FREERUNNERS DEMO UPDATE! (JANUARY 2024)

My game Freerunners is going to be included in the February Steam Next Fest, so I have been trying to get my Demo in the best shape possible for then (as well as polishing and finishing off the game!).

Play the demo on Steam for free HERE

I’ve been posting the Demo around in order to get more feedback. It’s been super useful to hear people’s thoughts (Thanks to the r/parkour Reddit). 2 things that came up across multiple people who played the demo were:

• The animations were a bit janky

• Some of the demo levels didn’t feel fluid

So I wanted to put some focus on these areas. Polishing the animations up was something I had been meaning to do for a while. The climbing up ladders and poles for example were placeholder animations from when I first started the game and I just hadn't got around to taking a look at them again. To improve this stuff I just started playing the game from the very beginning and every time I saw a janky or placeholder anim I went over it and gave it a bit of love, I think it feels much better now.

The second point, the lack of fluidity in the early levels, took a bit more time and thought. I realised that a part of this was that in the game you start off as a “noob” and work your way to becoming a “pro”. So you have to be more crap at the beginning to appreciate the better moves later on.

The problem with this is at the beginning you are slower and have slow less flashy techniques for using obstacles. To try and combat this I adjust a few things so the early game felt less stop-starty, including:

• Giving the player a little more stamina and speed from the very beginning of the game 

• Reworking the animations for noob level vaulting and climbing to feel more fluid

• Reworking the design of 2 levels that felt not great flow-wise (Below you can see a GIF of this at the top of the page, a double breakfall in the level now)

I think all these changes made a big difference to the early part of the game and so I decided to update the Demo build on itch and Steam!

Here are more patch notes in full for things relating to the Demo, that I changed:

• Fixed some bugs with the balance bar

• Fixed some bugs with the predictive trace block

• Fixed bugs with French language overlapping in the UI

• Fixed bugs with Russian language overlapping in the UI

• Fixed characters LODs getting triggered to close

• Fixed bug where letting go of ledges could make you visually go into the floor if you were close to the ground already

• Increased starting speed and stamina amount when you first play the game

• Reworked the design on chapter01 level 5 for better fluidity

• Reworked the design on chapter01 level 8 for better fluidity

• Tweaked misc art on a bunch of the demo levels

• Updated the balancing animations

• Updated the ladder-climbing animations

• New animation set for pole climbing

• Updated animations for misc background characters

• Updated the anim for when you finish a level

• Updated vaulting animations for noob level

• Updated climbing-up animations for the noob level

• Updated the animations for noob level tricks

• Updated the holding on to a ledge animation set

• Misc tweaks and fixes to the UI

• Main menu now shows stats: How many retries, how many fails and how many times caught

• Now can breakfall icon only shows if you can actually do a breakfall (e.g. not if you fall straight down)

• Footstep sounds now have modulation to add a bit more varity

• Optimised lights

• Optimised the electricity death actor

• Optimsed particles by adding LODs

Like I said I’ve been solo making this game in my spare time for the last couple of years. It’s taken a while to get to this point but I’m super happy with the progress I’ve made.

So give the latest DEMO build a go and let me know what you think!