Floating Runner: Quest for the 7 Crystals
released on Jan 19, 1996
Floating Runner: Quest for the 7 Crystals is a 3D platform adventure consisting of fourteen levels across seven different themed environments, with classic locales ranging from tropical forests to frozen tundra. As in the Mega Man series of titles, players can choose which of the worlds to attempt in whatever order they so desire. Populating each world are enemies in the guise of cute animals that can be dispatched using power-ups and weapons found scattered throughout the area. While avoiding the treacherous chasms and gaps that permeate the floating worlds, players will need to seek out special gems while keeping an eye on the time remaining to complete each world. Continues are unlimited so failure is little more than a temporary hindrance.
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This game, the Jumping Flash games and the King's Field games all have the early low poly graphics I absolutely adore. The levels are pleasant and vibrant, and the music is pretty good, but that's about all I can really praise about Floating Runner. The camera is way too zoomed in, your character slips and slides all over the place and besides the hit sparks enemies barely react to being damaged. Bumping into anything or taking damage from enemies pushes you back slightly, which can make the tighter platforming sections a tad bit more frustrating. Speaking of the enemies, there's way too many of them and they love to gang tackle you. Also, your default weapon shoots in an arc, which is shit.
Not really good, but has that kind of lovable 5 polygon jank of early 3D platformers, like a lesser Jumping Flash. Don't know if I'll actually finish this, but a cute diversion.
The first time I ever heard of this game was when I was just mindlessly scrolling through a list of PS1 ISOs to download (don't tell the police please) and the name Floating Runner just happened to jump out at me. It's a name I read and went "that's a platformer isn't it". In fact, one of the first 3D platformers on the PS1, and listing it in my 3D Platformers Before Mario 64 list made me more curious, so I finally checked it out today.
Right off the bat, this is some good-ass low poly art. Love the character and enemy models and love the colors of each level. If you want a good reference for the early PS1 aesthetic, well personally I would go with Jumping Flash first but this is also nice. After the art though, the next thing I noticed was the camera. Look, as someone who is a fan of 3D platformers in this era I am not one to complain about a problematic camera, I'll struggle with that shit gladly. But this game has a very different problem with it's camera and that's that it's pointed way too much at the ground. You have two choices for the camera: angled slightly in front of you but mostly looking at the ground, or entirely looking at the ground. I ended up having to crane my neck slightly in order to tell what was coming up next. This game also has tank controls, which isn't necessarily a deal breaker, as the level design does feel like it accommodates for it, the real problem here is the jump and the attack.
The jump is way too quick, a game with tank controls like this needs a little bit of floaty-ness in order to allow the player to aim their jump and make adjustments in the air. Otherwise, trying to jump on small platformers or specific enemies feels impossible. The game gives you a run button to make long jumps with, and it really feels like a luck of the draw whether you make it or bump into the edge and fall off. And lord help you if when you fall you land on a lower part of the stage, because you're gonna have to climb all the way back up just to try the same risky jump, all while a pretty strict time limit continues counting down.
As for the attack, it's a gun with a really weird arc, one that you really gotta put effort into in order to hit anything. You can get new weapons, but they use collectibles that only come out of defeated enemies as ammo, and every time you lose all your health you lose all those collectibles. Dying isn't that big of a deal since you have infinite continues and start right from where you die, but this leads to almost never getting to use the other weapons. It doesn't help that the game loves throwing a shit ton of enemies at you in such a way that it feels nearly impossible to get out of those situations without losing health. Eventually I found myself just running past every enemy in order to rush to the goal.
At the end of every level you hit a crystal (there's definitely more than seven, I don't know why they specify 7), and sometimes the crystal is switching between colors. This allows you to choose which of several level types you want to go to next, as the levels, outside of the first and last two, are randomly ordered. In every run I had my second level was different, and this is neat but also leads to situations where the second level is an absurd difficulty spike compared to the first one. Still, a neat concept that allows for repeat playthroughs to feel unique.
Honestly I didn't mean to go into this review to complain about how rough this game is, but I just wanna make it clear that this game should be approached only as an interesting artifact of the early PS1 days. I doubt many people can get much out of the way it plays, but it's no doubt fascinating to see a developer try and figure out what the hell a fully 3D game should be. And like I said, very cute aesthetics, the main characters are named Lay and Cress and I love them. If your looking for an early PS1 platformer with cute art and actually plays well, go with Jumping Flash, and leave this for when you finished that. Also if your wondering why I marked this as abandoned, I figured out the final boss is nearly impossible without a certain subweapon that I completely missed in another level, and I don't feel like doing all of that over again.
Right off the bat, this is some good-ass low poly art. Love the character and enemy models and love the colors of each level. If you want a good reference for the early PS1 aesthetic, well personally I would go with Jumping Flash first but this is also nice. After the art though, the next thing I noticed was the camera. Look, as someone who is a fan of 3D platformers in this era I am not one to complain about a problematic camera, I'll struggle with that shit gladly. But this game has a very different problem with it's camera and that's that it's pointed way too much at the ground. You have two choices for the camera: angled slightly in front of you but mostly looking at the ground, or entirely looking at the ground. I ended up having to crane my neck slightly in order to tell what was coming up next. This game also has tank controls, which isn't necessarily a deal breaker, as the level design does feel like it accommodates for it, the real problem here is the jump and the attack.
The jump is way too quick, a game with tank controls like this needs a little bit of floaty-ness in order to allow the player to aim their jump and make adjustments in the air. Otherwise, trying to jump on small platformers or specific enemies feels impossible. The game gives you a run button to make long jumps with, and it really feels like a luck of the draw whether you make it or bump into the edge and fall off. And lord help you if when you fall you land on a lower part of the stage, because you're gonna have to climb all the way back up just to try the same risky jump, all while a pretty strict time limit continues counting down.
As for the attack, it's a gun with a really weird arc, one that you really gotta put effort into in order to hit anything. You can get new weapons, but they use collectibles that only come out of defeated enemies as ammo, and every time you lose all your health you lose all those collectibles. Dying isn't that big of a deal since you have infinite continues and start right from where you die, but this leads to almost never getting to use the other weapons. It doesn't help that the game loves throwing a shit ton of enemies at you in such a way that it feels nearly impossible to get out of those situations without losing health. Eventually I found myself just running past every enemy in order to rush to the goal.
At the end of every level you hit a crystal (there's definitely more than seven, I don't know why they specify 7), and sometimes the crystal is switching between colors. This allows you to choose which of several level types you want to go to next, as the levels, outside of the first and last two, are randomly ordered. In every run I had my second level was different, and this is neat but also leads to situations where the second level is an absurd difficulty spike compared to the first one. Still, a neat concept that allows for repeat playthroughs to feel unique.
Honestly I didn't mean to go into this review to complain about how rough this game is, but I just wanna make it clear that this game should be approached only as an interesting artifact of the early PS1 days. I doubt many people can get much out of the way it plays, but it's no doubt fascinating to see a developer try and figure out what the hell a fully 3D game should be. And like I said, very cute aesthetics, the main characters are named Lay and Cress and I love them. If your looking for an early PS1 platformer with cute art and actually plays well, go with Jumping Flash, and leave this for when you finished that. Also if your wondering why I marked this as abandoned, I figured out the final boss is nearly impossible without a certain subweapon that I completely missed in another level, and I don't feel like doing all of that over again.