Haste Is A Better 3D Sonic Game Than Most Actual Sonic Games

Roguelike games often thrive on their complexity. Finishing run after run is just more enjoyable when you have a mountain of upgrades to switch it up, keeping the game fresh no matter how many times you play it. But it turns out you can strip out most of those interlocking systems altogether if you just make the basic act of playing the game so fun that players can’t put it down. That’s the case with a blazing fast new game I can’t stop playing on Steam.

Haste: Broken Worlds was one of the big hits of the first Steam Next Fest of this year, and it got a full release at the beginning of April. At its core, Haste is just about running. Playing as interdimensional mail carrier Zoe, your goal is to outrun a wave of destruction spreading across multiple planets, with a suite of items and abilities to collect along the way. That makes Haste feel like a mix of endless runner, roguelike, and racing game, which turns out to be an incredibly replayable combination.

Haste plays out over a series of procedurally generated levels, with Zoe barreling straight ahead across their increasingly complex landscapes. At first, you’re running through placid rolling hills, but before long, you’ll find yourself dodging massive thorny vines, jumping over bottomless pits, and winding through tiny openings in lattices of deadly lasers. Despite the simplicity of its concept, difficulty in Haste ramps up quickly. The goal of every level is simply to reach a portal at the end before the murky substance consuming each planet catches up to you.

You don’t control your own speed directly; Zoe is in a constant sprint. There’s not enough a jump button, as Zoe automatically glides into the air every time you crest a hill. Instead, you have a button that causes you to fall faster, and learning exactly how to use it is crucial. While you’re airborne, landing on flat ground or the down slope of a hill will let you keep your momentum and gives you a slight speed boost, but hitting the ground head-on — like flying into the side of a hill — will slow you down. Mastering the art of hitting at the exact right angle is the single most important skill in Haste, and nailing a perfect landing always feels satisfying no matter how many times you’ve done it before.

Befitting its lightning-fast pace, each level in Haste only takes a minute or two to complete. You have just enough time to lock into the stage’s rhythm and enter a near-meditative state of reacting to every obstacle heading for you at top speed, but stages are never so long that the focus required gets tiring. Haste can feel a tad repetitive after a while, since your goal is always the same, but the randomness of levels and the sheer fun of flying through them keeps that from being a bigger problem.

You can also mix your experience up with upgrades you purchase between levels. During stages, you collect stars that you can spend in shops that pop up occasionally, and you’re also rewarded a number of them based on how quickly you get through the level. Purchasable items can restore your health (which you lose by smashing into obstacles or letting the corruption catch up to you), grant speed boosts that you can use manually or triggering by collecting stars, and add other twists that give you an advantage. Bigger changes come from tools that affect your movement. Zoe starts with a hovering surfboard that lets you get extra distance on jumps, and items like a grappling hook acquired later on give you more ways to soar through levels.

At the end of each world, you also face a boss. Rather than abandon its straightforward focus on speed for boss fights, Haste leans into it. The game’s first boss launches missiles that spread fire across the ground, testing your ability to dodge and stay in the air as much as possible until you can defeat it by slamming into it a few times at top speed. Other bosses included a speeding train and a burrowing snake, which again push the same running skills used in normal levels to their limit.

Instead of stretching itself too thin, Haste focuses on one thing and does it extremely well. The sense of speed in Haste is something few games are capable of even coming close to, and the result is a straightforward but thrilling adventure that never wears out its welcome.

Haste: Broken Worlds is available now on Steam.