Going fast in games was never about the highest number on the speedometer. From the days of Atari and Super Mario Bros., speed was about preserving momentum. You could go faster, run, drive, or fly at the highest speed, but could you control yourself well enough to avoid all obstacles in that state? The delicate balance of speed vs restraint on a casual playthrough and the addictive challenge of operating on ever-higher levels has been a basis for thousands of games since.
Haste is a zoned-in take on momentum: an autorunner with fun physics, tight controls, and plenty of close calls. Once you step out of a portal and into a randomly generated path, you want to keep going as fast as possible. Zoe’s world is falling apart, she always ran, was flung from place to place, but now something is different; it’s all crumbling behind her. Reach the first mound, launch into the air, and land on a decline so as not to lose your step. Up your speed, launch again, keep going, faster, squeeze through between obstacles, land, run, launch, pull out your hoverboard to gain more speed, land, slam into a portal, and get your score.
It shares a lot with other autorunners, with Sonic and speedrun-oriented games, but what sets it apart is the level of control you get after leaping. In those, verticality is often an afterthought—Haste modeled its gameplay and control scheme in a way where the player can be just as active both on the ground and in the air, focusing on preserving that sweet momentum at all times.
Both states have different amounts of friction, creating an enjoyable learning curve. While on the ground you can move faster horizontally, you do want to get up as soon as possible. Landing at a perfect angle provides you with a boost, and this is the exact mechanic that makes the game come together. Gliding, pressing a button to dive down, and changing your angle at the last second to match the layout of the terrain you are aiming for is the kind of magic that stays with you, that you think about for months to come.
The quality of the animations matches the energy of each state you are in, your character doing an energetic flip accentuated by a satisfying sound when you nail that landing, with the other states awarding a less satisfactory movement. Landings also grant energy, which can be used on the aforementioned hoverboard or one of the other unlockable skills, my favorite being the grapple hook which, though tricky, got me out of situations no other tool would.
Pushing you forward is the fantastic soundtrack and its ingenious use. As if the crystal clear visual style was not guiding you forward enough, giving you those tiniest of windows to squeeze through if you are up for the challenge, the pulsing music with some magical melodies sprinkled throughout should. If you want to listen to it at its best though, feel it accentuate the action, you have to keep going fast. Get too far behind and you will start seeing cracks underneath your feet, not to mention the music will distort and lose its exciting tempo. You want to hear those sweet beats again? Do better.
This constant game of craving the satisfaction of a perfect landing, the punishment of ruining the vibes hurting even more than a lost life, the pitter-patter of Zoe running on terrain, and her joyful noises while launching back up, it is all so immensely addicting. I think I could do it endlessly, which is why I am happy that the game allows you to continue running indefinitely after beating a boss if you can match its increasing speed requirements.
Right, the structure. Here is when things get muddled. Everything surrounding the gameplay is honestly either superfluous or very surface-level. Nothing is particularly bad or intrusive, and there are moments where they add a bit to the experience, but it all could have been so much more. First, Haste is a roguelite. Randomly generated terrain is an excellent fit for this game and I would say every type of obstacle is incredibly fun to work around, even parts that I initially found frustrating I eventually ended up loving. Choosing a path, however, does not add the layer of strategy I would want.
So quickly I began to default to the same idea: as many shops as possible, few question mark spaces that provide minigames for currency or just free upgrades, maybe one hard stage that gives you a free item if you beat it and at least two resting places to regain health. Do not get greedy, you will probably trip up along the way. It became so monotonous that I would quickly end up picking the full path at the start, which is thankfully an option, and just going at it without giving my path a second thought.
By the time I reach a boss I snap back out of the mesmerizing trance of its core gameplay, and once again I am impressed with how clever these encounters are. There are a total of four bosses, three repeating, and instead of forcing in some kind of action combat as several platformers do, Haste’s encounters rely on what you know best: running. Though these are the clunkiest parts of the game, they are also some of the most memorable, with a barrage of high tension situations requiring risky maneuvers.
The items split into providing more health, healing, and energy or upping your boost so that you gain faster speeds at a faster rate. Here, again, I would just mindlessly pick up at least one for each. Everything is good but some items are a no-brainer like the flat speed bonuses which almost guarantee an S-rank on all future levels if you know what you are doing. There are also flat upgrades to health and energy etc. that can be acquired back at the hub with currency awarded for each run, be that completed or failed.
My biggest disappointment is in the narrative. It tackles the ever-changing, shifting world and ripples in time, which is a good idea for a roguelite, I always felt that incorporating gameplay loops into a story is the way to go, but Haste’s storytelling feels rather flat for how much dialogue there is. The characters look great, they match their personalities and provide just that bit of friendliness that you need sometimes, but they also never surprise or clash in any interesting way.
There was a moment at the very end of the game that gave me pause. It was a touching finale that plays out differently to your standard “press A to move to the next dialogue bubble” style of conversation, and it struck me that the reason why I was so uninvested, barely remembering names, was because the pace and presentation of the events matched the uninspired roguelike elements as opposed to the fantastic gameplay. I want to be running, not reading dialogue, the tiny text on item descriptions, or a route map.
Is this a deal breaker? Absolutely not. These are all aspects worth pointing out, but ultimately Haste is the type of game that I want to see at least three of each year. I would only be satisfied with its reception if it spawned a genre of its own. Maybe it did not nail its structure on the first try, but with gameplay this uniquely satisfying, I desperately need it to be a defining title. It understands speed, it gets its presentation, what kind of music to use, which obstacles fit its gameplay, how to design bosses, up the level of challenge, and get my brain constantly tingling.
Even some of the bugs I encountered did not detract from the whole experience, and they were actively being fixed as I was playing, but a few big ones still exist at the time of writing. One is randomly losing health when loading into a new stage, this seems to happen after losing and the game does not give you control of Zoe before she falls to the crumbling earth behind her. Second is the final set of stages randomly turning off the music. Third is one of the legendary items, one which slows down time to remove obstacles, sometimes permanently keeping the slow-down state.
The developers eliminated a lot of the other bugs at a fast rate during my playthrough, as well as listening to community feedback and implementing balance changes, so I am hopeful that in a matter of weeks, any major hiccups will be gone. Without them, what you have is an unbelievably exciting, one-of-a-kind game that I can only hope does not go unnoticed by the industry. This is something special, even with its failings, and it would be a mistake for me to not recognize it and prop Haste up as one of the best games this year.
Mateusz played Haste on PC with a provided review copy.
