Freerunners Review

Freerunners is a sidescrolling precision platformer published and developed by CBgameDev. In this fast-paced game, you’ll be doing your best to replicate all the parkour videos you’ve seen online and hopefully not die in the process. I’ve always been interested in this type of movement, and even gone out of my way to play games like Rooftops & Alleys: The Parkour Game, so this seemed right up my alley. So let’s see if Freerunners stick the landing or break all their bones after tripping on a slightly uneven edge.

You play as an amateur freerunner, training with an instructor to get in better shape and look cool while doing it. However, after accidentally stumbling upon something you shouldn’t see on the way home, you must learn while on the run from a criminal organisation. This chase will lead you across the city, forest, and caves, and you might even find yourself stopping them and saving the world… with parkour.

It's a pretty basic story that’s more of an excuse to run than something to look forward to. Still, it's nice to have a little context for each and every stage, and it makes for some interesting scenarios.

As for the graphics, the backgrounds are very detailed with little things that will make you chuckle (such as the use of poop graffiti at the bottom of drops), which contrasts with the low-poly characters with no visible face. The animations, though, are really well done. I really liked that throughout the game, your character gets better at running, becoming less awkward with their feet and able to smoothly transition into flips and tricks (while running for their life). Though I consider Vector to have the best parkour animations, and there is some stiffness, it still looks and feels good to run through stages.

Speaking of, let’s get running. Your goal in each level is to make it from Point A to Point B in the most direct way possible. How you do this, however, is often up to you. There can be multiple paths to the end of the level, but it's up to you and your freerunning abilities to find the quickest path to it. However, it isn't as simple as just pressing the Jump button.

Every action must be a deliberate choice; there’s nothing automatically done for you. You want to grab a ledge? You need to hold down the left bumper as you jump, catch it, pick a direction to transition from, then release the bumper to either mantle up or jump. Precision jumps, sprinting, crawling, balancing, and rolling to break your fall all require an input, which can be a bit confusing at times when you’re being chased by criminals. Not only that, you have to perform all that while managing your stamina. If you run out, you can't sprint or grab ledges, which might be the difference between a safe getaway or a nice tumble into the nearest trash bin. Given the mechanics, this is going to happen pretty frequently.

You will fail a lot. If a drop is slightly too high, you will break your legs if you don’t tuck and roll, which is pretty frequent considering that “too high” is maybe about 10cm or something. Not only that, you have to be careful about not getting electrocuted, run over, shot, and more if you want to even make it to the end of the level. But getting there isn’t enough, as if you want to earn all three stars per stage, you’ll need to beat some very tight times. And stars are pretty damn important.

As you earn stars, you unlock cosmetic options to make your freerunner a little nicer-looking, as well as improve your abilities. More stamina, faster climbing, better balance, lower fall damage, and increased strength are incredibly useful skills to learn. That means the better you play, the better you get, which is pretty cool. It encourages you to get better times and improve on your own merit, which in turn makes it easier to get more stars. I found this to be a nice reward system that will either force you to become a better freerunner or, at the very least, make you try instead of simply taking your time. I definitely felt amazing when I managed to beat the fastest time in only one attempt.

That being said, there are some issues that put a damper on my run. Sometimes, objects and enemies don’t load quite right when resetting a level. Other times an obstacle becomes invisible, which really messes you up. I also found the controls to be a little iffy at times, not quite letting me do what I wanted them to do. This could be my fault, but playing on a controller (the recommended way to play), the smaller movements I wanted just didn’t quite work. If I had a suggestion, I would’ve liked a way to check out the entire level on my own instead of just one quick overview. I got stuck a few times not knowing where to go, though I guess it would be cheating.

Overall, I think Freerunners is a good representation of being a practitioner. You will struggle, fail, and maybe even give up, but with enough time, effort, and bruises, those obstacles that seemed insurmountable can be climbed… and you’ll look cool while doing it.