Funnel Runners

I was actually avoiding this game purely because it was an early access game. I don’t like playing early access games because of the limited content. I’m worried that I’ll start playing what’s available, and if it doesn’t get updated fast enough, I’ll get bored and forget about the game completely. That almost happened with Phasmophobia. I understand these are small developer teams, which is why the updates are so slow, but that’s exactly my point. They can’t push updates quickly enough to avoid the fizzling out that follows a suddenly popular game. By the time they get the update out or get to an official release, people have moved on, and the game fades away.

I hope that doesn’t happen here. I finally picked it up to play with a group of friends and had a surprising amount of fun. I thought with more people, the game would be too easy, but it seems they accounted for that. The larger your group, the more things that need to be fixed on the truck. In single-player, only 3 or so items need to be fixed. I love that they factored this in because it’s a fun game to play, but I’d hate to have to wait until friends are available.

So let’s get down to the game itself. Very simple. You are what appears to be a storm chaser and your truck breaks down in the middle of an evacuated town. You have to scavenge through the houses to find the parts to fix your truck while dodging hazards from the storm and smaller tornadoes. There is a giant F5 tornado approaching so you’ll want to be out of the area before it hits. Sounds simple. It’s not.

My biggest issue with completing tasks is that I can’t remember which houses I’ve already checked. I’m in a panic trying to search each house that I don’t remember which one I went in last. There is a radar tool that probably helps but I haven’t found it useful yet. Maybe if something were identifying on the house or in the yard, that would help me remember, but that could be part of the difficulty as well. Otherwise, it is funny screaming over the mic after finally finding the fuses or that last tire.

Repairing is not so much a challenge as it is an obstacle. I say that because they are very simple mini-games, like a timing challenge, but they do slow down the repair. I hit a few hitches and lag which made it even harder to get the timing down but I was able to adjust my settings to avoid that in the future. Know what you can’t avoid? That last minute, clutch fix getting blocked by the repair mini-game. If the F5 is getting close, I want to say within 0.5-ish miles out, you start getting slowly pulled towards the storm. The problem is, this pulls you away from the mini-game. So if all you had left was to fill a tank, you may get frustrated when the game keeps pulling you away from the task.

Even though it sounds frustrating, it’s one of those things where it’s funny to watch and laugh at. I wish I had a clip to show you but there was a moment where we were warning a friend that the tornado was near the house he was in. We watch from a distance as he steps outside only to be immediately sucked into the tornado and whipped around. As he’s being tossed around, I suddenly get struck by lightning and die. Another teammate jumped out of the truck to grab my corpse and got pulled into the tornado as well. The others laughed from the safety of the truck as our team got picked apart one by one.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game and I’m excited to keep playing. Honestly, if you check my profile, you’ll likely see that I already played shortly after typing this. I really want to complete a single player round before dragging the friend group back online. Although there’s only one level, it does shuffle the houses and randomize the items so it feels like a new experience each time. I’ll back off it a little to avoid the burnout but I saw an update may be coming soon so I’m excited to jump in.

It’s not a perfect game and 4/5 is a high score especially for an early access game, BUT that can change for good or bad depending on how this project ships. It can stall out and slip into oblivion or ride the wave to a successful launch. The game is genuinely fun and a great party game. I compared it to Phasmophobia earlier and I should mention, Phasmophobia is one of my favorite games which had a very similar start. I’ll keep watching Funnel Runners develop and follow it through launch. I’m excited to see where it goes.