Spanking Runners Steam Charts & Stats

Sometimes I see a game so bizarre I have to get it and [i]Spanking Runners[/i] is one of the more interesting impulse purchases I've made. I've beaten the entire game and I still don't know what a [i]Spanking Runner[/i] is. At first glance it kind of looks like a Eurojank version of [i]Sonic R[/i] which it kind of is, but the actual game is even weirder than that. After a [i]very[/i] long ([i]at least[/i] 10 minutes) opening cutscene that lays out the entire [i]Spanking Runners[/i] lore (which boils down to "robots invaded because they want the planet's water), you're dropped into a hub world where you can feel out the controls and pick a race track. The game's technical aspects make a surprisingly good first impression, the hub and all of the race tracks take place on [i]Super Mario Galaxy[/i] style spherical planets which is a pretty insane feat for a game that came out in 2001. The physics also do an unexpectedly deft job at handling this unique quirk, and visually there's some impressive reflections going on. The characters have a Klasky Csupo look, like they could be extras on [i]Aaah! Real Monsters![/i] and the facial animations are surprisingly expressive and fluid, especially for the time. There's a lot of personality to [i]Spanking Runners[/i] and if the game was meant to be a tech demo I think it succeeds at showing off its developer's technical prowess. The actual racing is... eurojank in the classic sense. There are times when it flows really well and the game's a lot of fun, and there's times when you're fighting against the game just to stay alive. There are several different worlds which have about 5 racetracks each and the quality kind of depends on which world you're looking at. The pirate themed levels are consistantly the most fun and best looking, but the volcano levels are a miserable slog that exist to throw as much nonsense at you as possible. The clock themed levels remind me a lot of the factory racetrack from [i]Sonic R[/i] and are probably the best balance between "chaotic nonsense" and "actually playable". Trying the first race is like jumping into the deep end, though you can acclimatize, especially once you get used to the powerups. The first track is so small that laps last literal seconds and even the bigger maps are smaller and more chaotic than in a lot of games. Getting out of the gate is an exercise in surviving a multi-car pile-up and you'll constantly be getting bumped around by other racers, hazards, terrain, etc. Like I said, some tracks are [i]saner[/i] than others but even the normal ones have some sharp 90 degree and even U-Turn angles that feel odd to navigate even once you're used to the game. If you're going to master [i]Spanking Runners[/i] you'll have to get a feel for the powerups. Unlike [i]Mario Kart[/i] where you pick up different powerups during the race, you equip a loadout of three powerups that form your "vehicle" and they have a cooldown that speeds up as you collect blue cross markers. The powerups are very hit or miss, and I found the ones you start with are actually better than quite a few you unlock. You get a movement powerup, an attack powerup, and a hazard you can leave on the track. The best speed powerups are the ones that let you fly and you gradually get better versions of it. Being [i]off the ground[/i] lets you skip a lot of the chaos on the ground [i]and[/i] turn a lot tighter which helps out with the really sharp turns. [i]Avoiding[/i] the actual racetrack as much as possible will keep you safe. Ranged powerups are useless since the physics are so chaotic you'll never be able to lead a shot in advance enough to hit somebody. I just stick to the powerups that do an AOE attack around your car. For hazards I stuck with mold spores since they leave the biggest nuisance and that did me just fine. What annoys me about the power-up system is the game's weird obsession with non-consensually changing your load-out. You progress through the game by collecting a certain amount of bottles to buy new power-up and racetracks, and thankfully you don't actually have to [i]win[/i] to get bottles. If you had to win this game would be nigh-impossible on some tracks, but placing first gets you significantly more bottles. When you unlock a new powerup it automatically assigns it to your load-out and you have to go back to the power-up place in the hub world to change back. Most of the power-ups are kind of useless but you should still collect them all because you can't actually beat the final bosses without using a specific power-up for each boss. If your car is destroyed on the track, the game sometimes completely re-works your power-up loadout until the race is over. That said, if you get destroyed you might as well restart anyway because the respawn times are wildly inconsistant. Sometimes it takes about 4 or 5 seconds for your car to pull back together, sometimes it takes 10 or 15 seconds as you watch everyone else go whizzing by. Surprisingly, the kart racing gameplay isn't the only thing the game has to offer. Every time you enter a race you also have the option to play the game in a "turn-based mode", where you basically draw the path you want your car to take, and tell it when to pop the power-ups. Playing the game like this, some of the ultra-sharp turns and tight 180's make a bit more sense and seem more navigable, which has me wondering if perhaps [i]this[/i] was meant to be the game until they realized the turn-based mode [i]doesn't work at all[/i]. It would certailn explain the sharp divide in track designs and it seems kind of weird to have the option to experience the game as a whole-different genre as just a bonus, so I feel like there's a deeper story there. It's interesting and amusing to play once or twice, but it's really not practical at all for winning and manages to be even more insane and chaotic than the racing mode. The last thing to talk about are the boss fights, and the first three are kind of fun. The game doesn't tell you this, but you really need specific power-ups before you can beat the bosses and there's kind of an order too them. There are Steam guides that explain the order and while I generally don't like looking things up to beat a game it's kind of essential here. The fourth boss, the dragon is ridiculously hard but has a cheese where you basically run the race backward and I can't tell if that's a bug or a legitimate strategy, but even doing the cheese strategy is insanely hard because the dragon wings power-up you're supposed to use on the dragon boss hover you up and down at such a rate it's very easy to miss the power-up refills. I had to ironically take it slow and make absolutely sure I stopped over each pickup to ensure I had enough juice to keep going. I think if the bosses had been less obtuse, I'd say the game doesn't outstay its welcome at about 6 hours, but I probably put about 2 hours just into the bosses which stretched my playtime to about 7.4 and I did kind of want to be done with it. It's not a polished game, but like all great Eurojank, it's wildly ambitious and creative and there is good stuff to find here if you're willing to sift through the races where you're fighting the universe just to stay alive. Unusually for a Eurojank, I think the bigger failings are actually more design-wise than technical, it ran pretty well and didn't have a problem running at 144 FPS, though one particular track did like to crash a lot when I had to restart that particular race. I don't think it's the kind of game I could easily recommend to someone like "yeah there's this cool racing game, it's called [i]Spanking Runners[/i] you gotta try it", but if you tell someone "this game is [i]Sonic R[/i] on fentanyl and you have to see how weird it is" you might raise enough eyebrows to get someone to check it out. At the very least it deserves an hour-long Ross Scott deep dive.