How a Student Speedrunning Game Topped the Charts

While the primary objective of speedrunning a game might be to complete in the shortest possible time, that’s not the practice’s only defining quality. Watch any seasoned speedrunner play a game and you’ll marvel at their focus and split-second decision-making, the way they’re always leaning towards the direction of the finish line. Speedrunning isn’t just about beating a record, but about the sensation of gaining momentum and never letting yourself sacrifice even a bit of it.

This is exactly the sensation you feel when you play FrostRunner, a frenetic, first-person, free-running platformer specifically designed for speedrunning. The game has enjoyed quite a bit of success since its release earlier this year, garnering upwards of 70,000 downloads in its first two weeks on Steam alone. It also hit the platform’s front page and topped its “Trending” charts during this time.

But that’s not the only thing impressive about the game — it also happens to have been designed by a team of thirteen students attending the Guildhall video game development program at Southern Methodist University. If the game’s popularity on Steam isn’t evidence enough of how much of an achievement it is, it also went on to take home third place in the “Best Gameplay” category of the Intel University Games Showcase hosted in San Francisco, CA this past March.

It’s a well-deserved award; FrostRunner is made great by its mechanics and gameplay, which cut away any and all distractions without compromising the game’s depth. Each of FrostRunner’s levels contains a timer, a finish line, a leaderboard, and little else beside the platforms and obstacles that separate the player from their goal. Mechanics like flinging yourself across gaps using special glowing nodes or activating moving platforms slowly reveal themselves as the player progresses from level to level, but challenges are presented in a fairly straightforward manner.

This no-frills approach was intentional. “One of the things I fought for was making sure the player never felt like we wasted their time,” Lead Programmer Zach Bracken said. They sculpted the game’s mechanics and feel to appeal to speedrunners, adding a number of devices to answer the needs of this intended audience.

“Some examples would be instant reloading, leaderboards that breed competitiveness, and making sure that we allow them to break our levels,” Bracken said. “The last one is really important and something we struggled with at first. There were many levels we found exploits for, but instead of closing them off and forcing the player to stay on the ‘critical path,’ we left the exploits there for the skilled players that would find them.”

That’s what makes Frostrunner so compelling. It’s natural to improvise when under the threat of a timer, and sometimes making an ambitious leap or angling a maneuver in a new way might mean the difference between making the leaderboard and not. Some levels favor even more unconventional means of traversal, like vaulting over walls in creative ways or making shortcuts out of narrow ledges.

To encourage this experimentation, each level is designed minimally, highlighting only the most important features with visual cues. “We wanted our players to focus on movement and speed,” Art Lead Claire Bian explained. “On the other hand, considering that we only had three artists on the team and needed to create enough content for 36 levels within 24 weeks, we decided on a very simple and muted style — Brutalism. This art style allowed us to create assets almost without the need for baking from high-res models.” This functional approach to the game’s architecture serves it well, allowing players to easily form plans of attack for each run.

FrostRunner went through a number of changes throughout the development process. “The original pitch for the game is nothing like what we ended up with,” Lead Producer Gerald Milton admitted. The game started as what Milton describes as an “experiential crafting puzzler” before evolving into a game based around a weapon that could be used to teleport across levels.

Eventually, however, the FrostRunner team decided to ditch the puzzles in favor of the traversal mechanics they’d been honing. “Through each iteration, we moved closer and closer to our final pillar: ‘Movement is everything,’” Milton explained. “We found over and over again that it was the actual moving that was fun, not the thinking through and solving of puzzles.” It ultimately turned out to be a judicious move; puzzles would have only slowed the pace of the game, which sings when given the chance to be flexible with your movements while in constant motion.

The FrostRunner team learned a lot not only during the development process but during its distribution, as well. One key takeaway they gained was that games don’t require advertising to become successful; rather, connecting with a community can be a much more reliable way of fostering an audience.

“Your consumers are better than any marketing department,” Milton said. “Deliver the highest quality experience you can to your consumers, and they will market your game for you.“ Despite FrostRunner’s success on Steam, the team didn’t spend a single dime on marketing. “Our community really embraced the game and spread it. It hit the front page of Steam completely organically,” Milton said.

Lastly, the FrostRunner team also had some words of wisdom for any aspiring game developers who might considering pursuing an education or career in game design: Get your hands dirty.

“Make games!” Bracken said. “Game jams are great chances to make something small and learn a lot at the same time. There are a lot of cool game engines that are friendly to new developers (Game Maker Studio 2 and Unity for example) and the community around those engines have created a bunch of awesome tutorials to help you get started!”

FrostRunner is currently available for PC.