Quick Review: SpeedRunners

Gotta go f-*gets punched for making the obvious joke*

Ah yes, this empty metro station will be
perfect for our speed-measuring contest.

A game programmed by DoubleDutch Games, produced by tinyBuild, and released on April 19th, 2016, SpeedRunners is at its core a multiplayer game in which four players race around a level in an attempt to outspeed each other. You run around with WASD, jump with Z, use a grappling hook with X, and use items collected along the way with C to further be a nuisance to your opponents. Players can double jump, wall jump, or even activate switches to change the layout of a level. Quick reflexes and quick thinking will help!

The smaller the screen gets, the harder it gets
to remain in the race!

How does a match typically go? Well, when the game starts, the camera follows the player in first place. When a player is knocked out of the game by lagging behind and getting out of the camera’s field of view, the remaining three have to keep racing, but the screen will start shrinking, effectively reducing the margin for error and making it easier to be knocked out, until one remains. The round’s winner gets a point, after which all four (or less, if any players disconnected) reappear close to where the last round ended, and resume running. The winner of the match is the players who wins three rounds.

There’s a pretty good selection of playable avatars and levels to run around in. Of note, at first you only have access to quick, custom or local matches in multiplayer – ranked matches are unlocked after you’ve earned 2700 EXP by playing in other modes, so that you go into PVP with some experience and knowledge of how this game works.

There ae so many superheroes here that they
have to race to determine who can get to crime
scenes the fastest to stop criminals!

A game of speed on a boat?
I doubt that's a smart idea, but let's do it anyway.

Single-player fans, don’t despair! A Story Mode is made available for you, if PVP sounds too scary at first! It’s a perfect opportunity to learn the basics and try some stuff without pressure. A tutorial is also made available the first time you boot up the game. You unlock new characters, levels and weapons by earning EXP (which can also be done in the Story Mode). You can even follow a little comic book plot in which various characters try to outrun the main character, SpeedRunner. There’s definitely something bigger going on…

Blocks of ice make you go faster...
Freeze rays, one weapon you can pick up
during a game, are your worst nightmare.

As for my own experience? I feel that the game is a lot of fun and a great idea to boot. A racing platformer? Sign me up! The Story Mode is a pretty good place to start. I made the mistake of going into Quick Matches early on and found myself obliterated at every round – a combination of not knowing the game nor the layout of the levels. Of course I wasn’t going to do well in PVP! It does feel like a game you can learn very quickly, but need a while to actually master. Problem is, the game’s been out for almost 5 years now, so if you jump into it right now, you’ll likely meet a lot of players who already know the game and, in some cases, excel at it.

Watch out for those spikes!

So yeah – a very cool title with a sweet concept, a cool art style, awesome music, and a lot of options in terms of gameplay. Even if it’s all about competition with other people, there’s something that still feels relaxed, relaxing here. No animosity, it really feels like it’s just plain good fun. I wouldn’t be surprised if the feeling got very different once someone jumps into the competitive, ranked match scene… But outside of that, yeah, the whole thing radiates an aura of fun.

SpeedRunners is available on Steam for 14.99$.