1.
Sans. I feel conflicted about his inclusion in some way. On the one hand, he seems like he'd be way too lazy to really care about a racing tournament. On the other hand, his tricycle would be comically overpowered and the idea of Sans on a tricycle being a super-heavyweight who has the highest top speed in the game as well as the ability to send you flying with a single nudge is utterly hilarious. An
UNDERTALE rep is pretty much inevitable, but I don't mind.
2.
Peppino. Hey, even if
Pizza Tower is shockingly popular, I think the opportunity to represent newer games overall here is one that we can't miss out on.
3.
Annalynn. funneh
4.
Shovel Knight. it's ****ing shovel knight what do you expect
1.
Mt. Celeste. There's a lot of potential for this to be a beautiful track, and adding the idea of it being a combination air-land track overall, it feels like it'd be a frantic but fun inclusion to the roster of racetracks we have to deal with here.
2.
Pridemore Keep. Honestly, the idea of seeing this in 3D is enough to sell me on this one, but I think it'd be a lot of fun as a Bowser's Castle standin whilst still having plenty of unique vibes to make it feel fresh and fun.
3.
Snowdin. Hey, this one would be awesome too! Snowdin is a hella iconic location from
UNDERTALE, and it honestly feels pretty fitting to include here in some way or another. Just imagining all of the cameos seems so fun already!
4.
Gnome Forest. heh. lario
Job #03:
Given the tendency of a lot of indie games to famously have self-referential plots and a consistent handshake and slap to the face of the fourth wall, I think it'd be funny if the plotline is centred less around a Subspace-like "oh **** everyone's fighting" plot, and more around a plot that is consciously aware of three things: first, that it's an indie game, second, that it's a kart racer, and third, that it's a crossover. With this in mind, my suggestion for the first main villain is:
Character Name: The Player
Character Origin: Actually quite a lot of places, but we could include Undertale, Deltarune, OneShot, YIIK, technically Minecraft, Doki Doki Literature Club, OFF, LISA: The Painful, a lot of RPGMaker games, and a number of others besides.
It's a create-a-character! Wait, what?
Casting the player's own character as the
villain would be a lot of fun for a story like this, especially if we take it that The Player is actually only a simulation of what the game thinks you are. When you start up the game, it starts with a pretty typical "insert the hero's name" prompt, and appears more akin to a 16-bit RPG. Then, once you're done, The Player decides "no, screw this, I want to race in karts" and creates the Indie 500 as a result. The Player themselves apparently has the ability to manipulate the game in any way they see fit, allowing them to "manifest" various different things into the game, and after taking a look around the Internet, they've decided to pull a wide variety of locations and characters from "some games not made by BigCorp or something". Indie games!
As for the character's appearance, I'd say we should lean fully into the RPG-inspired aesthetic by having their character model literally be a 16-bit sprite, not dissimilar to how Donkey Kong Jr. was added into
Mario Kart Tour, with a similar appearance to sprites in
EarthBound. Their animations would differ slightly depending on which "class" you set them as - either a Hero, a Warrior, a Mage, a Psychic, or a Literal Child - but their stats remain the same regardless.
However, The Player has decided that they require an OMINOUS SIDEKICK. And who might that be?
Character Name: 2048
Character Origin: 2048
Inspired by the legends of "Marty the Stone" on a castle-themed race course in some old game they played when they were younger, The Player decided they'd need an assistant - and thus decided to download one from the Play Store in the form of 2048. An ominous block with the apparent ability to move around and increase or decrease its value by either doubling or halving itself into blocks, 2048 is unique in that they're a puzzle rep - not often seen in indie crossovers, given the natural focus on platformers and RPGs. Nonetheless, 2048 seems like they'd be an out of the box inclusion who, despite their ominous nature, honestly isn't so evil - they just think The Player is pretty neat. Also, the idea of having a literal cube be playable is pretty funny.
Job #04:
Stage Name: The Aquarium
Stage Origin: Octodad: Dadliest Catch (2014)
There's a ton of ways we could take this, but I can't help but imagine this would be a chaotic experience overall. The artstyle and general feel should be the same - however, the infamous chaos of
Octodad makes sense to bring in here. You'd drive around the aquarium and see a lot of unique setpieces - but after the first lap, one of the tanks shatters and floods the entire place, turning it into a primarily hovercraft-focused track. Hey, you could even include some other indie cameos here - Treasure Knight searching for some gold, or Orcane having a swim, feels like it'd be fresh.