Astronoid

Interestingly enough, a non gamer friend is my first source for new interesting games.
After warsow, reviewed here, I tried astronoid.
First, the web site. I haden't seen a webpage resizing itself since... the new century.
After this first surprise of the pre-friendly era of the world wide web, the site opens a new non resizable windows. Argl.
This is an interface, not really a web page not really a game browser, you can create an account and download the game. A bit overdesigned, compared to this.

Download is 80Mo, close borwser, install, start game.
Loading time average, start race.
Throttle up... throttle up... is this my max speed ? Give me my pod racer back !
This is sooo slow.
The principle of the game is: RPG. It means that when starting you have a crapy spaceship, you must run races and earn "fame points" to win new ships and new races. If you don't fall asleep during the first lap, drop your mouse, break your foot and uninstall this slowness of a game.
I was it this state of wind when murki113 started to talk to me using the internal chat stuff.
- murki113: Press backspace to chat
me (thinking): I do not chat with strangers, where the hell is the throotle up ?!
- murki113: Backspace is the key just up the return key
me (thinking): And which is the throotle key ?
- kyrlian: Ok, ok... why is it I'm so slow ?
murki113 explains me this RPG racing concept.

Well, you can like the RPG concept or not, but it was quite a good surprise to have a co-racer explain me the concept of the game, here to earn points and how, the use of antigravity and special keys. If he was just friendly, good wolf to him, if he was a sort of moderator, good idea from the team.

Did I mention Astronoid was in beta test, and therefore free, and will be based on a pay per month business plan ?
The monthly (or 6 monthly if I remember well the discussion I read) fee is not defined yet.

Oh, the website content is in french, but the interface and the game are in english.

Have a look at it, I don't think I'll make it to the end of the beta.