Runman: Race Around The World – PC Review

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Runman: Race Around The World, the 2009 brain-child of Tom Sennett (Deepak Fights Robots) and Maddy Thorson (Towerfall, Celeste), was released on Steam for the first time on October 1st. The 15th-anniversary release sees the addition of full gamepad support, optimised audio and visuals and Steam achievements.

You Can’t Out-Runman Your Problems… Or Can You?

A phrase associated with a certain blue hedgehog claims you’ve “gotta go fast”. But is pure speed always the answer for Runman? Let’s find out.

Gameplay

Runman: Race Around The World is a speed-focused, side-scrolling, 2D platformer. The goal is to get through each level as fast as possible. Achieving this, however, is not so simple. Easy to pick up and difficult to master sums up the experience perfectly.

A level in Runman: Race Around The World containing sleeping enemies that will wake up and explode if Runman uses his zoom ability when passing them.
Don’t Zoom past these guys, lest you be punished.

Each of the 36 levels has numerous obstacles for Runman to navigate and several routes available to attempt. To help get times as low as possible, Runman can zoom and wall-jump. Knowing when to use these abilities, and perfecting the timing of them, will form a majority of your strategizing. Sometimes zooming will be required to break through some blocks or to defeat enemies in your path. Other times, that same zoom may cause you to overshoot a jump, head back in the wrong direction, or wake a sleeping enemy that then explodes. There’s a careful balance to strike and a lot of planning and memorisation needed to play optimally.

It’s worth noting that your character cannot die, because dying isn’t fun. Instead, bottomless pits and enemies simply cause delays in completing the level quickly.

Rewards Around The World

In terms of rewards and incentives for getting better, each level has 3 medals on offer. A bronze, a silver, and a gold. I found that obtaining these can be pretty unforgiving, at least in my experience, though admittedly I don’t think I’m very good at the game. I have at least managed to amass a grand total of 17/108 medals, most of which came from the first 2 worlds.

An end of level screen in Runman: Race Around The World showing the final score for the level and the medal earned, in this case, a bronze medal for a score of 538 points in 20.73 seconds.
It’s only bronze, but it’s a start!

At 5, 10, 15, and 20 medals earned, you’ll unlock a new character to play with, each with a different skill. For instance, at 10 medals you get Ogmo who can double jump. These different characters offer the potential of different routes and solutions in the levels, though you may not be able to complete every level with every character. Experimentation is the key to finding the perfect match for each challenge.

A Couple Of Stumbles

I would have liked to have seen target thresholds for each medal and a history of my scores. Without those, it’s a little difficult to know how far I am from achieving the next milestone. There is the option to save a ghost from each level, so you can compare routes and see if you’re performing better or worse vs your saved ghost. You do have to exit to the map to load a level with a ghost rather than just restarting it though, which felt a little disjointed.

I did encounter a couple of bugs while playing. These came in the form of getting stuck in level objects, such as corners. You can quickly restart a level with a button press if this happens so it’s not the end of the world. As each level is only about 20-40 seconds long in most cases, there’s not much progress to lose so it didn’t cause me too much bother.

Mapping The Race

The zone map for Bliss Valley in Runman: Race Around The World. The player has earned 4 medals. This is shown in the total in the corner being 4 out of 18 and with a silver spot for level 1 and bronze spots for levels 2 and 6.
Lots of medals still to earn here.

A part of the design for Runman: Race Around The World that I really appreciated for its quick information delivery were the zone maps. Inspired somewhat by Mario games’ world maps, each location is connected by a path and is denoted by a small circle. These circles change colour based on what medal you’ve earned on that level. This shows you at a glance where you can go next to earn more rewards. There’s also a total shown for that zone, and you can enter the character selection menu from here too. It’s a nice, concise design that makes navigation a breeze.

Increasing The Challenge

The level design is handled in a way that gradually increases the difficulty as you progress through the 6 different zones. You’re introduced to different enemies and obstacles somewhat in isolation so you can learn the best approach for each until everything is thrown into the mixing pot to work your brain.

A Runman: Race Around The World level with several tight turns and terrain obstacles meaning moving too fast is likely going to lead to hitting a wall and stopping entirely.
Sometimes slowing down can be beneficial.

Each zone consists of 5 regular runs followed by a final level with a boss chasing you down. I really enjoyed the final level of the game which introduced a completely different concept which I hadn’t expected. Look forward to that one!

Graphics & Audio

The visual presentation of Runman: Race Around The World harkens back to those of early Flash games. The developers refer to it as “MS Paint”-inspired and it’s easy to see why. If you’re old enough to have had a Windows 95 PC growing up then you will almost certainly have created similar-looking art in Paint in between trying to figure out how to play Minesweeper and Hearts. Even though all the artwork is made of bold-blocky colours, the use of black outlines and a parallax background means it’s easy to distinguish platforms and interactive objects from decoration.

The soundtrack is the most unusual aspect of the game. A ‘phonograph-era jazz and blues’ vibe keeps your mood mellow whilst trying to wrap your head around the best route in a given level. Most similar games I’ve played have opted for a high-octane soundtrack to keep the blood pressure high and the intensity maxed. I appreciated this switch-up to give a more relaxing feel. It ties in well with the design philosophy of Runman: Race Around The World being fun-first.

Longevity

How many hours you pour into Runman: Race Around The World is going to depend on a combination of your patience, your will to succeed and your skill. All the levels can be completed in under 2 hours, but that’s probably going to only get you a handful of the available medals. The remainder of the time spent is going to be perfecting your control of the characters and memorising the levels. I wouldn’t like to guess how long it would take me to 100% this game. Celeste took me upwards of 80 hours and I thought I was pretty decent at that. I suck at Runman, so I could easily see me hitting triple digits.

Runman using his zoom ability to break through wall obstacles.
Brick walls are no match for Runman!

Final Thoughts

I think I’m getting old and my reactions and problem-solving skills are in decline. Either that or I need to be able to dedicate some more time to practising because I struggled to get medals on most of the levels. If you are more spritely than me though, and you enjoyed games like Super Meat Boy, Splasher, or SpeedRunners, then this might be the next challenge waiting for you to overcome.

Runman: Race Around The World receives a Thumb Culture Silver Award.

 

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

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