As we enter the home stretch of time before Sonic Frontiers makes it’s full release, I find myself still hungry for real examples of video game running speed.
While there are a number of free-running and parkour flavoured offerings out there, none have really scratched the itch in the way that I desperately hunger for. Whacky offerings like Clustertruck sort approach what I envision, where speed and control are measured in equal parts – but the missing element is the hang time. Achieving a huge amount of speed and feeling the world float past as you go beyond momentum and into another state entirely is what I crave – the kind of speed where everything else kind of feels like it slows down.
This is a small part of why I am a fan of certain Sonic titles. Every now and then Sonic Team manage to hand me an experience where those crucial factors all align and I can blast through a level and feel like I am some kind of nimble god. Unfortunately it’s incredibly hard to replicate, and I find myself going back to the same old wells and trying to recapture the feeling that I had previously. There doesn’t seem to be a resource that promises that high every time.
Then I managed to lay my eyes on Haste: Broken Worlds.
Ancient bridge with rolly rocks pic.twitter.com/sadr0M0tdJ
— wilhelm nylund (@wilnyl) September 5, 2022
The tweet above is what floored me. It randomly appeared in my feed, and I watched it loop at least half a dozen times before I strapped in to do some furious Googling.
Haste is currently in development at Landfall Games, who strangely enough are the same crew responsible for my current almost-but-not-quite free running option: Clustertruck. Awesome.
A clean aesthetic, amazing speed and some brilliant hang time have me positively salivating. Multiplayer is mentioned – and while that may not be my first desire, I am open to see how they interpret. Maybe a speed running royale? Could that be the latest genre breaker to get copied by Fortnite?
While there is still a lot of development left in the title, I can say it’s exciting even just looking at the development trailer – and all that did was showcase the prototype:
While the discussion around Haste is only starting, I am definitely pulling up a chair to see how this plays out. Landfall has delivered a great range of charming games that focus on delivering exactly what they were concepted to do – so if they want to make a free running multiplayer game that deals with super speed, I have every confidence they can deliver exactly that.
If you are keen to strap on your running shoes, you can absolutely sign up for a chance to play the alpha at the adorably titled website: https://runfastgame.com/
Are you a sucker for speed? Let us know in the comments, or on our social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
