SpeedRunners Review (Trent Booty)
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speedrunners is a side-scrolling racing game developed by doubledutch games and published by tinybuild. originally a free web browser game, it first came to the xbox live arcade, but a official early access steam release came in august 2013, while full release came in april 2016. it later came to xbox one in 2017 and a nintendo switch port came in 2020. tinybuild is a american publisher based in washington state. they have a really interesting history as they've primarily been a publisher after reported burnout from developing a single game. they eventually hit it big (by indie publisher standards especially) with speedrunners and that success led to more developers pitching their games to tinybuild, which little by little forced them to focus solely on publishing after a while. they also started getting funding from companies/investors, with a "undisclosed investor" funding fifteen million dollars in february 2019. they've since expanded to have two separate publishing subsidiaries both founded in november 2021 and ten different development studios that they've founded/acquired starting in early 2020.
kotaku said in their review of the game that it's essentially 'competitive multiplayer 2D mario' which is really the best way to put it. the game is played in rounds, you win rounds by being the last player standing, as players get eliminated by falling behind far enough off screen. eventually, the screen gets smaller, causing eliminations to happen quicker. you must win three rounds to win the match altogether. there's unique characters, each with four different skins, and a good variety of power ups, levels/maps, and skins that all are unlockable through gameplay. while most skins in the game are purely cosmetic, there is one mystery skin that hinders the players ability to play by giving them disadvantages in power ups and speed debuffs.
the art design and 'campaign' (if you can even call it that) both leave a lot to be desired, but the gameplay, audio design, and basically everything else are satisfactory and ultimately make speedrunners worth a purchase, although definitely wait for a sale. i also recommend looking into the large catalogue of games published by tinybuild on steam as well if you have the money to spend and are looking for unique games that aren't higher budget expensive AAA titles.