I’ve been working on a game called Freerunners in my spare time for a good while now. Finding chunks of time to work on it in the evenings and weekends outside of my main job which is pretty time-consuming (also making video games, I’m a lead developer on Marauders).
Freerunners is a parkour game, based on my own experiences of doing parkour a couple of years ago. I wanted to try and give the feeling I got of finding a flow and underlying rhythm of movement through an environment. Vaulting, climbing, jumping, ducking, swinging, sliding, doing what it takes to complete a route as fast as possible.
PLAY THE FREE DEMO HERE
Since I’ve been making the game I realised that there really aren’t that many parkour-focused games out there. Lots of games have vaulting and ledge grabbing etc but very few are themed around parkour. I’m sure there are a bunch that I don’t know about but really the main ones I can think of are Mirrors Edge, Dying Light, Assassins Creed and a mobile game called Vector. I don’t know if I’ve stumbled upon a niche or if there is a good reason that people don’t make parkour-themed games ha.
I find it funny to think that I’m getting closer to releasing the game, I really enjoy the process of making games but it is definitely feels like climbing up a steep mountain. Making games, even a small one takes so much effort, I’ve got respect for anyone who manages to get one out the door!
The next step on my journey towards launch was to take part in the Steam Next Fest, which is currently running 5th Feb till 12th Feb. I wanted to be involved in this to get a bit of exposure and to have more people playing the demo so I could get more feedback.
I had a demo up for around 4 months before the Next Fest event. Meaning I had a good chunk of time to refine the Demo (it still approached fast though!). I’d launched a demo originally because I thought it was a great way to get feedback and a way for me to get used to the process of cooking, uploading and releasing updates to Steam. I updated the Demo 5 times since launching it, because I felt I had made meaningful enough changes based on peoples feedback (thanks everyone) and from just generally improving the game through continuing development. The last update I got in just before Next Fest included some not-so-glamorous but essential features that all games should have: Keybinds and Screen Resolution Settings.
I’m continuing to chip away at development, fixing bugs, refining level design, polishing things up and I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing people feedback from playing the game during Next Fest!
I’ll try and do a little summary of how the event went as a whole once it’s finished. There are already some things I’ve learned that I would put into practice when taking part in a Next Fest event for future games!