On-foot racers that challenge you to use the environment to your advantage are lacking these days. Games like Speedrunners and Sonic Rivals are great, and the 2D nature of them allows for tighter control and skill, but what about bringing that to a 3D plane? There’s been efforts in the past, certainly. Sonic Adventure 2’s multiplayer springs to mind, as does more lesser-known efforts such as Iridium Runners, but I’m thinking of something more open.

Picture Crackdown, with its superhero powers of super jumps, air dashing, and ground pounding, as just a pure racer. Getting from one destination to another as fast as possible. Such is used in mission design with numerous open world games, after all, but never is it the focus. That’s what Freedom Sprint aims to change.

It seems with me I’m always going for open world type experiences when it comes to these concepts, and that’s true. For this one, I feel the open world is what would set it apart from other efforts. By no means does that mean this one is less focused, though. By being an open world, I see it as a way of forging your own path to victory by knowing how best to use the environment.

While there would be regular point-to-point challenges that are focused routes across this city, there would also be one-point challenges that see only a finish line for you to reach however you want, multi-point challenges that offer numerous checkpoints to hit in any order, and trial routes that shrink the size of those checkpoints while expecting you to navigate the more dangerous parts of this city.

Now, unlike when I outlined the concept in What I’m Waiting For Volume 10, there’s no outside the city here. Instead, various parks will bring a more natural side to this city that’s full of urbanisation. It’s like a Coruscant designed in our time, full of road networks with junctions between layers, man-made river channels cutting paths through various layers, and rail networks for fast travel around a layer. A perfect on-foot playground for those with the power, then.

The player character – who can be customised with a few select options – finds themselves able to use these powers. Having accidentally used them where a police patrol could see, they find themselves having to run and find somewhere to hide. Along the way, they encounter someone who offers them safety. The player character is now outlawed because of those powers.

Just as with anything, there’s always going to be those who utilise the powers to do bad. The police within the city now sees anyone with those powers to be bad. Even though this group do not use weapons against them or even fight them in any way, the police still try to hunt them down. Fortunately, evading the police isn’t that hard. It is instead what weapons the police are using to control them that is the difficult part.

The powers could be removed, but it is a harmful and painful process. Few would choose it. Hence why the police have weaponised the chemical that removes the powers. And such serves a gameplay purpose. There is an energy gauge that controls the use of all powers, which will recharge when no powers are being used. At first, the gauge will be small, able to be increased over time. When hit by a pellet from the police, however, a small section of it is removed. Permanently.

When you use your powers, you are generating experience. When back at the base, you can use that experience to increase the powers gauge or increase expertise with the powers. At first the glide will only allow you to travel in the direction you started it, but increasing your expertise with it will allow you one change. Increasing expertise in general powers use will slow down how much of that gauge you are using per second, which comes in useful when charging super jumps.

Eventually, you will become a powerhouse capable of moving about the city with ease – even if you get hit a few times. Of course, getting hit enough to reduce the gauge to nothing is a game over state, which will auto fail the mission and return you back to base with the starting gauge. Why are you moving about the city, when these powers will get you hunted down, then? To prove that not everyone who has them is a bad person. Something the police don’t seem to care about.

Finding out why is a secondary objective for the group. Now, if you’ve been reading up to here and wondering how this could possibly fit into a racing game, there’s a simple explanation for that. Every mission is a race. Whether against one or multiple others depends on the mission objective. To make sure that the AI racers can always finish an objective, they are immune to the pellets the police use, but the police will still aim at them if they see that other racer as an easier target.

It makes sense to keep yourself positioned away from the police, preferably with one or more racers between you and them. Or use your powers to avoid the aim of the police altogether. You’ll know if there’s police aiming at you thanks to the icon on the HUD that will show up red with a chemical reactor power that you can gain to show where the police are gathering.

Now, speaking of powers, there’s the super jump and glide already mentioned. There’s the quick dash, which allows you to run faster than normal. The air dash, which is the same as the quick dash but up in the air. The air stand will erect an invisible platform under your feet, allowing you to take a quick break while in the air. The dive will drop all your momentum while in the air to bring you closer to the ground.

The game being open world but not allowing you to explore it would be criminal, and so you can explore outside of missions. You won’t get the ability to do so until you progress the story enough to find a second group of outlawed people, which will then bring with it a specific optional quest to find more outlawed groups. You find them, explore their stories, and by the end they will help when the time comes.

Those groups you find might not be so moral at first, utilising distractions to help break their own from prisons, but you help them to understand that such stunts hurt anyone with powers. That while they might free one of their own, more will end up in prisons as the police get tougher in their handling of those with powers. There will be one group who don’t react to such talks, and so the only way to get them to back down is through challenging them to ever harder races, which you find out they were using to their advantage anyway, so give up on them.

There’s a city full of racing routes, meaning no two missions will ever fully be in the same area. The top layer of this city will allow you to see the sky, but they’re also the most dangerous. But if you want to discover the truth, eventually you have to break inside the Government building to do so. Which is where the story ends. I’m sure you can figure out how it goes.

Freedom Sprint is looking to provide a new take on open world racing, and on-foot racing. Have I achieved both, or even one of those things? Let me know, along with if you’d like to see the concept in action.

Images Taken From:
Crackdown 3 Xbox Store Page
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst Xbox Store Page
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected Trailer 1 Xbox Store Page