Hotdog Runner

Now with Thick 44, you cant ask for more.

I suck so horribly bad at this game.... ...and I love it! I bought this game immediately for the sole reason I am part of the greatest gaming community in the world and do not regret it at ALL!

Hot Dog Runner is a 3D endless runner released in 2024 by Aidor Gaming and Neebs Gaming Games that asks the question “how much can you reasonably expect for $2?” The game is about a weird little guy named Simon who likes hot dogs and he’s running and there’s hot dogs and he eats the hot dogs. Sometimes there’s pits and crates and torii for some reason and if you run into them Simon falls down and hollers. I did not know this when I bought the game, but the publisher is a YouTube channel/gaming collective named Neebs Gaming, and its overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam seems to be from all the fans who bought it, don’t really care whether it’s actually a good game, and are just mindlessly boosting it along with their favorite in joke or reference that nobody who doesn’t watch the channel would get. I watched the launch video for the game, and found that the developer made this game following YouTube tutorials. No disrespect meant to the developer, but that was the feeling I got from playing. All the in game assets look like something that came out of the box with a fresh Unity install. The controls are standard for a runner - left, right, slide, and jump - but when you go around a corner you have to press the direction to turn. This is the same button that you use to move left or right, so this creates a scenario where if you are already moving right as you travel around a lefthand turn, your character will turn right and immediately slam into a wall. Additionally, the game doesn’t seem to get any more difficult as you play it. Simon doesn’t run faster, the timing doesn’t need to be any more precise. There are occasionally tricky spawns where a pit or a wall will appear after you need to slide, and the slides will lock you in an animation and slow your momentum and generally those are going to be your undoing, or something like an unlucky barrel spawn around a blind corner turn, but I imagine you can get some pretty ridiculous high scores once you’re somewhat competent at the game. I was approaching the developer’s high score of approximately 1000 after playing for 45 minutes. Also, from watching the launch video they discussed plans of updates - adding the rest of the cast of Neebs Gaming as selectable characters for example, or making it so that breaking barrels and crates produces hot dogs. It’s been seven months since the game released and there doesn’t appear to have been any updates so I’m not sure if any of those promised updates are ever coming. This game appears to be for fans of Neebs Gaming who want to show their support and throw a couple dollars their way without really caring about the quality of the game itself, so if you’re one of those people, check it out. If, like me, you’re considering Hotdog Runner because you saw a game from a small developer with overwhelmingly positive reviews and were curious about it, you can confidently look elsewhere. Edit: I see the game got updated after my review was posted. You're welcome Neebs Gaming fans!