Arcade machines were the thing when gaming first took off. They let players compete either in direct challenges against each other or against scores. The latter made its way into the homes across the world especially when it came to India. Most Indians (me included) didn’t have multiple controllers growing up, so we went for turn-based gameplay where everyone got a chance at taking on the previous player’s score.
This is why I remember Race the Sun. My apartment mates Zolin Gonsalves, Hari Pillai and I used to take turns daily, trying to beat each other’s scores on shitty Zebronics wireless controllers.
Story:
There isn’t one, it is a pure score-based runner with a bit of a luck factor.
Next!
Sound:
The sound is alright. There is only a sole electronic track for the main game that calms down in between levels and pumps up again when the next level starts. It stays the same throughout the levels unless you crash which changes to a more rock-like track which would have better throughout according to me.
The pickup sounds are also fine. Point pickups make a clinking sound till you get 5 of them in a row at which point it makes a sound like three xylophone keys hit together. The other pickups sound about right too, the speed pickup makes a sound of an engine powering up while the portals make a fan powering down effect.
The problem with the sound is that the music is too high making all these little more entertaining sounds rather muted.
Graphics:
The graphics are quite simple. Everything is made of squares, triangles and straight lines. You can even see the multiple lines that makeup stuff like your vehicle and the rolling balls. The colour pallet limits itself to grey, white and dark brown for the world. Thankfully the pickups are much better with green, yellow and purple to represent them.
As for effects, there is a lens flare, light and shadow effects including haze. Each pickup will break into small shards when hit which looks nice. I don’t think the crash is animated but just the player vehicle replaced with some non-moving clouds trying to represent smoke.
The graphics give the feel of a really simple game that is made on a tight budget, they do their job right though sometimes the light-effects can be overpowering.
Gameplay:
Race the Sun is probably the simplest game I have played since One Finger Death Punch. It only uses one button more than One Finger Death Punch. The game follows a very simple loop of dodge obstacles while collecting pickups to get a high score, that’s it. You can’t control the speed of the vehicle on the ground nor its ascension or dive in the air. I could stop the review right here and you would have a pretty good idea of the game but I’m going to bore you with details anyway.
Race the Sun gives you a solar-powered hovercraft with broken brakes, a battery that can’t hold a charge and tells you to get going. The hovercraft is lite and nimble so takes split-second turns with no problem. To counter the agility of the craft; the tracks are daily generated and are littered with obstacles in the form of walls, hills, rolling balls, falling bricks, rotating blocks and windmills. The initial problem you have with the game is figuring out which obstacles are static and which are dynamic, the game helps you tell them apart by colouring the static one’s grey and the dynamic one’s dark brown. The one exception to this colour separation is that there are floating paths that fall into place as you travel. Dodging the obstacles after the first couple of regions becomes a game of skill but once you pass the 5th region it becomes a game of luck.
There is a failure condition besides crashing into obstacles: loss of sunlight. As you play, the sun is always setting so you need to move as fast as you can. Clouds, hills, tunnels and just about everything drops a shadow. If you get stuck in a shadow the hovercraft starts to slow down. Stay in the shadows for too long and you lose.
To help you in the chase of that high score there are pickups. You get points just for travelling straight but those can be improved by collecting blue pickups which add points. For every 5 you get without sideswiping a wall your score gets a multiplier. There are also green pickups which let you jump and purple pickups that let you spawn a little above the region after you crash. The last and most important pickup is the yellow pickup which gives a burst of speed causing you to catch up to the sun a little.
There is a levelling system that grows just from playing that unlocks add ons for your craft like a magnet that prevents you from needing to crash into a pickup to collect it or a larger storage for jumps and the like but you can finish it off quite fast.
The gameplay is fun and breakneck but with only 3 worlds (4 if you count driving while the credits scroll) it gets quite dull fast. Thankfully there are lots of community created worlds that you can download and add but a game that needs the community to save it doesn’t deserve to have a price tag.
Conclusion:
While I have fond memories attached to Race the Sun, I cannot recommend it. It’s a functional game but with so little for worlds and a minimalist concept, it’s not going to last more than a couple of hours. If you have some friends around and just need a way to waste time in a pinch it might work but there are much better choices out there.
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