Haste

This game plays exactly like how you would ride in the back of the car or the bus and imagine a little guy running over all the obstacles at super speed

Haste is a gorgeous game with fantastic movement, but it's brought down by bugs, bloat, dialogue, and procedural generation. I would gladly pay more for a version of the game without those features. I found myself bored, even on the hardest difficulty. I planned to refund the game after a boss repeated, but decided to stick it out to attempt to see the final boss and attempt the level 10 achievements. I wish I had refunded the game instead. It was a monotonous slog getting there, and the final boss ended up being an underwhelming, and frustrating experience. I can't recommend this game, but if you must and find yourself bored, try: - Setting difficulty to max. - Avoiding items entirely. - Ignoring sparks entirely. (Just aim for the end of the level.) - Avoiding challenge nodes. (Or just die.) - Watching something else while you play. [h2]Detailed notes[/h2] [h3]Definite bugs[/h3] • The tutorial bugged out (I was stuck in endless slow motion). I had to entirely restart the game. • I got stuck on the "Shard X" screen text twice. I had to quit the game. • I received damage despite seemingly not hitting obstacles [h3] Potential bugs[/h3] • There were no sound effects during the shard completion cinematics. • The +50% speed item didn't seem to increase my speed by 50%. [h3]Roguelike elements[/h3] • I love roguelikes but the graph map and progression felt tacked on. • You can ignore items, even on the hardest mode, and get S ranks. • You can ignore the map by clicking on the final node. [h3]Procedural generation[/h3] • The procedural generation lead to lacklustre levels: geometry flowed poorly, especially where breadcrumb trails lead to death. • Early in level 10 I went from S ranks to losing all my lives at the start of one poorly generated level where it was seemingly impossible to beat the shadow. • I would have preferred a limited set of meaningfully hand designed levels to unlimited procedural mediocrity. • I would have enjoyed racing against established times. [h3]Level types[/h3] • I loved the (rare) train track sections. They felt like a meaningful ongoing challenge. • I liked the bosses, but they felt a bit one note, as if missing a phase. • I was dissapointed when bosses repeated, and even more dissapointed when they had more lasers and instead of adding new mechanics or phases. • Regular levels felt bland. • Challenge levels felt boring (find exit / collect sparks / enter 3 circles). I would die to skip them. [h3]Difficulty[/h3] • Every difficulty felt the same. • I liked the custom difficulty sliders. It was more enjoyable with +500% obstacles but the space between the obstacles (and the entire special levels) still felt bland. • Playing okay and playing excellently felt the same. Earning a fraction of a tiny boost felt underwhelming. • Earning S grades don't feel different to C grades. It isn't clear how close you were to other grades, or how different the rewards are. Sparks as a reward felt underwhelming, since items felt pointless. • Many times I took damage it felt like it was because of unfair procedural generation rather than failure. It got better when I learned to avoid breadcrumbs, but it lead to things feeling even more monotonous. [h3]Items[/h3] • Most items didn't feel impactful. Even the "+50%" speed item seemed to do almost nothing. • The items that did feel impactful (slow time & jump upward) didn't seem to be useful. • The base hoverboard only boosted speed by 10-20% for a short period. So it felt ignorable. • I liked how clear the descriptions were. • It felt like items would have been better off as on-track pickups (speed/restore health) or as unlockable baseline abilities (teleport/slow time). [h3]Story[/h3] • The character illustrations and models look fabulous. • The story ruined the flow of the gameplay. I would pay for less, or an option to turn it off. • The credits looked gorgeous, but they felt out of place. • The opening cinematic (crystal) felt awkward, and pointless. • I would have loved if Zoe delivered the letter, then got right into gameplay. I would have loved a game with 0 story where I just deliver letters to animals. • I hated getting a parragraph of text after clicking on a map node. Just let me in the level please. • I hated having conversations with characters who aren't physically there and have no interaction in the gameplay. It made the story and characters feel tacked on. E.g. The first ever dialogue: You're running with nobody nearby, but then the game interupts you to show you (Zoe) standing still with Riza: "Zoe: Everything's falling apart! Run!" "Riza: I finally found you! You have to find the portal out of here." "Zoe: What? Who are you?" [We can see her name is Riza] "Riza: We'll talk later. For now just run and leap!" The exchange could be entirely cut: • Riza replies are non sequiturs. The conversation makes more sense if Zoe's lines are cut. • Riza instructs Zoe to do things she is already doing. So Riza's lines could also be cut. • It tells instead of shows, and what it tells contradicts what the game is showing: Riza doesn't exist in the environment and the world is being covered in black stuff, not "falling apart". [h3]Overall[/h3] I would love to pay [i]more[/i] for a version of this games with less: no story, no procedural generation, no challenges, and no roguelike elements. Just the great physics, a few hand crafted levels, 4 shards/bosses, and racing against human times.

Some say that it is a little "repetitive" , but the developers made the game in such a way that you don't feel anything other than excitement! I really love playing it and I recommend it to people who cannot play single-player games. I almost 100% of the time cannot play games alone because I get bored easily, but not with this. 10/10

Played the demo first for 10h and then this for another 10h. Very fun but gets progressively harder and you can basically add infinite challange to test your skill level. Almost punched my screen after some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ world gen.

This game is so close to being great. It's not terrible by any means, but certain elements really hindered my overall enjoyment of the game. The story is very slow and interrupts the flow of gameplay too much. I would complete a level and feel excited to do the next run, but all that momentum is killed by a slow dialogue sequence where... nothing really happens most of the time. The characters look super cool but the dialogue is longwinded and feels like filler. I ended up clicking through it most of the time. The roguelite elements are really hit or miss. Sometimes you get a great procedural level that is really fun, sometimes it's terrible. Sometimes you get a choice of great powerups, sometimes they are trash. I wish I could have more control over my builds to try different strategies, and I wish the levels had been curated rather than random. The boss fights are also not very fun. It's navigating a bullet-hell arena, but my character controls are so floaty it's hard to dodge and be aggressive to defeat the boss.

Haste - A momentum based game where you deliver post (I think) Hands down the smoothest momentum based game I've played in a while. This game looks absolutely gorgeous and has a ton of roguelike items for every run, making everything unique. The boss designs are spot on that match the aesthetic of the game and some of the challenges are brutal in its difficulty. Gameplay consists of 2 things: Jumping and landing. Land at a wrong angle and you can't land perfectly which means you suffer speed. No speed and you can't outrun the dimension collapse. Hands down, great game, with great movement and great soundtrack. Got this from my Dutch buddy, *tips fedora hat (if I had one)* and it was a blast to play through coop and all 10 shards. You get the endless shards which you can also try, but do be warned, the difficulty spike is very steep and very sharp, very quick. Can't recommend this game enough, absolutely a blast!

Haste is a game that has surprised me enormously in several aspects, starting with its tone... It's a colorful, lighthearted game with cheerful music, a pleasing style and colors, charismatic characters, and quite effective and fun mechanics... Except it isn't. The end of the universe—that's the main premise. The game opens with our protagonist absolutely terrified, fleeing from a void that consumes reality itself and all that follows. It immediately shifts to that premise: a colorful, pleasant, and even lighthearted game. Everything is fun until you're hit with that harsh dose of reality again. Characters talk about how terrifying and fascinating the situation is, about the loss of their families and homes, about the importance of survival, life and death, fighting against fate, defining who you are... before immediately returning to the cheerful running gameplay. It's simply fantastic. The way this contrast is executed is magnificent and evident in hundreds of details, both narrative and visual. It's the aspect I loved most about the entire experience, and that alone is enough for me to recommend it. However, it is a game, so it's wise to mention its other aspects. The mechanics are simple yet varied, offering a surprisingly high level of complexity to master, with a considerable challenge in various instances through stages filled with all sorts of obstacles. The visuals are magnificent, incredibly charismatic, and varied in every aspect. I particularly appreciate the design of the bosses and the other elements related to the Agency—designs that aren't necessarily unique but have a lot of personality. The OST has several catchy tracks. And the narrative is fantastic; nothing particularly groundbreaking, but its execution alone made me love it. There's really little to mention, aside from minor complaints about inconsistent mechanics or the level of grinding required for certain unlockables, but these are fairly minor issues, inconveniences that didn't ruin the overall experience in the more than 19 hours I invested and all the hours I plan to invest in the future. Highly recommended.

Haste is simply that type of game you can just get into easily while still being fun. the game doesnt get stale because of the variable routes and items you can manifest along the way and the gameplay itself is addicting. you can just enter a flow state and just start hitting many consecutive perfect landings. the story is good for what it is, this game is obviously not meant to be story-focused. and the customisation does give you something to strive for after finishing the final shard but the game doesnt rely on it that much. The endless shard is really fun sometimes but it does get stale for me because I find variation fun. and endless runs don't give you shops, expert fragments, quests and bosses like normal shard do. wich is a very personal nitpick 8/10 game, I love how simple it is but I do have *some* nitpicks

A good game all about going fast. If you like going fast, it's good. If you don't like going fast, I can't associate with you anymore. When in doubt, go faster. Two minor critiques- the metaprogression is a bit slow, and it would have really benefitted from voice acting, to the point where the story feels shallow and hard to invest in without it. Still 100% worthwhile though.

gameplay is nice, but the characters are so cringe