Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/race-the-sun-pcmaclinuxps2ps4psvitaios-review/
Endless runners exploded when the iPhone’s App Store was introduced. They all have an easy to understand concept, easy to use controls, and low barrier of entry for both developer and user, so It’s easy to see why. Trying to get the onscreen character as far as possible through an environment as far as possible without hitting any of the obstacles makes for a pretty good and addictive time waster. But due to the low barrier of entry when developing for this genre, endless runners are a dime a dozen. But every now and again, a game breaks through and really grabs your attention.
In Race The Sun, you control a solar-powered spacecraft through a pseudo-procedurally-generated landscape, and your objective is to get as far as possible before the sun sets and your spacecraft runs out of power or you accidentally crash into one of the obstacles. The landscape is broken up into regions, each region increasing in difficulty and having a new and increasing difficult variety of geometry to avoid.
Visually, the game foes for a simplistic style that is effective in it’s simplicity, keeping everything in grey-scale, leaving the few colors that the game does use for power-ups and collectibles, making them stand out from the landscape. The game foes for flat-shaded polygons and keeps everything low-poly to match it’s art style. Mixed with some nice shadowing, the game does looks quite nice. Overall, the game graphics do come across as a prettier version of Cube Runner.
To keep the game play interesting, a newly generated level appears every 24 hours, so if you enjoy memorizing a level and love getting through a lever through memorization alone, you’d probably be a bit disappointed by this. The leader boards also reset every 24 hours, so if you like having the top spot on the leader boards, you have your work cut out for you. There is however a feature that allows users to create their own levels and upload them, so that might be a feature worth checking out for both people who like level memorization or creating their own levels.
The goal of the game is to get the highest score you can and to try and get on the leader board, or to just try and beat your personal best. To get a high score, you fly your spacecraft as far as possible as well as collecting Tri’s. The Tri’s add to a score multiplayer as well as add to the overall score. Collect 5 Tri’s and the score multiplayer increases by 1. Accidentally knock against any of the obstacles, your score multiplayer loses a few multipliers and you have to build it up again.
Another game play feature is keeping your solar-powered spacecraft out of the shadows of both obstacles and clouds. Flying through shadows for too long and your spacecraft slows down as it’s battery is drained. Being in the shadows for too long or or crashing into geometry head on and your spaceship explodes and it’s game over for you.
Being something a bit more advanced than the average endless runner, Race The Sun’s game play is a bit more complicated than usual. The game has power-ups which are unlocked by completing challenges while racing. They range from something as easy and simple as completing a region without colliding with obstacles or collecting a certain amount of Tri’s to something a lot more difficult like getting a 25x multiplayer in one run.
The more the difficult the challenge, the more points the challenge is worth. Each challenge is worth 1, 2 or 3 points depending on it’s difficulty. Get 6 points and you level up. After leveling up, you get an upgrade. You don’t really pick your upgrades so much as they’re given to you. You’ll start out with attachment for upgrades, so you’ll have to carefully pick and choose which upgrade to put on your ship and make a strategy around it.
There are two types of upgrades, unlockable items and ship upgrades. Items include Energy/Speed Boost, which gives you a temporary speed boost, Jump, which allows your spacecraft to jump, and Emergency Portals, which activate when you collide with an obstacle that would have normally kill you, and re-positions your spacecraft over where you crashed into and you glide back down to the planet. Both Jump and Emergency Portals don’t trigger when you fly over them. Instead you pick them up and use them whenever you see fit.
The ship upgrades include a Magnet, which allows your ship to collect Tri’s from further away, the Battery, which increases your battery capacity and allows you to fly through shadows for longer, and the Turning Jets, which increase your spacecrafts turning speed, allowing you to avoid obstacles a whole lot faster. Other ship upgrades include increased Jump and Emergence Portal storage, up to 3 slots, making the more difficult regions a bit easier.
The final unlockable is another mode called Apocalypse Mode, where the difficulty is cranked up to 11. Good reflexes even with the Turning Jets upgrade are need here, since there are non-stop obstacles popping up.
Another gameplay feature of Race The Sun are Portals that appear randomly throughout the regions that’ll warp you into different user created worlds as a sort of replacement for the current region. The game does come with a default region to show off how the Portals work. So your user created levels are bound to be seen someone.
Since the games release, it has been updated with a first person view, showing what its like from the ships view. If the game ever gets VR support, i can see people easily getting nauseous very easily, but it still would be pretty fun to try out once.
Race The Sun is a simple but effective game that i would definitely recommend. At USD$10, it is a tad expensive, but on sale i can definitely recommend it. There is piece of DLC called “Sunrise” that has a new mode that lets you fly through a level without having to worry about leader boards or the sun setting, creating a xen-like experience. The DLC goes for a purple color instead of the regular games grey scale. It’s nice, but at USD$2, i don’t know if i can recommend it. I wish it would have been an update to the base game instead of DLC. A definite pick up when on sale.
Endless runners exploded when the iPhone’s App Store was introduced. They all have an easy to understand concept, easy to use controls, and low barrier of entry for both developer and user, so It’s easy to see why. Trying to get the onscreen character as far as possible through an environment as far as possible without hitting any of the obstacles makes for a pretty good and addictive time waster. But due to the low barrier of entry when developing for this genre, endless runners are a dime a dozen. But every now and again, a game breaks through and really grabs your attention.
In Race The Sun, you control a solar-powered spacecraft through a pseudo-procedurally-generated landscape, and your objective is to get as far as possible before the sun sets and your spacecraft runs out of power or you accidentally crash into one of the obstacles. The landscape is broken up into regions, each region increasing in difficulty and having a new and increasing difficult variety of geometry to avoid.
Visually, the game foes for a simplistic style that is effective in it’s simplicity, keeping everything in grey-scale, leaving the few colors that the game does use for power-ups and collectibles, making them stand out from the landscape. The game foes for flat-shaded polygons and keeps everything low-poly to match it’s art style. Mixed with some nice shadowing, the game does looks quite nice. Overall, the game graphics do come across as a prettier version of Cube Runner.
To keep the game play interesting, a newly generated level appears every 24 hours, so if you enjoy memorizing a level and love getting through a lever through memorization alone, you’d probably be a bit disappointed by this. The leader boards also reset every 24 hours, so if you like having the top spot on the leader boards, you have your work cut out for you. There is however a feature that allows users to create their own levels and upload them, so that might be a feature worth checking out for both people who like level memorization or creating their own levels.
The goal of the game is to get the highest score you can and to try and get on the leader board, or to just try and beat your personal best. To get a high score, you fly your spacecraft as far as possible as well as collecting Tri’s. The Tri’s add to a score multiplayer as well as add to the overall score. Collect 5 Tri’s and the score multiplayer increases by 1. Accidentally knock against any of the obstacles, your score multiplayer loses a few multipliers and you have to build it up again.
Another game play feature is keeping your solar-powered spacecraft out of the shadows of both obstacles and clouds. Flying through shadows for too long and your spacecraft slows down as it’s battery is drained. Being in the shadows for too long or or crashing into geometry head on and your spaceship explodes and it’s game over for you.
Being something a bit more advanced than the average endless runner, Race The Sun’s game play is a bit more complicated than usual. The game has power-ups which are unlocked by completing challenges while racing. They range from something as easy and simple as completing a region without colliding with obstacles or collecting a certain amount of Tri’s to something a lot more difficult like getting a 25x multiplayer in one run.
The more the difficult the challenge, the more points the challenge is worth. Each challenge is worth 1, 2 or 3 points depending on it’s difficulty. Get 6 points and you level up. After leveling up, you get an upgrade. You don’t really pick your upgrades so much as they’re given to you. You’ll start out with attachment for upgrades, so you’ll have to carefully pick and choose which upgrade to put on your ship and make a strategy around it.
There are two types of upgrades, unlockable items and ship upgrades. Items include Energy/Speed Boost, which gives you a temporary speed boost, Jump, which allows your spacecraft to jump, and Emergency Portals, which activate when you collide with an obstacle that would have normally kill you, and re-positions your spacecraft over where you crashed into and you glide back down to the planet. Both Jump and Emergency Portals don’t trigger when you fly over them. Instead you pick them up and use them whenever you see fit.
The ship upgrades include a Magnet, which allows your ship to collect Tri’s from further away, the Battery, which increases your battery capacity and allows you to fly through shadows for longer, and the Turning Jets, which increase your spacecrafts turning speed, allowing you to avoid obstacles a whole lot faster. Other ship upgrades include increased Jump and Emergence Portal storage, up to 3 slots, making the more difficult regions a bit easier.
The final unlockable is another mode called Apocalypse Mode, where the difficulty is cranked up to 11. Good reflexes even with the Turning Jets upgrade are need here, since there are non-stop obstacles popping up.
Another gameplay feature of Race The Sun are Portals that appear randomly throughout the regions that’ll warp you into different user created worlds as a sort of replacement for the current region. The game does come with a default region to show off how the Portals work. So your user created levels are bound to be seen someone.
Since the games release, it has been updated with a first person view, showing what its like from the ships view. If the game ever gets VR support, i can see people easily getting nauseous very easily, but it still would be pretty fun to try out once.
Race The Sun is a simple but effective game that i would definitely recommend. At USD$10, it is a tad expensive, but on sale i can definitely recommend it. There is piece of DLC called “Sunrise” that has a new mode that lets you fly through a level without having to worry about leader boards or the sun setting, creating a xen-like experience. The DLC goes for a purple color instead of the regular games grey scale. It’s nice, but at USD$2, i don’t know if i can recommend it. I wish it would have been an update to the base game instead of DLC. A definite pick up when on sale.