We're happy to kick off a series of developer "Speed Blogs." They'll be dedicated to the making of SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed—to give you a better idea what kind of a game it'll be. Expect development updates, peeks into the creative process, and just some cool details about the upcoming sequel. Let's dive right into the first blog.
Speed Blog 1: Levels & Setting
In the first blog, let's focus on the world and level design of the second chapter. "Why did you guys decide to make SpeedRunners 2 in the first place?", you may ask. Well, it's no secret how beloved the first game is among you, members of the community. "Let's take SR1 with all its classic levels and make it even better and prettier," we thought. Easy?
Not at all.
🎨 2D → 3D
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| Metro (SpeedRunners) | Metro (SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed) |
You might've already heard that we're transitioning from 2D to 3D with SpeedRunners Part Two. We really hope this change will allow us to do justice to the series and make both the original levels—"officials"—and fresh maps look more vibrant and immersive. There's always a catch, though, right? Make them too busy or colorful, and players will struggle to keep track of their characters and tell what's going on on the screen.
After releasing our first two trailers, we received community feedback about a certain amount of visual clutter. Our team is currently making sure to address those valid concerns. We've added adaptive character outlines that change their...
- Size—depending on camera distance.
- Color—depending on the runner and skin you equip
We've also implemented player indicators and cleaned the backgrounds of redundant detail. In essence, our goal is to make the sequel look different from SR1 without compromising the gameplay and disrupting the display of those speedy skills of yours.
Would SpeedRunners be the same without its traditional futuristic setting? Not on our watch! Here's how our studio is approaching worldbuilding.
🌇 THE SETTING
The utopian aesthetic with a distinct "Atomic Age" vibe is making a comeback.⚛️ We were heavily inspired by the American retro-futurism of the 1950s: Comic books, illustrations, and other art forms from that era served as references. You can also say that SpeedRunners 2 has some things in common with the Fantastic Four franchise when it comes to the art direction.
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Another source of inspiration for our artists has been the Googie architecture, with its slick arches and upswept rooftops. As you can already notice, the world feels very "analogue"—no holograms or any of that digital stuff!
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| Googie architecture reference | SpeedRunners 2 concept art |
Now that we've settled on the art direction, it's time to put work into level design. "The 'officials' from the first game were great, but how can we refine those levels?" Enter alternative layouts.
🔄 ALTERNATIVE LEVEL LAYOUTS
Each map will have two variations:
- Layout A. If a map is returning from SpeedRunners 1, Layout A's track is identical to its counterpart from the original game. The background, details, and decor, like signs and ads, may be different.
- Layout B—an alternative variation. Sometimes, Layout B is the more challenging of the two, where SpeedRunners gigachads will have the chance to showcase their technical prowess.
The original levels had been created before the SpeedRunners meta crystalized. That was one of the reasons why we decided to implement alternative layouts in the first place—for them to lean towards the meta for more challenging play.Example 1☝️ Layout B of the Museum stage introduces some fresh level design decisions to encourage players to mix up wall jumping/floating with the usage of the grappling hook.
Example 2☝️
🛠️ OTHER PLANNED FEATURES
We're putting maximum love and care into SpeedRunners 2, and our crew is eager to shake things up so that the second installment offers new things to the player base. Note that some of these will be introduced at launch, and some throughout early access.
- 8 Player Mode! This experimental mode is already working—we've tested it internally many times, and it seems chaotic and fun so far. In the future, we plan on constructing new maps specifically suited for that mode. By the way, there will only be casual 8-player matches, no ranked.
- Spectator mode. Watch your friends outrun each other. Or host a tournament and oversee it.
- Breakable glass shortcuts: move at a certain speed to break the glass and take a different route.
NOTE: This GIF ☝️ was taken from the game's tutorial, so it doesn't show an actual shortcut. It's just to give you an idea of what those shortcuts would look like.
- Lasers: Disable them to reach and pick up a cosmetic collectable.
- Speaking of collectables, we'll hide cool easter eggs on stages for you to discover, and some of them will be really tough to find!
- Level editor (after the Early Access launch) and bringing popular community maps from the first to the second game. Speaking of community-made zones, our designers integrated many good ideas from workshop creations into our new speedrunning arenas.
- And finally, time leaderboards for every map—so that you can compete with other players and show off your records!
That would do it for today, speedrunners. Let us know how you feel about this here Speed Blog, and expect the next one to arrive in the near future. I know the first question on everybody's minds is: "Where is the playtest, mate?" We're cooking, and it'll arrive sooner than later; our team is taking that extra time to make the whole thing more enjoyable for you all. Keep your eyes peeled for the announcement when it drops. Love ya all, and until next time!
Join our Discord Community to chat with other speedrunners and share ideas with the devs directly:
Also, wishlist follow our game on Steam to stay updated with the latest news.
