SpeedRunners 2 Review: Great Core, Cluttered Sequel

What it is

SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed is the sequel to the 2016 indie party racer that ate half my university evenings. Up to eight runners sprint, grapple and wall-jump through looping tracks; fall behind the edge of the screen and you're out. Simple, vicious, hilarious. This time the game comes from Fair Play Labs, published by tinyBuild, with the original creators at DoubleDutch Games only consulting. It launched on 3 September on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch, and it's been in Game Pass since day one.

How it plays

When it clicks, it really clicks. The grappling hook still has that perfect weight - you snap onto a ceiling hook, swing over a gap, catch a booster pad and pass two people who thought they'd shaken you off. Power-ups (missiles, freeze rays, traps, a golden hook that yanks the leader back) keep every round unstable, and last-second steals are as loud on the couch as they ever were. Local split-screen and LAN are in, online lobbies take eight, and there's ranked play plus 64-player elimination tournaments for the sweaty crowd.

Where it stumbles

The problem is everything around that core. The new HD look is busy - bright backgrounds, bright effects, bright characters - and in a full lobby I regularly lost track of my own runner, which in a game built on split-second reads is a cardinal sin. The developer has publicly acknowledged the visibility issue, which is good, but it's still a launch problem. Performance on my PC wasn't smooth either: frame dips in the busiest moments, and a spec sheet asking for 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1660 Super for a 2D racer is hard to defend.

Then there's the clutter. A story campaign, cosmetic unlocks, gold skins, experimental custom modes - none of it is bad on its own (and I appreciate that trails are unlocked by playing, not paying), but it's all piled into the menus in front of the thing you actually came for. Twelve characters and 16 map layouts feel thin once the novelty wears off, especially next to the years of community content the original has built up. Steam users are split right down the middle (Mixed, around 56% positive at the time of writing), and I understand both halves.

Who it's for

If you have Game Pass, just try it with friends - it costs you nothing extra and the core is still a riot at a party. On Steam it's €9.99, which is fair for what's here, but if you already own the original, there's a reason it's still installed. Competitive players should wait a few patches for the clarity fixes before committing to ranked.

Verdict

SpeedRunners 2 has the right bones and the wrong priorities. The movement and the chaos are intact; the readability, the performance and the focus aren't. Fix those and this becomes the sequel it should have been. Right now it's a good party game wearing a costume that's far too loud.

Score: 6/10

Image: Jc Riley / CC BY 3.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiny_Build_Pre_Pax_Speedrunners_(151083323).jpeg