By John Walker on October 25th, 2012 at 7:00 pm.
Arcade racer Distance comes from a few of the folk who brought us Nitronic Rush, the Digipen driveygame that impressed so much. While some of the team have slunk off to AAA developers, a core understand the true value of purity, and are staying defiantly indie. (No, seriously, congrats to all who got jobs off the back of their stellar university efforts.) Under the name Refract Studios, Distance is inevitably being Kickstarted, and now we’ve an announcement trailer too. It’s looking pretty fine.
They’re after a sizeable $125,000, but are already well on their way there with nearly $37k in the pot. What are people funding? This:
Oh wait, that was a complete waste of everyone’s time. Sorry. Let’s try the Kickstarter video instead. Jump to 3:20 to see it in action:
The themes of Nitronic are repeated here – gravity-defying racing on impossible tracks, this time far more pretty, along with multiplayer, and driving upside down, like in real life. There’s also a real push to see it be fully moddable. But obviously they’re after funding to get all this done without a publisher. Will they make it?! I actually know, but I’m not telling.
25/10/2012 at 19:10 SominiTheCommenter says:
I sure hope they make it, even addim Multiplayer would already be worth it. With mods it’s even better. It’s even Torcht doing the music again.
25/10/2012 at 19:11 Henke says:
Already backed. :)
Nitronic Rush was one of last year’s best racing games so I’m really looking forward to this.
25/10/2012 at 19:16 DJJoeJoe says:
I find it hard to sit through these videos of people selling their games. Nitronic Rush was rad, :) .
25/10/2012 at 19:46 Glen Moyes says:
Backed. And yes, Nitronic Rush was very rad.
25/10/2012 at 19:57 kaplonkaplonk says:
Please let there be a “Ghost Ride the Whip” mode!
25/10/2012 at 20:21 sirdavies says:
Will definetly back. Nitronic Rush is awesome.
25/10/2012 at 20:32 Mctittles says:
Multiplayer alone would make this an instant buy for me. I was waiting for this news to get an article on RPS. I wonder if having a Kickstarter can negatively effect talk about your game. Since it turns into a kickstarter article instead of “they are making a sequel” article.
25/10/2012 at 21:05 Koshiir Ra says:
Already backed this. Interesting fact: They said they have another trailer in the works that will show off more gameplay. Should be coming out in the next few days.
25/10/2012 at 21:08 Hodge says:
Frankly, I’d happily pledge in support of that guy being called Hightower.
25/10/2012 at 22:09 Urthman says:
Anyone who gave Nitronic Rush a brief try and was unimpressed might want to go back and try the hardcore levels where they turn off the wings and make you learn to do flips and drive on walls. It’s like a combination of Trackmania and Tony Hawk (or Rollcage 2 if you remember that one).
25/10/2012 at 22:15 Mr. Mister says:
The real deal are community levels (though you may count Gladiator and Nitro Tunnel in too).
Those things will kill you, Kill you, and KILL you, until you dominate them and show’em who’s the boss.
25/10/2012 at 22:12 Urthman says:
Hmm. Has any racing game ever done that thing there with the hud entirely on the outside of the car? (Obviously we’ve had in-game first-person dashboards before). I think I might like that idea.
25/10/2012 at 22:29 Nic Clapper says:
Closest I can think of would be Split/Second — it has the HUD sorta wrapped around the back of the car (not actually ON it tho). Blur has some HUD stuff wrapped around like S/S too (only pickups tho).
This looks super cool tho — hope they are successful!
26/10/2012 at 03:00 Tiax says:
To be honest I don’t have the slightest idea about how most of those levels are supposed to be beaten, lest drived on…
29/10/2012 at 21:02 Mr. Mister says:
Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwuz066NM8g
25/10/2012 at 22:51 fooga44 says:
Nitronic rush was a real gem made with love, they put a lot of work into it. I’d love to see what they could pull off with more devs/cash to put more work into it. Racing is pretty stagnant as a genre and I liked how Nitronic rush was actually made as A VIDEOGAME, a game made by nerds for other nerds who heart games. Like trying to do new things other games have not yet done that we’ve all thought about at one point or another playing racing games.
I’d love to combine nitronic rush + pod + maybe some car combat multiplayer mode.
pod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYRPB2ssjkA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnI8a_SHjf4
25/10/2012 at 23:30 DarkNightRJ says:
Seem’s like this isn’t going fast enough. It started off strong first day or two now its just slowly creeping up. I don’t get why anyone wouldn’t want to back this, the first one was amazing and this will be even better.
I’d like to raise my pledge but I don’t know if $10 more for a soundtrack and a digital concept art book are worth it to me.While I do want the game to succeed I still wanna feel like I get the most out of my money,
25/10/2012 at 23:39 fooga44 says:
Procrastination / wait and see crowd (i.e. do everything on the last day or two before the kickstarter ends).
I’ll be honest with you, even though I knew of Planetary annihilation I didn’t fund it because I knew that the procrastination curve would kick in at some point.
27/10/2012 at 15:18 Mr. Mister says:
“Procrastination curve”. This needs to be its official term.
26/10/2012 at 00:08 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I’ve actually been searching for Nitronic Rush but I couldn’t recall where I encountered it and what it was called. I forgot to try it when I read the article. Distance looks rather nice, too.
26/10/2012 at 08:14 jikavak says:
You can click the Nitronic Rush tag on this article and it’ll take you to the older ones about it.
26/10/2012 at 23:49 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I know, I know. Just commenting on how I’ve been looking for the related title. Been enjoying it so far. But thanks anyway.
26/10/2012 at 00:18 Chizu says:
I already backed this. Since Nitronic Rush appealed to exactly what I like in arcadey racing games, it reminded me of Rush 2049 (an obvious influence). Put my money down as soon as I could.
I do hope this makes its target. Do want so much.
26/10/2012 at 02:15 Big Daddy Dugger says:
I had a friend over that’s only into xbox halo/CoD stuff and he was amazed when were smoking weed and playing nitronic rush on my tv, needless to say he was depressed for months after i told him they don’t have it on xbox.
26/10/2012 at 02:49 ghkhgk says:
http://clxu.eu/87lhi
26/10/2012 at 08:23 LionsPhil says:
…Nitronic Rush was released? Hunh. Completely missed that.
27/10/2012 at 15:17 Mr. Mister says:
Well, the guys had balls releasing it the same day as Skyrim. That’s probably why you missed it, but you have no excuse now.
NONE.
27/10/2012 at 18:54 LionsPhil says:
Indeed! And I grinned all through Story Mode. Good fun!
29/10/2012 at 20:16 Mr. Mister says:
You’ve probably played most of them by now, but you now must advance through the Hardcore levels! They wingless mechanic is what makes the game what it truly is for me.
A little bit of frustration is not rare at the beggining, but you’ll get used to it: you’ll be able to beat Hardcore Black in two deaths by the end of the week. There’s quite a difficulty gap with Gladiator though.
And once you feel you can dominate the standard Hardcore maps… then go Commnity levels. They’re the REAL deal. Can you take my “Kill it with FIRE!” world top score down?
RUSH!
26/10/2012 at 19:24 MikoSquiz says:
Its resemblance to F-Zero is making me moist.
27/10/2012 at 00:50 zhanba6 says:
http://pp。cc/6o1x