility tracks like Mystic Cave and Pompeii. The arrow becomes red when the next curve is to the right, and green when the next curve is to the left. This should allow players to predict the next curve without having to take their eyes off the road, just seeing red/green in the corner of the eye should be enough to feel where the next curve goes.

And that's all for this update. Thanks for playing!

Blue Hour, a free DLC expansion for Slipstream, is now available!

The expansion brings 3 new cars, 5 new tracks and 5 new songs. More details can be seen on the Slipstream: Blue Hour DLC store page.

To install Blue Hour, right-click Slipstream on your library, select "Properties", then "DLC" and check the Blue Hour box. It will eventually be added to the default install, but at the moment I'm asking for manual installation so I can measure the number of installs.

I'd also like to recommend players to use the game speed adjustment setting! Slipstream can be too hard to control at the default speed, and this setting exists to make the game more comfortable to play. Don't be afraid to use it, the game is still very fast at 80% speed, and everything in the gameplay and physics remains exactly the same. If I were to release the game today, I'd probably make the default speed closer to 80 or 75%, but now it's too late to change the defaults. So, please, check this option out, it can make the game a lot more fun and enjoyable. The setting can be found on the settings menu and the pause menu.

Some other notes:
- I am aware that the macOS version has some audio problems since the last update. I'll look into it as soon as possible, expect a patch to fix the issues in about two weeks, maybe less.
- A bug with the user content loading system was fixed in version 1.3.0-01
- There are no new achievements for the DLC. It was an oversight, new achievements will be added in the near future.
- I'm still working on the modding tools

Thanks for the bug reports and support, I hope you enjoy the new content!

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great. I have big news to share with you today.

Slipstream is now five years old! Time flies. The original release feels both like yesterday and a long time ago. Since then, I've worked (almost) continuously to keep this game afloat. I've done a full rewrite of the code, added many new features, and fixed all the bugs and problems I could. It's still not perfect, I guess it will never be, but I've tried my best to make it good and enjoyable. Once again I want to say thanks to all of you who played the game, gave me useful feedback and support in general.

Today I bring you a new version of the game, Slipstream v1.3. As with the previous v1.x updates, I'm gonna freeze the latest v1.2 build on a separate branch (legacy-v2), so it can still be played in the future. There are major changes, so let's get to them.

* A new rubberbanding system
For those who don't know, 'rubberbanding' is a type of dynamic difficulty adjustment that's very common in racing games. It basically makes the AI cars more or less powerful depending on the player's position relative to them. If a player is far ahead, the AI gets faster, if it's far behind, it gets slower. A great example of a heavily rubberbanded game is Mario Kart 64.

Slipstream v1.1 had a lot of rubberbanding too. In the v1.2 release cycle, I tried to remove it completely, but that created a series of new problems. It's very hard to balance a game like Slipstream, that doesn't take place in a fully 3D space where minor adjustments to the racing lines can be the difference between winning and losing. In Slipstream the cars' raw attributes matter more, and the AI got out of control because it drives in a very optimized way. To mitigate this, I had to add artificial speed limits to the AI and the whole system became more complex, ugly and cumbersome than the v1.1 solution I was trying to replace.

For v1.3, I decided to bring rubberbanding back, but in a very different way. There are two types of rubberbanding, let's call them 'power-based' and 'skill-based'. Power-based means the AI cars get physically faster or slower depending on their position relative to the player. That's the kind I used in v1.1. Skill-based rubberbanding feels a lot more natural, the cars don't change physically at all, the only thing that changes is the AI's skill level. It might hold the brake a little longer when it's winning, or make more precise turns when it's losing. This is the kind of RB I've implemented in v1.3. In my own experience it feels pretty good, the game still has its challenging difficulty but it doesn't feel impossible to win some races like it did in v1.2.

* Car attributes, rebalanced
I really like the way the difficulties are handled in v1.2, with three different weight classes like in Mario Kart. However, that system was still too tame. In v1.3, the differences between the weight classes are much more noticeable. Heavy is still the 'classic' mode, with the highest top speeds. Medium is a little slower than before, which I feel is a more sensible default setting for experienced players and beginners alike, and Light is beginner-friendly, more relaxing and less challenging.

On the topic of balancing, ever since the original release, Top Speed has reigned supreme as the most important attribute. Again, due to the game not taking place in a 3D space, it's impossible to make Top Speed less important. All else equal, the car with the highest top speed will inevitably win the race. That said, I tried to mitigate this issue a little. Now both Handling and especially Acceleration have a stronger effect on the car's behavior in the race, and that should make the low top speed cars more viable.

Finally, since everything was changed, a whole new set of online leaderboards will be used for v1.3. The v1.2 records will still remain accessible from the legacy-v2 branch, but it wouldn't make sense to preserve them for the new builds. Time Trial ghosts and individual records will also be cleared, but the save file progress will carry over from v1.2 to v1.3.

* New modes, more randomness
When I added the Battle Royale mode to the game in v1.1, it was intended as kind of a joke. Back in 2018, when PUBG and Fortnite were starting to become massive hits, people joked that "now every game needs to have a battle royale mode" and I decided to actually do it. I didn't expect people to give much attention to that mode, but as the years passed I noticed experienced Slipstream players seem to really love that mode, and I think I understand its appeal: It takes almost no configuration, unlike Cannonball, and it's perfect for a relatively long, relaxing and varied race. The randomness is an important part of the equation, Battle Royale was the only "true" randomized mode (you can shuffle Cannonball tracks, but you can still see the track list before the race). Well, not anymore!

The update brings randomized versions of Grand Tour and Grand Prix modes. Both follow the same rules as the default versions, but with a random pool of tracks. I'm also trying to give a little more love to the Reverse versions of the tracks, they have been in the game since v1.0, but always stayed tucked away in just two modes, one of them probably the least played of all. Now all the random modes (including Battle Royale) will reverse half of their tracks, for maximum unpredictability. That means 7 out of 15 possible Grand Tour stages will be reversed, and 2 out of 5 Grand Prix tracks.

Also worth noting that, for these modes, the game can pick any of the available tracks, including the ones from diamond cup, and also...

* Modding v0.1
The user content system is now finished and stable. There was a version in v1.2, but it was a little buggy and not properly tested. Now it's 100% functional, save for the occasional bug that's probably still hiding in there. However, I'm calling this "v0.1" instead of v1.0 because there are still many parts missing.

A real modding system requires three things:

• Support in the game code itself. [finished]
  
• Specialized tools, like a track editor. [in alpha]
  
• Documentation on how to do it. [not started]

The tools are still not finished. I have preliminary versions, but they're not ready for a public release yet. I will release them as open source before the end of 2023, but that's all I can say for now. And the documentation hasn't even started, but that part will be easier than programming the tools themselves, I think.

Still, if you are a tinkerer and likes reverse engineering stuff, you can look at the content package provided by the game (under Slipstream/assets/content/vanilla/) and see how things are done. It's all just JSON. User-created content should be put in the "content" directory of the game settings folder. If you're on Windows, that's [user home]/AppData/Roaming/ansdorGames/Slipstream/content (keep in mind the names are case-sensitive).

* Some graphical changes
All the cars have new sprites, with more vivid colors and a slightly different perspective. I just felt like they needed a bit of a punch-up. The verticality of slopes in the game has been very noticeably reduced. Reverse tracks don't invert slopes anymore, the reverse track is now an (almost) exact mirror image of the regular version. The Slipstream engine got some new features, one of them is a new fog system, used in two of the diamond cup tracks, Aquatic Ruins and Mystic Cave. Aquatic Ruins now has a more underwater-y feel and Mystic Cave gets dynamic lighting provided by the cars' headlights, instead of just shortening the draw distance as it used to.

These are the major changes. I hope you enjoy the new version, and thanks again for these five years of continuous support and appreciation. And that's all for today, see you later!

...oh, wait a minute. I almost forgot something.

Blue Hour, the first DLC expansion for Slipstream, will be available for FREE this summer. It includes 3 new cars, 5 new tracks and 5 new songs. More details on the dedicated steam page for Slipstream: Blue Hour. Free DLC for a 5 year old game, bet you weren't expecting this one!

Hi everyone, hope you're all doing well.

I have an update for you today. There are few visible changes to the game, mostly bugfixes, with the notable exception of a new feature: A Photo Mode. Here are the notes for Slipstream v1.2.4:

• Photo Mode. When activated, the screen will be frozen and the HUD disabled. This will allow players to take better screenshots of the game. Pressing the CONFIRM key will toggle the HUD on/off, and pressing up/down will switch between some photo filters: normal, pixelated, CRT, NTSC, VHS.
  
  If you had a save file prior to this update, the photo mode will probably be assigned to the F7 key. This is because this feature used to be available only in my personal Debug/Test builds, and I used the F keys for debug-only stuff. The new default/recommended binding is TAB. If you restore the default controls or create a new save file, the game will restore the correct mapping. On gamepads, it's mapped to the equivalent of a 'select/back' button. I believe it's the 'share' button on PS4/PS5 controllers.
  
  
• New localizations: Greek and Russian. This addition might cause an unexpected language change for some players because, internally, the game stores the selected language as an index, and since two new languages were added to the list, the index stored in your save file might point to a different language now. If you can't find the option to restore your preferred language, just delete the settings file ([user home]/AppData/Roaming/ansdorGames/Slipstream/settings-1.2.bin on Windows) and the game will restore the default settings.
  
  
• As usual, bugfixes and difficulty adjustments. Notably, I had forgotten to re-implement the "darkness" effect in Mystic Cave, but it's back now.

One last note: I'm working on new content to be added to the game in the future. I can't say much for now, but I'm making major changes to the engine under the hood, and this update might have a slight impact on the game's performance. The engine is doing a few more calculations (actually a few thousand more) per frame, to accomodate the new features. I didn't notice any impact on my own testing PC, and I hope it won't affect players too much, but if your computer struggled to run this game before, it might struggle a little harder now. Unfortunately it's a trade-off, I can't add more features to the engine without this. But it's unlikely that this will happen, the game has never been too demanding anyway.

I hope you enjoy, and thanks for playing Slipstream!

Hello everyone, hope you're doing well.

The news is out: Slipstream is finally coming to consoles, thanks to a partnership with BlitWorks, the company behind the modern ports of Sonic CD and Jet Set Radio, among many others. The release date will be April 7th, the base price will be the same as the PC version. It will be available for PS4/PS5, Xbox One/SS/SX, and Nintendo Switch. If you like the game, any kind of support is, of course, welcome. I haven't got my hands on a Steam Deck yet, but I believe the game will run fine on it, since it has a native Linux version and full support for Xbox-like controllers.

In preparation for the new release, I come to you today with a new update. Here are the changes:

• Localization: Slipstream is now available in Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. The language can be changed from the Settings Menu. The UI was also changed in some places to accommodate the localized text.
  
• The speedometer now flashes briefly to indicate the rewind status. A green flash indicates the rewind is available to use, and a red flash indicates it's fully charged. This should help players know their rewind status while keeping their eyes on the road.
  
• The VHS Effect on the pause menu can now be turned off on the game Settings. This should make the menu text easier to read.
  
• Characters chosen by players no longer appear as rivals in Multiplayer Cannonball mode.
  
• The traffic car colors have been changed.

That's all for now. Thanks for the continued support, and enjoy the game!

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well. A new update to Slipstream has been published, with a few relatively small but significant changes:

• The whole Automatic Drifting system has been reworked to be more ergonomic. The autodrift controls used to be a little stiff and too different from manual, but now they work almost exactly the same and should be easier for everyone to use.
  
• Text descriptions were added to the Main Menu and Car Select screens.
  
• Fixed a bug in Time Trial Mode where the ghost car would get desynchronized. The bug was strictly related to how the ghost plays, not to how it's recorded, so your existing ghosts should work without issue.

That's all for the update. The game has reached a very stable state, I think the difficulty is now at a good point, especially with the accessibility features, so further updates will probably be focused on bug fixing only.

I've seen some users in the forums request the old character art to be re-added to the game, and I'd like to give it a proper answer. Those old portraits were made in a rush, in 2018, just a few weeks before the game came out. I did the best I could back then, but I was never satisfied with those pictures, and always wanted to change them. It was in fact one of the few things I changed in the game's graphics from v1.1 to v1.2. I understand that some people think the new art is too comedic or exaggerated, and prefer the more sober tone of the old ones, but re-adding them to the game is not currently in the plans, I'm sorry.

It's not that I'm against having a more serious look to the game, but I can't express how much I dislike those pictures and bringing them back wouldn't improve the vision I have for Slipstream. And, well, they are not entirely lost, the v1.1 branch is still available to download and play. I might, some day, add an alternative set of pictures for the current characters (i.e. no richard, yes dr levik) with a different art style, closer to the old one, but for now I have other priorities such as localization.

That's it for now, thanks for playing!

Hello everyone, hope you're doing well.

First of all, I want to say I'm sorry. In November I published part of an update I was working on at the time, but the work had to be interrupted and the game was left in a very problematic, buggy state for two months. That earned me quite a few negative reviews and emails, and you were right, I shouldn't have left it that way, especially for so long, in such a critical time of the year. I hope this new update can serve as an apology for that mistake.

Here are the major changes in version 1.2.1, now available for all platforms:

When I originally published the 1.2.0 version, I said there were still problems to be solved with the game's difficulty thanks to the new AI, but they were never as bad as in the previous patch. Now I believe I've reached a good spot, where the AI is challenging and consistent but not excessively hard like before.

I've also balanced some aspects of the game's difficulty on the player's side. It's now easier to turn at high speeds when using the slipstream, so players won't crash as often as before. The rewind cooldown is now proportional to the amount of rewind time used. If you use 25% of the rewind bar, you get 25% of the max cooldown time. This will increase the availability of the rewind, which will also allow players to crash less often.

This is a new accessibility feature inspired by Forza Horizon 5. The player can now reduce the global game speed up to 50%. That means the whole game will play out more slowly, giving the player more time to react to the race (and enjoy the scenery), but the physics and gameplay will otherwise be exactly the same. I believe this will help players who find the game too fast for whatever reason.

For the sake of fairness on the online leaderboards, the game will not record the times of races using any speed other than 100%. If you reduce the speed in a single track on Grand Prix Mode, both that one race and the cumulative cup time will not be recorded, but the other races at 100% speed will. Everything else is the same, you can get all the trophies and complete the whole game on any game speed.

• Fixed a major bug on windows where the game would freeze when closing the application.
  
• Fixed a bug on windows where the game would open a cmd.exe window along with the graphical one.
  
• Fixed a bug on time trial mode where the ghost car wouldn't start the race at the proper position.
  
• Fixed several bugs with the Steam Platform functionality in all versions of the game. If you got a trophy and it didn't show up on Steam, open the Trophies screen and it should be added to your account.
  
• Added description text to the weight classes on the main menu.
  
• Added the option to import saves from Slipstream 1.1.

I haven't forgot about the modding system, I'm already working on the tools and documentation but it's taking more time I expected, as usual. My next deadline for that is March 2022, so stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for playing Slipstream. I hope you enjoy the update.

After a year and a half of work, the new version of Slipstream is finally here. Calling it "1.2" is almost an understatement—it is a full rewrite of the original code. Calling it "2.0" would make more sense.

Initially, it was supposed to be just a "simple", straight rewrite of the original code, in preparation for a re-release (more on that later), however, as I rewrote parts of the code, I noticed there was a lot of room for improvement and decided to take a little more time and do the right thing, fix and add everything I thought was necessary. A 6-month project became a 1-year project that, as expected, took more than a year, but now it's here, and I'm very satisfied with the results. It's hard to even write a "changelog" because everything was changed, but I'll try to list all the major new features.

The one change that set the ball rolling for all the others was rewriting the AI. The old version relied a lot on rubberbanding (that is, making the AI artificially faster or slower depending on the player's position in the race. If you're in first place, AI gets faster, if you're last, AI gets slower.), but I never liked that, it's a very obviously artificial way to balance things. The new AI should be equal to a player in every sense, use the same cars, with the same specs, same mechanics, everything. And, although the new AI still isn't perfect, it feels much better to race against now. The AIs use the same cars as the players, they crash, they use the slipstream, everything.

(side note: The new AI isn't exactly ideal yet. The amount of testing I can do by myself is limited, so the difficulty may be a little unbalanced. I will try to improve this with smaller updates in the following weeks.)

The non-rubberbanded AI created a problem: they wouldn't slow down if you made a mistake. If you crash your car, the only hope of getting back into the race would be if the AI crashed too. And it does crash, a lot, but relying on that wouldn't be a good way to balance things. To avoid locking the player in this almost unwinnable state, I introduced a new major mechanic that changed the whole game: the time rewind. When you activate it, you can go back in time for up to 5 seconds, so you have a second chance to enter a curve or avoid a crash. This was a very complex system to implement, but it made the game a lot more fun and strategic.

A lot of people like how challenging and fast Slipstream is, but others have some difficulty with the controls and the speed. I want the game to be approachable and playable by anyone, regardless of their gaming experience, so I decided to change the difficulty system into a Mario Kart-like weight class system. Instead of easy/medium/hard, now we have light, medium and heavy. Heavy is the "classic" setting for Slipstream veterans, with very high top speeds and relatively slow acceleration. Light is the opposite: all cars have lower top speeds but faster acceleration, and they're easier to control. Medium is a midpoint between the two. There are no restrictions on trophies anymore, all classes are equally valid. The AIs are almost the same in all classes, so the focus of the new difficulty system is on the player cars, not the AI cars like before. Light is not necessarily easier to win than Heavy, but it's easier to play. And now, making the game easier for players makes it easier for the AI too, so the light setting may still be quite a challenge. (If you thought Stardust Speedway was "too easy" in the original, do I have a surprise for you...)

In the original game, there were two pure racing modes: Single Race and Grand Prix. Single Race always used "stock" cars (cars with predefined specs) and Grand Prix always used "custom" cars (cars with upgrades chosen by the player). Now they are two separate categories. Single Race is still stock-only, but Grand Prix now has an option to choose between Stock and Custom categories. The upgrade system has also been entirely reworked, now instead of 0 to 10, the upgrades go from 0 to 100, and the player gets more money for upgrades from each race.

With all those changes, it wouldn't make sense to compare all times for a given track without finer categorization, so I raised the number of leaderboards from about 30 in the old version to more than 200 in the new. Each track now has 9 (!) online leaderboards, one for each weight class, in each mode: stock, custom and time trial. There's also a new Records screen on the main menu, which keeps your times for each track/category/mode, and it's also present in the DRM-Free versions.

All the rivals have new dialogue and new portraits, created by my super talented friend Victor, who also created the art of Dandara: Trials of Fear—check it out.

This is the one system I haven't been able to properly test yet. It already exists and it works, the base game content is already loaded through the same system that loads mods, and I have tested modded content on my own machine, but there's a problem: there are no modding tools yet, nor documentation. I have been very busy getting the game ready for this release, so I'm gonna ask for a little more time on this one. Basically you can add user-provided Cars, Tracks, Backgrounds and Scenery Props (but not characters for now, sorry). This content can be used in Single Race, Cannonball and Time Trial modes. Expect news about this before the end of 2021.

Many small changes and optimizations, too many to list, but, from the top of my head:

• Alt+Enter now switches between fullscreen/windowed.
  
• The graphical changes in the settings menu now happen instantly; no need to 'apply changes'.
  
• The in-game radar now shows your distance from the adjacent racers/rivals.
  
• The screen now tilts when you turn the car.
  
• Screen Shake and Screen Tilt can be configured from the pause menu.
  
• The keyboard icons now show the actual keys to which they are bound—no more X/C only.
  
• Battle Royale Mode can now be played with 4, 8 or 12 racers instead of always 16.
  
• NTSC Effect has been replaced with a faster/lighter version.
  
• Vibration has been reduced to a more sensible amount.
  
• Separate save slots for Single and Multiplayer in Grand Prix mode.

Save files from the original version will NOT carry over to the new one, but the two can coexist. Steam achievements will remain exactly the same. The old version will be moved to a separate "legacy" branch and remain there for anyone who prefers it over the new one (but I hope no one does, the new version is objectively better).

As I mentioned before, Slipstream is going to be re-released. I've signed a contract with a publisher and we're preparing to bring this new version of the game to new platforms. So, if you liked Slipstream and want to support me further, keep an eye out for when it shows up on your platform of choice. It will also probably work on the Steam Deck, but I can't confirm this yet. I'm gonna be running discounts on the Halloween, Black Friday and holiday season sales, so if you have a friend who might like the game, tell them!

When this update cycle is over, when the bugs are fixed and the game is stable, it will also be the end of this project, at least for me. I feel like it is complete now, it is the best I could do for this idea, this concept of a game. I've dedicated years of my life to this project, and it's been a great experience. Slipstream sold more than 15 thousand units here on Steam, and it reached more than 200 thousand people through the humble monthly package. It has a 92% positive review rate at the time of writing, and has been featured on SGDQ 2019; it surpassed by far all the goals I could have set for it in 2016 or 2018. It got me in touch with a wonderful community (even though I'm very shy and very anxious, sorry if I don't interact as much as I should!). Thanks for all of that, to each of you who ever played it even for a minute, it's been an honor.

But I don't want Slipstream to vanish. The modding system will be my way of saying farewell to the project and passing the torch to the community. If there's enough interest, maybe the community will keep it alive with new tracks and/or cars. And maybe I'll come back to make some DLC package or expansion in the future, but for now I want to start a new project I've had in mind for a long time.

If you want more frequent news or want to know about my next project, follow me on twitter—it's my only social media channel. Thanks again, and enjoy the game!

First of all, I want to say thank you, again, to everyone who's supported the game since launch. May 21st was the third anniversary of Slipstream, and I'm really happy to have all of you here. I hope you enjoy the news.

It took me a lot longer than expected, as expected, but the 1.2 version is now playable. It's not complete (more on that later), but it's good enogh to advance to the next phase of testing, and you're all invited to try. It is currently in an optional beta branch, and only windows builds are available, but I'll eventually add builds for other platforms. (Also, let me know if you can run it with Proton, it didn't work on my computer but maybe it will for some of you.)

So... what's new? First, let's get the negatives out of the way:

• Only 3 game modes are available: Grand Tour, Cannonball and Single Race.
  
• No achievements, the secret tracks are unlocked by default but the whole progression system is disabled for now. Also no leaderboards.
  
• No post-race information screens, game goes straight from gameplay back to the main menu when the race ends.
  
• No tutorial.
  
• Some of the settings, like difficulty and traffic density in cannonball mode, have no effect.
  
• The game is completely unbalanced in terms of difficulty, some races are too easy, some are impossible. I will try to fix this soon.
  
• In general, remember, this is BETA software, it's not finished. There are bugs, some things don't work yet, some parts of the audio and UI are missing, don't judge it based on polish right now. I guarantee it will have at least the same level of polish as the original.

Now, the fun part:

• New mechanic: Time rewind. Hold SPACE (Y on gamepad) to rewind up to 5 seconds. There is currently no limit to this mechanic, other than the rewind time resetting after use, and this will probably be changed eventually. Also expect bugs, since this is a new mechanic, and a complex one from the programming side.
  
• New AI. The AI cars have been completely changed in all their behavior. They are now almost exactly equivalent to a player car, having access to the same mechanics, like the slipstream, and crashing/spinning like players. Also, all of the rubberbanding has been removed, the AI cars are exactly equal to the ones available for the players. The AI is still not 100% finished, so it will do some funny stuff now and then. The collision system has also been greatly improved and the physics of the game feel better now, at least in my opinion.
  
• New art for all the rivals, thanks to my talented friend Victor Leão, and new dialogue for most of them. I took the liberty of writing new lines for the kickstarter backer characters. If you are a backer and want to change something on your character, email me.
  
• Modding. The skeleton of the modding system is already implemented, but there is no documentation and no tools yet. If you want to poke around, take a look inside the assets/content/ folder. I will elaborate on this in the future, like making tools available and adding steamworks support.
  
• Some technical changes. You now Alt+Enter to switch fullscreen on/off, the camera tilts, and the settings menu was changed in some ways (no more 'apply graphics settings').

I don't expect it to take much longer for the final release, but I wanted to do a beta period first so I can take your suggestions and gather more data to help me balance the game. I hope you enjoy the new version. Thanks for your patience and see you soon!