Back in April of this year we checked out the trailer for a very cool looking upcoming platformer called Planet Runners (Free) whose focus was having players compete against each other in online races to the finish. A cool cast of characters and plenty of dastardly weapons a la Mario Kart had Planet Runners sounding rather promising. Then just a couple of weeks ago, developer Happy Doze soft-launched Planet Runners in select regions, hoping to expand the audience of the game which had been limited to a smaller closed beta test. Well that soft launch didn’t last very long as over the weekend Planet Runners officially launched worldwide. Check out the trailer if you missed it previously.

One of the cool things Planet Runners is trying to do is simplify the whole concept down to something that works well for mobile. There are only three control actions: Tap the right side of the screen to jump or double jump, tap the lower left of the screen to dash, and tap the upper left of the screen to use your character’s unique Ultimate Ability. The racers themselves run on their own and typically an entire race won’t last more than a minute or two. And in addition to matching up and playing with random players online, you can also create private races which will generate a unique code that you can share with whomever you’d like to race against. Overall Planet Runners seems really cool so far and it’s free to download and try, so be sure to give it a spin and drop by the forum thread to share your thoughts with other racers.