SpeedRunners is a multiplayer side-scrolling racing game developed by DoubleDutch Games and published by tinyBuild. Originally a free web browser game titled SpeedRunner and later an Xbox 360 game by the name SpeedRunner HD on Xbox Live Arcade, SpeedRunners was released on Steam on 26 August 2013 into Steam Early Access, and as a full game on 19 April 2016. SpeedRunners was released on Xbox One in June 2017 as a Games with Gold title.
Battle against the mad bomber and his diabolical machine, avoid spikes and obstacles, collect pickups and unlock bonus levels in this gorgeous game!
A Nintendo Switch version will be released at a later date. It was recognized as an eSport by the Electronic Sports League in July 2015. However, due to decreasing activity the SpeedRunners section was ended on 28 August 2016 when the final community cup was held.GameplaySpeedRunners is played as a fast-paced side-scroller. Players compete with each other to outrun their opponents using grappling hooks, power-ups and interactive environments. The screen moves with whatever player is currently in the lead. Falling behind far enough off the screen results in players dying to the players who still remain on-screen. As the player progresses they earn experience based on their performance.
Getting enough experience points causes the player to level up which unlocks new power-ups, levels, characters, and skins.ReceptionKotaku's Alex Jones termed SpeedRunners as 'competitive multiplayer Mario that Nintendo should've made'. PC Gamer's Emanuel Maiberg said it to be a 'fully realized idea', with the exception of 'occasional bug and some rough art assets'. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Ben Barrett praised the game's simplicity.SpeedRunners won the Gamer's Voice Award in the 2015 SXSW Gaming Award, the 2014 Best Multiplayer Game Award by Indie DB, and was nominated for Best PC/Console Game at the 2012 Dutch Game Awards. Video Review and Screenshots.
UPDATE-We'd like to thank you all for participating in this very intersting discussion! It's really great to see all your opinions on this. For now, our plan is not to make the game free to play. We will however be adding DLC character packs to the game in the near future, based on well-known letsplayers. These new characters will be purely cosmetic and part of the revenue will be donated to cancer research.-Some time ago we decided that the final release of SpeedRunners should be free to play.With this thread I would like to get as much feedback as possible on our (rough) plan.
Why switch to free to play?Motivation revolves around keeping the game's longtail in mind. If a lot of people try the game for free during local game sessions - that's fantastic, and after they've had a great time, they'd have the option to buy characters to play online with.Putting it simply, we want the game's community to keep on growing. This feels like a great way to do so.All Early Access buyers would keep current characters in the game and retain all current functionality.What does everyone think? While I'm not too much of a fan of the 'paying for more characters' idea, here's a way I think it could work:You have a 'base' pack, which is normally $10, and has the first five characters and the online play. However, all other character packs would cost at most half that, since you're not getting the added bonus of the online to go with them, just the cosmetic skins.To sweeten the deal a bit, what about giving each character their own distinct 'trail' that they leave behind when they boost?
For example, the Comrade could have little floating stars in his, while Hothead could leave a BTTF-esque fire trail(still purely cosmetic, of course).Also, one more idea: How about, when the game releases, giving Early Access players Roulette as a playable character as a way of saying 'thanks for backing us early!' Edit: Thanks, Steam, for posting that six times.
Definitely what I meant to do. When I bought this game I had no idea would I like this type of game or not, just saw few gameplay videos on youtube.
Of course afterwards it turned out to be great but still this free to play model for local/bot games will be fine for people who are curious about the game but can't/don't want to spend on it before actually playing. Then I can also get more people atleast to try it since there is nothing to lose from it.Is this also suggesting that we get more characters which we can buy if this current 5 character set would be considered as kind of 'base set' when starting to play online? Since this is a really enjoyable game atleast for me so I wouldn't mind having other means to support your work while getting little extra content.Also upvote for Early Acces players getting extra character for free (Roulette?) after official release but still available to others from store.
Well, as it stands now, i think that broadening the player base would be good for the game, and thus, for the players. The idea of making the offline version F2P is actually quite a clever one: there will be almost no one that wants to play the game only locallyHowever, you have a few (or a lot) of ways to monetize your game, and i'll name a few ones and say my opinions on them:1) Players would have to pay one time to get access to online multiplayer forever. This seems, for now, a good option to monetize this game, you can't have unrestricted online multiplayer for free or else people simply would not buy the game, and that monetization would raise it's popularity (and raise it considerably, i hope). This could be paired with selling a few cosmetic items like special trails, other characters, other character colors/skins, shiny winged running shoes, or every other purely cosmetic item. (AKA TF2's hats)2) Players would get acess to multiplayer for free but would only be able to play 1 or 2 maps (alley is perfect for this, since it doesn't have the 'cool stuff' the other levels have: rocket lauchers, lasers, spikes, and is generally the easiest map and the most noob friendly one).
They would have to pay one time to get access to all multiplayer levels, workshop items and the level editor features.I don't know how you would manage the matchmaking for this though, since i don't know if the number of free players would be enough to make a queue dedicated to free players or if you guys can come up with any other cool idea for this to work without harming the players who paid. Could also be paired with cosmetic items for sale. If the matchmaking system issue with this system could be solved somehow, i think that it would be the perfect monetization for this game.Could also be paired with a form of 'level viewer', which lets you choose a level and see it running (lasers spinning, doors opening/closing), pan the camera around, but not actually play the level, to give the players a taste of what they can get. I don't know the viability of this feature, since probably there are a lot of hard-coded stuff that would make it difficult/impossible to do without rewriting a lot of code.If you guys come up with a magical solution for the matchmaking system, i think that it would be the perfect monetization plan for this game.3) Freemium.
That is definetly not the way to go right now, since it would probably make no money at all, but if the game grows into a really large one (and i think it has the potential to do it), i think you should consider making the game freemium in some way.Obs.: I hope you guys agree that selling items that gives any advantage to players is not a good thing to do, since it would make the game pay to win.Obs 2.: Some exclusive cosmetic stuff for the beta buyers would make all of us happy too (:I hope that gives you guys some ideas/insights on how to make the game even better. Congratulations to the dev team for making this awesome game. Making the offline free is called a demo I personally don’t like F2P and I would suggest creating a demo and having free to play weekends before launching a F2P model. A good free weekend might cancel the need for a F2P model.If you go down the F2P route I would suggest making the multiplayer be free and limited to 2-4 character models.
People love buying new models, skins, weapon cosmetics, etc.More importantly this game needs more reasons to encourage multiplayer before launching down a pay to own or F2P model.1) Multiplayer only achievements that would force achievement ♥♥♥♥♥s to play online2) A reward/unlock system (i.e. Get a gold/fancy suit for a character after X amount of wins with that character)And +1 for early access character. I agree pretty much with what Oh Noes said.
What you described sounds more like a demo than a free to play model from today's standards. If you release it this way and call it a f2p you might get a bad response from the possible players you want to attract because it's not the way other fp2 games are designed.
Online mode should be available for free but with a very limited set of not so cool skins.Think it this way: people want the possibility to be unique because they all have access to the same limited generic free content. They will start an online game and see other people with cool skins and they will want to look as cool as others. They will pay to be different from others.An other great thing to do is create rarity with skins that looks better but have higher values and that shows how cool you are.So having only 2 or 3 skins in the free part and having a huge selection of paid custom skins would work better IMO if you want to go the f2p way. 'For example the current 5 characters would be the first pack that you'd pay the equivalent of what we charge for SpeedRunners now ($10).'
I dont like the 'buy characters play online' Aspect of it, but if you're going to have a free to play option you might aswell have a demo or have free to play on weekends or something on specific days.' As of right now the idea is to keep all characters purely cosmetic.' If you're going to have cosmetic's or whatnot you might aswell have them unlockables instead of buying them. I also dont agree with the characters, if you're going to have them as you said purely cosmetic you might aswell have all of them unlocked and have character skins you can unlock. Making the game free to try out with your friends is actually a pretty good idea. But making a demo for the game might work better.
In my opinion, being able to acces all the game has to offer for a one-time-pay sounds better than online character packs, which means you pay 10$ for online play and still don't have all the content. That may become a big annoyance to some. I think that if you make the local mode free and ask 10$ for FULL online play + the level editor, a lot of people who enjoy speedrunners will insta-buy the full version anyway.
Considering the main draw (for many players) will be the online community I view your free-to-play as more of a demo.With that in mind, I worry you may shoot yourself in the foot a little. I have no doubt your AI will impove before release, but they will always lack that human aspect.
That organic failure that twists a game into something amazing. Money is really only the second commodity your fighting for, time is what you need to convince people to spend.By purchasing the game (even for discounted prices) you have a much greater chance of people actually playing the game, the lower the barrier of entry the greater the drop off in the first hour or match of play. Awesomenauts is a great example, more players have been 'humiliated' (killed) by a creep than have won a match (33%) which points to a notoriously low time in game. These numbers have shot lower when they became only $1 on humble.Going free to play runs the danger of people turning off the game before they give it a real chance.Free to play might have more money opportunities, I don't have the research, and I really do hope it does work out for you, because community size-wise, I don't believe it'll have the effect you're looking for.If you're looking for community expansion and player retention, which both tackle the same issue, I recommend dual packs.
Add a second copy to the $10 price and to every character bundle. This game plays like mario kart and super smash brothers which means it plays much better with a friend you can laugh at than a stranger who calls you a hacker or noob.The second focus should be a positive community.
You're going to have a lot of negaitivity around 3-0 losses and amazing item use, thus is the price of a competitive game. I would recommend removing the taunt from non-custom games. You don't want a -50 drop to be accompanied by some guy laughing at you.If possible gain voice support.
Many lucky grapples and perfect missiles sting less when the user says, 'I'm just as suprised that worked.' There are many shots I've made that have worked 100x better than expected.Definitely hope the best for you guys and if there's any other thoughts I can add please let me know! Doesn't make sense to me to make the game f2p and then lock the game mode it revolves around, the online multiplayer. Would this be the first 'pay 2 play' f2p? I get it, you get to play the single player, but this game is all about the multiplayer. Why not just put a demo out, f2p weekend promo, etc?and i'm not too thrilled of the idea of having to pay for future characters that i've been reading about on twitter, as that is what it sounds like it's headed for. I personally hate f2p games.
I'd rather pay an upfront price than be nickle and dimed for every cosmetic item/character/weapons/etc that ends up costing 5x the original cost of the game if you want to get all the content. Jewel mania level.