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[Guert]

Runman: Race around the world
or: The Star That Did a lot of Speed

   Racing might just be the most visceral form of competition in mankind. Anyone who walks can run and the gifted in the fields of pedestrian speeding can reach a velocity close to what machines can. Of course, humans are puny racers compared to what the world has to offer. Cheetahs or hares can easily out-run any human. But if there’s one being in this world that can out-run them all, it’s without a shadow of a doubt, the shooting star.  Yes my friends, a star so speedy that it simple presence in a race means automatic defeat for all other contestants. The greatest of all speedsters; the champion that waves “hello” to light as he runs by it; Runman, the king of all racers.

   So is the premise of the freeware game Runman: Race around the world. When a racing contest is held to determine who is the fastest on the planet, all the best racers in the world gathered to participate in the event. However, when the small yellow star Runman showed up to compete, the rest of the participants simply laid down their arms and retreated, giving Runman a win by default. But what is a champion without competing? Who is king of all racers without running? And so, Runman ran off on a course that would take him to every corners of the world. This is where the player steps in and guides the shiny little speedster through many intriguing locations around the globe.

   Runman: Race around the world is the baby of creators Tom Sennett and Matt Thorson. They developed this 2D platformer for over 4 years and released for the price of “whatever you want to donate” on the PC platform. The game runs on most computers and the minimal requirements, unspecified by the creators, are fairly low. The machine I used to play the game is over six years old, has Windows XP and had no problems to run the game. You can find Runman: Race around the world at the following world wide web address, whatareyouwait.info, or by browsing on the creators’ respective websites.

Welcome to the world of Runman. Oh yeah!

First impression

   When pondering upon the best way to describe Runman: Race around the world, the first words that comes to my mind are “charming”, “simple” and “sadistic”. A weird cocktail, isn’t? Runman is an odd little game that has a good share of fun moments and at the same time, a good dose of unforgiving design. It would be unfair to call the game incredibly difficult but it shares many resemblances with the new wave of “hard games” that is now common on the independent and amateur game development scene. I did enjoy the game overall. It is quite entertaining and offers charm and simple fun. The redundancy of the experience, the high difficulty and the somewhat uneven controls, combined with the numerous bugs, ended up unhooking me from the game. The experience offers six different zones, each with about five levels and a boss stage. In each level, including the boss stages, the player can earn up to three medals for completing the challenges with a certain amount of points. The game also keeps track of your best runs using a “ghost system”, made popular by Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart series, so you can compete against yourself or the run of another player. The game also features un-lockable characters, each with their own specific mechanics. In other words, the game does offer a good share of content and replayability which helps to compensate for other issues. Runman: Race around the world is an entertaining little game that is worth the try. Now, let’s take a closer look at how the game's craft.


Game Experience

   When we look at the design philosophy that drove’s Runman: Race around the world‘s design, it is easy to deduce that the creators focused a lot on the element of speed. All the mechanics, scoring system and rewards gravitate around this sole theme. The game experience is simple. The player starts at the left end of the level and must reach the other end, to the right, as quickly as possible. The faster your character moves, the more

points you score. The game features a momentum gauge that fills up as the character moves. When passing through a checkpoint, the momentum gauge gives a bonus multiplier based on how much it is filled. This multiplier is then applied to the player’s score. When the player reaches the last checkpoint, the player is awarded a medal according to how much points he scored during his run, taking that he has enough points to earn one, of course. In common levels, the player cannot be defeated. If he falls into a hole or collides with an enemy, he can keep on going but looses all momentum and receives score penalties. In boss levels, the rules change a bit. Colliding with the boss means that the player must start his run all over again. The general control mechanics follow the same speed philosophy. When controlling Runman, the player can run, zoom, jump and bounce off walls in order to achieve great momentum. But don’t be mistaking “zoom” for zooming in; here it means to “move faster”.  The player can also dive and use level elements, such

Runman at the beach

as the glider or the mouth portals, to pass through checkpoints and finish the level. Speaking of these level elements, there are some dissonance between some elements and the central theme of the game. Many “power-ups” or interactive elements in levels slow down the player rather than making him go faster, breaking the tempo. The mouth portals, the glider and the hand swings are here to help the player in is quest for speed but slows him down drastically. In the end, even if using them has benefits, they feel like they are not helping the player to get faster to the finish line. But here’s the thing that’s important to understand when playing this game.

In this game, its not about speed of completion; its about speed of movement.

   This can be quite misleading to new players. Runman: Race around the world‘s goal is to acquire as much points as possible and, to do so, you must use your speed to keep moving but not necessarily toward the end of the level. The game’s main goal is not to complete a level but to earn medals within it. When a game’s theme is speed, its story revolves around racing and the game is timed when playing, it gives the impression that the main goal of the game is to complete the levels quickly, which is not the case here. The primary intent of the game, scoring and getting medals, is not well presented to the player while the secondary intent, quickly finishing the levels, gets a lot of spotlight. The creators could have dodged this issue by informing the player soon within the experience the importance of points within its economy. For instance, the player does not need any specific amounts of medals to finish the game but needs some to unlock characters. These characters are very important to the replayability value of the game since they all have different game styles associated to them. I feel it could have been interesting to tell the player right off the bat that the game offers the possibility to have different characters once enough medals are acquired. This information would help the player understand right away that scoring medals is not simply for bragging; it is also used to get more game content. From there, the player, alone, can understand how to use the scoring mechanics while playing the levels with that particular goal in mind instead of the secondary goal of racing against time.  The surprise of having a character join you once you beat the game would not be spoiled since the real surprise is not having a new character but having an enemy join you. Also, simple rules in the likes of “you can only play as Runman in a level that has not been completed yet” would not break the story behind the game. But then again, this is a potential solution; there are hundreds of possibilities.

   When it comes to level design, some levels feel well designed while others seem to lack fun and simplicity. In some levels, you can easily run at incredible speed and bounce off walls with great ease and enjoyment while other levels become tedious, somewhat boring and forgettable. The level design also seems to have a multi-path philosophy that works in certain levels but fails in others. In some levels there is true multi-path: the level can be completed using multiple strategies and styles of play. In other levels, the multi-patch design feels as if there is only one good path that must be used to succeed and the other paths lead to failure. In other words, some levels are linear and just toy with the player’s mind before hurting them in a sadistic way.  This of course can lead to frustration and frustration is seldom the player’s friend. The level design tries its best to offer originality and bring something new to the player’s table The levels do feature interesting elements, such as running on water, breaking though blocks and tornadoes, but unfortunately,  fail to truly prevent the redundancy of the experience. The various methods used by the levels are interesting but they are too spaced and happen a tad too late to prevent the initial monotony of play to settle in.

   For instance, lets take a look at the “awe” curve of the first three chapters. Taking from a point of view of a player that starts the game for the first time

   We can see from the curve that the game starts strongly. From the menu through the first zone, the player finds something new and interesting to find. The menu is cute and simple, the tutorial level is straight forward and you have a lot to do. The second level lets the  player play for the first time so the awe peaks. Then it starts fading away. It stays relatively stable but the glider level fails to top the awe from playing the basic mechanics. Then comes the boss level which is a novelty for the player at this point and is quite interesting. When the second zone starts, the awe is stable since there’s a whole new world to discover  but starts reducing when it feels and plays very similarly to the first zone. The “all bubbles” platforms in the fourth level of the second zone is just plain fun and hypes up the player but, once again, the glider level fails to impress and when the second

Runman gliding in the sky

boss stage starts, its basically the first boss so the awe drops. The third zone then has the tough task to hype it up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much time to realize that the third level plays just like the first and second but with an higher difficulty. The hand swings do bring something fun to the game but the lack of surprise and clustered design of the fifth level drops down the hype. When the third boss appears and it is the exactly the same idea than the two previous bosses, the awe drops completely. Afterwards, the game does manages to bring new cool mechanics, such as running on water (which is very fun), the hot soup (a nice twist), the vertical level (first level of the sixth zone) and pushing around the first boss are all events that makes the awe rise up a lot. Unfortunately, they occur way too late to save the game from suffering the “I already did that” syndrome. It would have been interesting to have special moments peppered

throughout the entire game instead of mostly living them toward the end. Overall, the level design is well crafted and follows the game intent closely but some levels seem to have more problems than others do. In general, the game experience is fun and entertaining but features some issues that can spoil the moment. One of the aspect of the game that is connected to the experience design is the difficulty, which also has its ups and down.

[Guert]

During the race, Runman finds himself swinging around in the jungle or chased by a giant hungry bird. Charming.

Difficulty

   Let me tell this right away. The game is difficult. No, it’s not the most difficult game I’ve ever played and it’s not as evil and sadistic as others. Still, the game is difficult. With all honesty, the game’s difficulty is a bit too spicy for my taste, I’m more of a sweet and sour type, but what truly bothers me with Runman: Race around the world is not its difficulty level; it is its difficulty curve. It feels to me that the game’s difficulty curve is uneven, particularly toward the last stages. For example, in most of the zones, I can easily go from the first level to the boss stage with relative ease. Sure, I don’t get all the medals but I can easily score a few bronzes along the way. However, when it comes to the boss stage, the difficulty skyrockets and becomes quite nasty. The boss levels feature many traps and precise timing that can be quite hard to pull. In normal stages, they wouldn’t be much of a trouble since the player would have the chance to give the challenges a second try. However, bosses can “kill” Runman, making the player start the level all over again. This turns a moderately difficult run into a highly difficult one. The fourth and fifth zone bosses in particular can be quite rough and there are zones in their levels that are just plain nasty. But that’s for finishing the levels and not collecting the medals. In general, the difficulty level of collecting medals is very high. Even in the tutorial, earning a gold medal is quite tricky. But as I mention, it is a difficult game and the most seasoned (or masochist) players will find a suitable challenge they can overcome. It should come to no surprise to anyone who does a quick background check on the game’s creators. Thorson’s past work consists mostly of games featuring a very high level of difficulty. Still, it doesn’t excuse the unbalancing of the difficulty curve in Runman: Race around the world.     

To my eyes, the unbalanced curve is not the only issue that affects the game’s difficulty. There’s also the topic of controls and control losses. As mentioned earlier, the game often challenges the player with tight and precise jumps and obstacles to overcome. However, the controls can sometime feel too sloppy to precisely react and dodge the challenges. In other cases, the player looses control of the character for a short while. This is does not refer to interactive elements in levels. This control loss seems to happen when the player makes a false move and Runman starts moving in an undesired direction and cannot be stopped. Sometimes, after a false move, Runman can get stuck between two obstacles that makes him bounce back and forth between them. Another example: if you hit a wall while zooming, Runman starts running in the opposite direction. When doing so, the player can press any arrows he wants to, Runman

The star in the moonlight: recipe for love.

won’t change direction until the zoom button is released. This takes a while to get used to since the controls have two inputs for the same action. When holding the zoom button, Runman does the same thing as if the player was holding an arrow key but faster. This control philosophy blurs the actions of “zooming” and “moving in a direction” together instead of separating them, making the game controls more difficult to handle. Taking back the control over the character becomes difficult. Controls in a fast-paced game are crucial but it is also extremely difficult to pull. In general, the controls in the game are good but those little irritation do not help the general experience and heightens the game’s difficulty in a bad way.

   The game’s economy follows the same high difficulty pattern than the rest of the game. It is difficult to score points but very easy to loose some. The choice of adding score penalties to the score system makes the whole economy rather unforgiving. Sometimes, only a split second of hesitation when jumping can change a gold medal into nothingness. Runman’s world is a harsh one indeed. 


Presentation

   When it comes to presentation, Runman: Race around the world has opted for a very distinctive approach. Not only does it bare a very unique and peculiar art style, the audio department also received an original treatment. The visuals are all hand-drawn, child-like, simple drawing that looks as if a youngster would have toyed around with the free graphic editor “MS Paint”. It bares the charm and innocence of a child’s doodle, well a technology-bathed child mind you, which gives the game the feel of a kid fantasy come true. However, the visuals are a bit too crude and simple to make the game feel truly professional. It’s a shame because the idea behind this art direction is interesting and has been used in the past with great results. The visuals are consistent throughout the entire game and there is little to none visual issues when it comes to the tiles used to create the platforms.  It is easy to know where the character can walk or not and discern whether the visual effect is part of the level or just decorative. The main character, as well as the rest of the cast, is adorable. The characters are simply designed and could easily fit in a cartoon show intended for children. Regarding the audio, the team went for a very stylish yet financially viable solution. The creators selected songs from the public domain, mostly jazz and the likes, in order to concoct a unique sounding soundtrack for their game. The result is quite convincing and pleasing to the ear. The sound effects, even quite rudimentary, fit well with the visuals. Overall, the creators did a good job when it comes to the presentation of the game. Although perhaps a bit too crude or elementary, the presentation still feels original. 

And then you warp through some guy's mouth in an ice castle or battle ninjas in a storm while being chased by a tornado.

Ergonomics and Engineering

   When we look at the game under the lenses of ergonomics and engineering, there a few scratches that can be easily spotted. First of all, the game lacks the proper confirmation when leaving the game or the in-game screen. It’s very important to confirm these two events since they can affect the player’s experience. You don’t want the player to loose a game progression or having to load the game once again. It is particularly true in this game since the default quitting button, ESC, can be easily pressed by mistake. Of course, one cannot prevent all mistakes from happening while the player is using the game but its best to prevent as many mistakes as possible. The game also keeps track of all settings selected by the player except the screen mode. It is rather annoying to always have to go in the options screen to set the mode to full-screen every time you want to play. Another ergonomically related option that would have been nice to have in the game would be the option of using a gamepad.  Since this title is action-oriented, some players, such as myself, may find it more suiting to use a gamepad rather than the keyboard. Speaking of control settings, ergonomically speaking, it would have been a good thing to display the current control scheme instead of forcing the player to enter once again the desired inputs.

   When it comes to engineering, unfortunately, the game has many bugs. Some are minor visual glitches, like the transition effect twitching once in a while; some are annoying bugs that do not alter the experience, like a file loading bug that pops an error message that can be ignored without any crashes when you load your game. Other bugs are critical and stop the player from playing the game properly. In certain levels where there are speed altering traps, like the purple slime or the hugging faces, if the player gets stuck too long in one, the controls become completely phased, reacting two or three seconds after inputting an action. The game becomes unplayable and the player has to leave the mission and reload it. On a good note, the game does not fatally crashes so the player can remain inside the game. Still, bugs are never a fun thing to experience and it is too bad that some scar the game.


Final thoughts

   I enjoyed Runman: Race around the world. I had a good time in the early levels, speeding through the stage, bouncing around, smashing through enemies and blocks. I also like the small touches, like speeding over water and swinging around in the jungle. However, the high difficulty, the spaced awe moments, the control issues and the bugs turned me off. The creators did a very good job and created a very entertaining game. I hope to see more of this duo in the future, as they will continue to perfect their art and skills.

[Inanimate]

Fantastic review! I applaud you, and your obvious talent. Can't wait to see further ones!

[Valter]

I think the greatest flaw with this game is that it doesn't emphasize the necessity of diving in the tutorial. Many of the flaws you mentioned in your review would have been remedied if the player were given a better idea of the greater importance of diving.

When I first played through the game, worlds three and four were hellish. I was falling into seemingly every pit and fire block the game had to offer! I got only one bronze medal through all of area three, and did only marginally better on area four. When I returned, however, I was usually reaching gold medal scores after only a few tries. nothing was as difficult or frustrating as it had been before. Looking back on how poorly I was doing on my first run, the obvious reason was a lack of understanding of the dive mechanic.

The main reason is that charging increases player speed noticeably, and allows for the ever present wall bouncing needed to complete each level. The user is actively encouraged to charge, and nearly all the levels can be completed without letting go of the charge button once (except to sneak by the sleepers). The catch is that charging cancels input on the left and right keys. Once you're charging, you can't change your speed or direction. As such, essentially, the only two keys that matter are the jump and dive buttons, both to dodge obstacles as you dash your way to completion.

As such, the dive button is equally important to the jump button, if not more so. It's consequently vexing that the game only introduces the dive mechanic on the fifth level. Even after it's introduced, the mechanic is used a single time in that level to dodge some fire bricks, and then is never addressed again until the third zone.

This results in a rather peculiar design flaw: the first two areas of the game are actually too simple for the rest of the game. At first, the philosophy applied to the first two areas seems sound: for the player to have the most fun, there needs to be an illusion that the player can perform great feats with relative simplicity, so "Deathtraps" are set up that the player can actually bypass with ease. For example, if a huge amount of fire blocks were to block the player's way, there would be an arc of clear space that perfectly fits the character's jump speed and height. The player would be excited when he makes his magnificent dodge, that actually consists of the press of a single button.

This design philosophy works! I see it in a lot of games. Unfortunately, I think it persists for slightly too long in Runman: Race Around the World. In a way, the player is spoiled. you expect, by world three, that platforms will be right there for you when you need to make a death-defying jump. This nearly ruined the experience for me, when I reached the third area. I had to stop charging completely in some levels just to jump carefully from platform to platform, as if I charged I would fling myself constantly into whatever pits/firetraps/sawblades/goo-monsters were nearby, as the jumps are just too short, or just too long, to charge-jump as I had been throughout all the other levels I had completed.

If diving were taught alongside jumping in the first few levels of the game, players would be more capable of executing shorter jumps and more complicated dodges by the time they reach the harder bits of the game. As it currently is, as Guert said, there's less of a difficulty curve in the middle, and more of a difficulty wall.

[Valter]

Gracious! That wasn't supposed to take so long to explain! 

[Guert]

Inanimate: Thanks a bunch
Valter: Interesting point1 Thanks for bringing that up Also, welcome to my world :D

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Er, I guess it was a good review, but...

You gave it no score, which is why I'm curious as to the somewhat formal ending to the review. It's like you're trying to give it a score without doing so. Come on, man up and make it a straight-out opinion or give an 'objective' score and get it over with.

A summary line may have been nice as well. Something to summarize your thoughts at the beginning. It's nice to talk about the history of the game, but it feels somewhat unnecessary to open with.

And the conclusion is somewhat conflicting. 'I love the game. These really horrible issues were really annoying and made me dislike the experience. It's very entertaining.' It just feels kinds of... odd. Like maybe if you said "Despite the issues, I found it a quite enjoyable game." and then finish with a reccomendation as to whether it should be played or not?

I'll admit though, I didn't read very much. I got half-way through the first post and then said "screw it this is too long". I haven't played the game yet either, but if your goal was to get people interested in the game and get them to play it, I don't know if you'd call this a success. I'd be worried too many people would just get bored and give up, completely ignoring the game.

[/harsh criticism]

[Guert]

Well, I must say that this doesn't fit in the standard review format because well, this is not a review. This is more like a critique where I speak to a developer, explaining what I see that, as a fellow developer, could be done to make his game better. To be honest, I don't care if people want or do not want to play the game after reading this. I'm explaining my opinion on the game. From there, people do whatever they want to do with it. My goal is not to give a thumb up or a thumb down so that the game survives or dies on the bloody sand of the coliseum; my goal is to speak of core topics of game design so that developers, of the game and others, find something interesting to read so we can all learn how to make better games, either by agreeing or disagreeing with the topics I brought up.

Also, I'm not a full time writer so I admit that the structure isn't perfect and there's always room for improvement. But before I sign off, I will point out that, like I said, I did enjoy the game but some issues turned me off. Some may pass over the issues I felt  and some players will even see those issues as a good thing (like the high difficulty).

So yeah, I hope this helps to clear the intention behind this

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Aye, I see what you mean now. Still, the wording is somewhat reviewish. Really a lot could be cut out, if you're not really focusing on trying to interest other people. Would probably make it more readable. Just focus more on the what and how it could be changed or why it should be, or shouldn't be, and cut out a lot of the introductory stuff which is really only important when trying to influence people who haven't played the game yet. I think. I dunno, I haven't played the game yet. 

[TOM SENNETT]

Thanks, Guert. It's awesome and extremely valuable to have someone going over our work with such a fine-toothed comb. The only major thing I have to note is that we have included full gamepad support. All you have to do is plug in a gamepad and go to "configure controls" in the options menu.

I find it interesting that you thought the game drags in the third zone. This is personally my favorite zone - one of my favorite "awe" moments is the end of 3-5 (if you do it right). But I don't exactly have a fresh perspective as a player, so I can see how a feeling of sameness could set in.

The bugs and such are an unfortunate occurrence that I like to blame on Game Maker, but either way we're going to resolve what we can. Many people play the game with no errors at all, so who knows.

I have lots of design counter-points I want to make, but I'm not sure it'd be constructive. I think I'll just take your ideas and keep 'em in my brain. The game says more about our "design philosophy" than I could in words anyway.

Thanks again, Guert. This is my favorite part:

The greatest of all speedsters; the champion that waves “hello” to light as he runs by it; Runman, the king of all racers.

[Inanimate]

I personally hate scores, and am so, so glad you didn't put one in.

[ChevyRay]

Aye, I see what you mean now. Still, the wording is somewhat reviewish. Really a lot could be cut out, if you're not really focusing on trying to interest other people. Would probably make it more readable. Just focus more on the what and how it could be changed or why it should be, or shouldn't be, and cut out a lot of the introductory stuff which is really only important when trying to influence people who haven't played the game yet. I think. I dunno, I haven't played the game yet. 

I really liked how Guert wrote it, either. I'd be honored to receive such a well-thought out write-up on one of my games, as a developer. Guert seems to have a really strong approach he takes in his critiques that I always find attractive and enjoyable to read through, where as gaming reviews are something I usually skip out on or ignore.

[Guert]

JackRabbit: Well, I need to find the right balance between fun reading and
serious stuff. Perhaps the intro was too long. We'll see when I'll make the next one.

Thanks, Guert. It's awesome and extremely valuable to have someone going over our work with such a fine-toothed comb. The only major thing I have to note is that we have included full gamepad support. All you have to do is plug in a gamepad and go to "configure controls" in the options menu.

Oh that's too bad because my gamepad is not recognized by the game at all. I tried it 2-3 times to make sure I couldn't play with it (it's a PS2 controller). I'll dig around my spare controllers to see if I have one that works.

I find it interesting that you thought the game drags in the third zone. This is personally my favorite zone - one of my favorite "awe" moments is the end of 3-5 (if you do it right). But I don't exactly have a fresh perspective as a player, so I can see how a feeling of sameness could set in.

Well, like I said, it's not that the third world doens't have its moment, it's that, I feel it doesn't break the feeling of sameness and, as you said "if you do it right" means that one can easily skip it. To me, the issue is not entirely on the thrid world's shoulders. In fact, if I would change something, it would be around 2-5, 2-6, 3-1 and 3-2. This is where the interest of the player drops heavily. Making somethign interesting there would help to keep the awe up and keep the player in a good state of mind. When it comes to interest of the player, its easy to keep, its easy to loose and very hard to take back. The best strategy, in my opinion, is making sure the player doens't loose awe too much so you don't need to pull out a huge bang to get it back.  Perhaps simply changing the second boss for something completly different and using a new mechanic would reverse the steam and rise the awe enough so that the third world can be enjoyed at its fullest

I have lots of design counter-points I want to make, but I'm not sure it'd be constructive. I think I'll just take your ideas and keep 'em in my brain. The game says more about our "design philosophy" than I could in words anyway.

My opinions are my opinions and you can do as you wish with them. Agree or disagree, it doesn't really matters. What is important to me is that you can select the things you want to change and keep the things you like. I learned things when I wrote this and I hope you learn something from reading it. Perhaps not precisely what I wrote but maybe something else. Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling so I'll stop.

Oh and thanks for reading everyone

[Matt Thorson]

Copy and paste what Tom said into the top of this post, because I'm thinking exactly the same stuff.

Thanks for the thoughtful critique! Even if I don't agree with every point you made, I feel like only good things can come from this.

[Renton]

Great grind again, Guert.