SUNRUNNER

Race the sun across a noir comic-book planet. Light is your fuel.

On Kessler, the sun crosses the sky faster than a race lasts. Your rocket sled runs on sunlight, so every lap is a race against the clock overhead. Noon fills your boost. Golden hour doubles the boost pads. Then night falls, the solar charge dies, rain hits the canyon and all you have left is your headlights.

SUNRUNNER is a high-speed hover racer drawn like a Silver Age comic. The world is halftone and ink, and every crash, drift and boost lands with a big comic word.

LIGHT IS FUEL

• Open sky charges your boost fast. Shade, tunnels and night barely charge it at all.
• Each phase of the day changes the rules: high sun, golden hour, nightfall, dawn. A dial at the top of the screen shows what's coming.
• Thermal vents fire in daylight and go cold after dusk. Night storms bring rain, slick roads and darkness.

DRIFT LIKE YOU MEAN IT Hop into a power slide and hold the corner. The longer and cleaner your drift, the higher it charges, through three levels. Let go to fire a mini-turbo. Some corners are built for drifting, and some shortcuts are impossible without it.

PICK YOUR ROUTE (AND YOUR RISK) The track forks again and again into routes that feel like different maps. The faster the shortcut, the easier it is to crash. Before each fork the HUD shows how much time a route saves and how risky it is.

• SALT HIGHWAY: a long, safe arc across white salt flats and glowing prisms.
• DUNE SEA: a shortcut over shifting sand.
• SKY SERPENT: a raised road over a ravine, with switchback drift corners and a long drop.
• SUN FURNACE ROAD: basalt and a blazing field of mirrors.
• THE PRESS: straight through a printing hall where the newspaper is made.
• BACK ALLEY: the city turns black and white.
• SALT TUNNEL: underground, through your X-ray goggles.
• Plus the Cavern, the Ridge, the Wreck Cut, the Jump Line and the Graveyard Run.

THE SUNRUN CUP Four legs, two laps each, against five rival Sunrunners: Kira Sol, Moth, Old Hask, Vex Ardent and Brakka.

• Every leg rolls its own conditions: sandstorm, night rain, dawn run, low gravity, turbo hour, brawl or golden rings.
• Bet your credits before a leg. A top-3 finish pays ×2, and a win pays ×4.
• Each leg has a bounty on one rival. Take them down to collect it.
• Between legs, a gentleman lizard named Salazar pours you a drink. Each drink is an upgrade (common, rare or legendary), and they stack for the rest of the cup. Pay for another round, or gamble on the House Special.
• Most points takes the cup, and your best score is saved.

CONTACT RACING Shields wear down on scrapes and wall hits, and a nose-first crash wrecks you. Ram a rival from behind or pin them against a wall to take them down. KA-BOOM.

THREE SLEDS

• Needle: top speed and raw thrust, fragile in a fight.
• Kestrel: sharp steering and the best drift control.
• Mule: three engines, heavy shields, wins every shove.

IT'S HARD (ON PURPOSE) The rivals are fast, and they get faster each leg. Your upgrades are what make the cup winnable. There are three difficulty levels: Rookie, Runner and Sunrunner.

CONTROLS │ Action │ Keyboard │ Controller │ │ Thrust │ W / ↑ │ Right trigger │ │ Brake │ S / ↓ │ Left trigger │ │ Steer │ A D / ← → │ Left stick │ │ Drift (hold) │ Space │ RB │ │ Boost │ Shift │ A │ │ Reset to checkpoint │ R │ Y │ │ Camera │ C │ Right stick click │ │ Pause │ Esc │ Start │

Tip: hit thrust in the last half-second before GO for a perfect launch.

SETTINGS & ACCESSIBILITY

• Settings are laid out as a newspaper on the desk.
• Simple UI turns off the messy, jiggly comic effects.
• The comic filter can be switched off, and the camera can be calmed.
• Camera shake, render scale and quality can all be adjusted.

PLATFORMS

• Browser: needs a recent Chrome or Edge. The browser version uses a plain font, because browsers can't use the system fonts.
• Windows (64-bit).
• macOS (universal): the first time, right-click the app and choose Open. It isn't notarized.

ABOUT Made for the Summer Games Jam, theme LIGHT, in Godot 4. Everything is original: tracks, sleds and scenery are generated in code, and every sound is synthesized.