Proun Review: Proudly Priced

Pay What You Want. That's how much recently released indie racer Proun costs. A pretty bold move for solo developer Joost van Dongen (And unexpected as the good response killed his server within hours), who's been toiling on this game for the last six years while not working at Ronimo Games (Awesomenauts and Swords & Soldiers) and sleeping. Is it a gimmick though? Maybe he's letting us name the price because it's not worth anything?

If only it were that simple.

Those tiny balls on the left are actually part of the track further on. They're actually really big

The premise of the game is simple: You control a ball rolling along this tube. All along the tube is an array of obstacles with sole purpose of stopping or slowing you down. Avoid enough obstacles and you can gain enough speed to earn boosts that make you go even faster.

How is the racing fleshed out though? Well, not much. There's a “championship” mode where you just try to earn a certain number of points based on your placing in 3 races. Winning each one unlocks a new faster game mode. In addition to that, there's a time trial mode with your ghosts and up to 4 player split screen coop, though a gamepad would put you at a disadvantage here to be honest. The controls are rather simple. You just move left or right to control the ball along the tracks.

4 player coop or 1 player with 4 hands

Proun reminds me a lot of the Trackmania games. Incredibly basic control scheme but requires a deft touch to master. Yes, at the end of the day, you're merely moving left or right, but since your speed drops every time you turn, doing precision turns will help shave off an extra tenth of a second on your final lap times. Quite similar to how you had to choose the right moment to turn or let go of the accelerator in Trackmania to hit those perfect driving lines, you'll have to do the same in Proun to maintain maximum velocity.

Furthermore, the game gets harder by introducing faster speeds. When you first start a race, it's almost soothing to just slide around the tubes as you casually take in the scenery. At ultra speeds however, it's almost done using muscle memory as you try to finish each track without an embarrassingly bad time.

Muscle memory, where art thou?

Charm is what sets this apart from other indie racers out there. The large geometric objects that litter the track are pleasant to look at and easy to follow even at mind-bending speeds (They especially make for some great replays, which is a shame as there is no built-in replay feature). The ball itself is lifelike as it ripples and bends whenever you hit something or use the boost. If that wasn't enough, the jazz music's pretty great too as it complements the minimalist aesthetic very well.

However, unlike Trackmania, it doesn't have a quick restart feature. Restarts even requires the levels to be reloaded. This makes it difficult to maintain your momentum when you want to quickly restart a botched run and makes it a bit of chore to improve your scores on a track as you try to do that perfect run. A wasted chance here really as games that depend on mastery through repetition like Super Meat Boy need to make it easy for players to quickly restart with as little fuss as possible.

This looks both exhilarating (And scary) in motion

Other complaints, if you can even call these complaints for a technically “free” game, are that it's very light on content. With only 4 tracks (And one extra bonus track if you paid for it), it can get a bit boring if you're the kind of gamer that needs a minimum of ten tracks to consider a racing game, as a  proper game. Which is as bad as those close-minded gamers that don't consider Portal a proper game because it can be completed in 2 hours. It's grossly unfair and severely underestimates the entire game and it's potential.

The lack of tracks is hardly an issue as the developer has supplied a mod tool that allows modders to make their own custom tracks. It's a tad inaccessible since you'll need 3D Studio Max to do it (Unlike the built-in simplicity of Trackmania), the game certainly does look like it's going get pretty big once the community starts churning out tracks by the dozens.

3 days, and we've already got community efforts like this

All in all, give this game a shot. If you like it, please purchase it. It's not every day we get developers who sell their wares like this (On a new release no less) and if you really do enjoy it, that little bit of charity goes a long way.

Pros:

• Trackmania style: Easy to learn, hard to master
• Cheap
• Overall minimalist yet slick design
• 4 player coop
  
• Pay what you want. There's even a torrent if you're that cheap
• Mod tools available, so future content will be supplied by the community

Cons:

• Only 5 tracks
• Lacking in game modes
• Stiff difficulty curve after the 2nd difficulty level is unlocked
  

Verdict: Pay what you want. What are you waiting for?