SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed Is A Competitive Platformer Aiming To Maintain Its Predecessors’ Momentum

By Elijah Gonzalez | September 19, 2025 | 1:00pm

Video Games Features speedrunners 2

SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed Is A Competitive Platformer Aiming To Maintain Its Predecessors’ Momentum

There’s a certain brand of player who enjoys going fast at any cost, pushing games to their limit as they map out every corner and glitch, all in pursuit of reaching the finish line just a little bit faster. Much like its predecessor, the fittingly named SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed, is for this kind of person. It’s a competitive 2D platformer one that takes inspiration from both platform fighters and Mario Kart, resulting in breakneck races full of deadly projectiles and killer turns. Its open playtest begins today, and having already had hands-on with the game, I can confirm it’s a high-speed experience that rewards skill—case in point, I got dog walked by its devs and internal testers.

Handled by Fair Play Labs, the studio behind Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 1 and 2, this sequel takes the basic structure of its 2013 predecessor and combines it with 3D graphics, updated netcode, and eight-player support. It’s currently aimed at a 2026 release, but you can already see the vision, even if that vision involves getting Scorpion-hooked to a fiery death.

As for how the game works, you and your opponents race laps around the map, 2D platforming over obstacles, like crates, and utilizing your grappling hook on designated ceilings to get the upper hand. The catch is that instead of completing a set number of laps, the goal is survival: like in a Battle Royale game, there’s a ring of fire that slowly closes in. Basically, all of the players are shown on the same screen, and you die if you fall behind and disappear off the edge of the frame. As a race progresses, the ring of fire around the screen closes in, leaving less and less margin for error.

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This encroaching hazard gives rise to all sorts of interesting strategies. Each player has a meter that represents their currently stored boost, which can be used to sprint. You can use it as soon as you hit a snag, or store it up until right after you hit a section of the map that naturally speeds you up, utilizing the terrain to your advantage to suddenly increase the distance between you and your trailing foe. And as previously mentioned, there’s very much a Mario Kart thing going on, as you can find items that give you powerful abilities like a freeze ray, defensive shield, or, most infamous of all, the hook, which basically lets you switch positions with an opponent if it lands. It all leads to quick reversals of fortune that make it so that you need to pay attention to both the stages and your foes.

However, while that sounds like it could devolve into an item-chucking RNG-fest where Blue Shell-like projectiles decide wins and losses, my time with the game indicated it had a great deal of competitive potential. Sure, the controls are very simple, with the basic inputs being to jump, slide, use items, grapple hook, and boost, but these could be combined with the layout of stages to perform some impressive moves.

I got my first taste of this depth in the incredibly obtuse tutorial that almost immediately showcased a range of advanced techniques, which honestly could have been explained a lot better. Hopefully, this is all just a placeholder—it very badly needs a video demonstrating what these tricks are supposed to look like in motion, along with input footage—but despite being a bad teacher, I eventually got the gist of various methods to transfer momentum and maintain speed.

For instance, instead of running normally, apparently performing short jumps can help keep your momentum better. To do this, I was instructed to perform a short hop, then a slide, then hold the slide, then hold the jump while sliding to perform buffered hops to keep my speed. This was just one of many skills not so convincingly taught by the tutorial, and the others included “slope surfing,” “reverse grappling,” “wall climb boosting,” and more proper nouns that seem like the kind of thing you’d usually learn from a pro-player in a YouTube video. It’s nice that there’s some attempt to explain the game’s advanced maneuvers, but this instruction still needs a lot of work. Basically, there’s a lot going on here, and you can very much tell this was made by the devs behind a pair of platform fighting games that took heavy inspiration from Super Smash Bros. Melee and its infinitely deep systems.

All of that said, while all of this makes the game sound obtuse and inpenetrable, the reality is that none of these techniques felt essential for simply dropping in and enjoying the game. Once started actually playing, I largely had a good time swinging around corners, sabotaging my foes, and figuring out the best ways to get through tricky wall-jumping sections. The core experience was intuitive enough to get into the game and move through these sometimes devious levels, even if some of the advanced players I was up against were consistently crushing the lobby by using the above-mentioned skills—this will very much be a game that needs some good skill-based matchmaking for those who don’t have a group of similarly skilled friends to play with.

At its best, the game evoked a flow reminiscent of a certain blue hedgehog as I jumped over hazards, slid through narrow passages, and swung to maintain momentum, booking it through these stages as my opponents exploded from a well-timed dash. Even without knowing the nitty-gritty of maximizing speed, there’s plenty of fun to be had.

However, while the game worked as a casual experience, there were some drawbacks from the perspective of a new player. For one, because the camera is presented via a Smash Bros.-style single shared screen instead of one that’s tailored to you specifically, it can be difficult or impossible to see what’s coming next on the map if you’re in the lead, forcing you to memorize map layouts in a way that can make it overly punishing to be in first place.

Beyond this, I also ran into a few rocky matches where the netcode couldn’t keep up, resulting in unresponsive gameplay. While the devs said that the online play is still a work-in-progress, and the game isn’t out until next year, this is something that needs to be razor-sharp at launch. Additionally, while the game’s new look is solid, I think I honestly prefer the original’s 2D Flash art, which did a better job communicating the game’s sense of speed.

Overall, though, I can definitely see the potential in Speedrunners 2’s chaotic platforming, not just for sickos who’ve mastered every movement trick, but also for casual players looking for some Mario Kart-flavored mayhem. While the game could definitely use some better tutorialization and needs improvements to its online play, the core experience is fast and fluid, seemingly offering tons of depth for those who want it. It may be a crowded race for competitive games these days, but Speedrunner 2’s iterations on its unique predecessor may be enough to separate it from the pack.