Race the Sun is a familiar game, an endless runner turned to minimalism.
- Ben R.
Player of Games
P.S.
Extra:
Maybe developer Flippfly knew the endlessness of the standard smartphone runner was futile, one dimensional, and sought to comment on that with their own game. They've taken the formula, running, picking up items, and avoiding obstacles combined with colorful environments and sharp sound effects, and stripped it to the bones. In Race the Sun, you're the pilot of a grey solar-powered ship, space-worthy, but skimming the ground. The sun is setting, and you need to go. There are only a handful of collectibles spread sparsely throughout the zones. And, an ending can be achieved without crashing, but it is almost an equal failure. Fly forward constantly avoiding obstacles is the game, of course, but you've got free range to lean far to the right or left as you'd like, or can without crashing, and the game will generate new obstacles. The obstacles take on a pseudo-random generation, in which entire clusters of obstacles seem to spawn as a group instead of single blocks. Grouping together obstacles splits the zones into more coherent sections and avoids the design mess of an actual near-random.
The items are very, very few. The basic three are blue, green, and yellow. They stand out because the map is grey. The blue item ups the score multiplier, the green grants one jump, and the yellow one reverses the sun's descent oh so minimally. There are others, a purple lifesaver that grants a life. When the sun sets, your solar-powered ship stalls. You could also run out of juice by flying in the shadows for too long. Or, you could crash, blow up on the side of a mountain. Either way, death or not, the sunset is inevitable. It always will be, and you might need some good practice before you land in the trench run of the fourth zone or before you find a warp portal to an alternate zone, but the sun will always be there to set, to disappoint, to end what it started. Getting further each time can feel like an accomplishment, and a game like this that gets a physical release, I think, is worth a try. It's futile, as addictive as anything else in the genre, but with a purpose in dialing into the lack of ending.
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| An extra mode, a peaceful way of life |
The items are very, very few. The basic three are blue, green, and yellow. They stand out because the map is grey. The blue item ups the score multiplier, the green grants one jump, and the yellow one reverses the sun's descent oh so minimally. There are others, a purple lifesaver that grants a life. When the sun sets, your solar-powered ship stalls. You could also run out of juice by flying in the shadows for too long. Or, you could crash, blow up on the side of a mountain. Either way, death or not, the sunset is inevitable. It always will be, and you might need some good practice before you land in the trench run of the fourth zone or before you find a warp portal to an alternate zone, but the sun will always be there to set, to disappoint, to end what it started. Getting further each time can feel like an accomplishment, and a game like this that gets a physical release, I think, is worth a try. It's futile, as addictive as anything else in the genre, but with a purpose in dialing into the lack of ending.
- Ben R.
Player of Games
P.S.
Extra:
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