During PAX West this past September, we met up with the folks from Timberman (Free) developer Digital Melody as they showed us at least half a dozen new mobile games that they had in the works. One that stuck out as especially clever to me was Runventure, which looked to create a serious one-button platformer but not of the auto-running variety. The way they’re trying to accomplish this is with a slider at the bottom of the screen which you’ll use to make your character run right or left. The further you push in either direction the faster he’ll run, but also as you’re pushing in either direction a guide line arcs out from your character which indicates how long and high he’ll jump if you let go of the screen. It’s tricky to wrap your head around, but even with a few minutes of practice it started to click with me when we played that early version of Runventure at PAX. Well I’m happy to report that Runventure is ready to see the light of day on March 15th, and Digital Melody has put together a new launch trailer showing off all the features of the game.
The one-button platformer has been something of a white whale on mobile, as games like Super Mario Run (Free) and Leap Day (Free) absolutely nail a great one-button platforming experience but at the expense of free movement and other concessions that make the whole thing work. I like auto-runners just fine, but I like them in addition to more typical free movement platformers, and not as a replacement. So to see a developer trying to create a free movement platformer but still utilize one-button mechanics is really interesting to me just from a design perspective. It’s been several months since I was able to try out that early version of Runventure, but even then it worked quite well so I’m anxious to see how the final product stacks up. As mentioned Runventure will be released on March 15th, and if you click this link from an iOS 11 device you can pre-order the game right now and it’ll just auto-download to your device when it’s available.
