When developer Wilhelm Nylund shared a video of the upcoming Haste: Broken Worlds on Twitter earlier this week, it almost immediately exploded. Since then, the preview has reached almost 1 million views, as well as thousands of retweets and likes. Much of the ongoing conversation, however, involves wishing Haste’s speed and momentum could be reproduced in a much larger game: Sonic Frontiers.
“Better Sonic than Sonic,” said Samuel Molina, a Spanish designer currently working on Star Citizen at Cloud Imperium Games.
“[W]It would be better for independent developers to do that [Sonic] game that the company has been doing [Sonic] for 31 years, “said another Twitter user,” but it’s not surprising at all. “
“You’ve left the perfect video for Sonic fans to be upset,” a third party said.
We’ve been working on the first playable character for Haste! The messenger! pic.twitter.com/sCDtZORb71
– wilhelm nylund (@wilnyl) June 15, 2022
Haste is currently in development at Landfall Games, the Swedish company behind hits such as Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Clustertruck. Nylund, general manager and designer of the studio, told Kotaku that Haste is a racing game in which a large group of players are reduced through several rounds, almost like a battle royale. The video uploaded early Wednesday morning shows the first of several playable characters destined for release.
While Haste apparently draws more inspiration from impulse-based games (think Tribes, Tiny Wings, and Counter-Strike surf maps), Nylund understands why Sonic came up so often in response to his video. Sega built the initial reputation of the blur blur by being faster than its competitors (i.e. Nintendo and its relatively laborious Mario games), so it only makes sense that Haste, which on its surface is about speed, resonate with Sonic fans.
“I can definitely see why people make the comparison,” Nylund told Kotaku in a direct message. “The Sonic franchise seems to be the first thing that comes to mind when the concept of incredibly fast running comes up.”
As funny as Haste may sound, this response also implies general disappointment with what we’ve seen from Sonic Frontiers so far. The first images revealed a smooth “open zone” game that looked more like a change of Unreal engine assets than a next-generation entry into the typical vibrant Sonic franchise, and subsequent projections have not alleviated indifference. general. With another potential disappointment on the way, it’s only natural that fans will be desperate for anything that seems to embody Sonic’s “must go fast” potential.
“I see these comments as a massive compliment!” said Nylund. “It’s incredibly fun to know that we’ve done something that seems to offer the fantasy of speed so strongly to people.”
Haste: Broken Worlds has recently entered full steamy development, but Landfall Games is accepting entries for a future alpha multiplayer if you’re interested in trying it out soon.