FutureGrind forges, destroys, and rewrites neural pathways until gray matter is shaped to command its style of acrobatic vehicular platforming. Uniracers meets Trials is an easy shortcut, but it undersells the succinct density and progressive challenge of its level design. FutureGrind has the goofy novelty and formidable sincerity of what's expected from a platformer in 2019.
The penalty of aging and acquiring experiences is, eventually, it seems you’ve collected too many. Craving the new and the novel is no longer an attainable goal and personal ambition transitions from a thrill of discovery to the satisfaction of mastery. I am 35, which is either old if you’re younger or young if you’re older. From both perspectives I have been enjoying platforming videogames for over a quarter century. Finding a new one is impossible. Appreciating one that is well made is much easier.
FutureGrind is not an especially new game. This is its only problem. The concept of a vehicle-based 2D platformer reliant of the balance of physics was already expressed in a half-dozen of RedLynx’s Trials games and further overloaded by infinite freemium mobile titles. A new Trials comes out next week while similar mobile games will appear until humanity loses the ability to produce electricity. FutureGrind is another physics-based platforming game that captures the delicate balance between cardinal directions. FutureGrind is also very, very good at it.
The premise of FutureGrind is simple. You have 360 degrees of x and y axis control over a contraption with two opposing wheels. The objective is to navigate this unicycle-but-with-two-wheels thing—I’m going to refer to it as a bike for the sake of clarity—to the end of a level by way of hopping to and from grind rails. I don’t remember any of FutureGrind’s 31 courses taking longer, through a successful run, than 60 seconds. I also occasionally spent 30 minutes trying to finish a single course.
The bikes are nifty little crafts. In addition to sliding across rails, bikes can also grind and stick to the bottom of rails, effectively inverting the playing field. Stacks of different colored rails can be reverse-navigated in a manner not unlike a slinky falling down stairs. There’s also a separate maneuver to slide one wheel above a rail while dragging the rest of the bike below (think of a gyro wheel toy as the top wheel) and nailing it proved difficult. All three methods of grinding accumulate different sets of points.
Complication arrives in successive waves. The wheels of your bike are color-coded and can only touch rails of the same color. Later, that color will change to the opposing color every time you jump. A new bike will have three smaller jumps instead of two larger jumps. A different bike will have one hilarious huge wheel and one tiny wheel, throwing off the presumed balance and requiring more progressive mental maintenance. Some levels will have jump pads while other levels will have shaded panes that change the color of the wheel(s) it touches. Sometimes levels will have both. Each time a mechanic is added the brain suffers before it adapts.
FutureGrind is extremely adept at coming up with new ways to complicate itself and challenge the player. Each level has its core objective, survive, but follows it up with two bonus challenges within the same level that demand a slightly different approach. You’ll be tasked with instructions like avoiding the color-neutral white rails, performing a 720-degree flip on your first try, or grinding the bottom of seven rails.
Performing tricks and creating variation are essential components of producing a high score. Flipping by pressing left or right creates individual rotation bonuses, and larger bonuses for the “golden” tricks, which is defined as your first attempt to perform that trick in a level. The amount of time spent grinding a particular rail adds another layer of risk and reward. You want to flip as much as you can and stand affixed to rails as long as possible, both of which jeopardize the primary task of survival.
The addition of a score multiplier is FutureGrind’s final proposal. Switching rails adds a number to the score multiplier. Touching a white rail takes it all away. Courses are designed in such a way where obliging White Rail Avoidance, on top of all the other wheel and rail colors, can be intensely demanding. It all builds to an end level score that will award a bronze, silver, gold, or diamond rating. I never settled for a bronze. I usually got silver. Sometimes I got gold. I never made diamond. I don’t think any score inhibits progression, which is smart.
Playing FutureGrind for six straight hours, as one may expect, reveals the proficiency of its level design. The courses are by no means large and contain, at most, two pathways. Inside of this, however is room for both survival and finesse. Every rail, ever color of rail, and all of the variables in between are there on purpose and feel like the product of rigorous refinement and testing. FutureGrind’s levels have a handmade texture that’s fun to discover and devour on a personal level and fascinating, presumably, to watch on a professional level. Every piece of track is a deliberate action to either aid those who are struggling or challenge those who want more, and each is accessible to a desired level of engagement.
Underneath FutureGrind’s operation is, of all things, an eccentric narrative. Shaped by text messages received between courses from the bike’s various sponsors, it begins with weird too-friendly marketers encouraging your performance and ends with a cyberpunk manifesto that seeks to subvert its own plot. When the first marketer’s message included the word “fam” I groaned in the loudest way imaginable but, as it wrapped up, I considered the whole attempt to tell a story in a fluorescent wacky bike game admirable. You rarely have to do anything—participating is mostly just working through the tracks normally—making it unobtrusive instead of incongruous.
FutureGrind culminates, in a manner of speaking, with two de facto boss battles. The entire idea of a boss battle in a game like this is absurd, and FutureGrind doubles down by introducing concepts that rely on improvisation over static course repetition. It’s the opposite of what the game has been doing this entire time, which is alarming, but it’s also extremely and appropriately challenging and calls on the player to employ every single skill they’ve spend the game developing, which is extremely cool. As quickly as FutureGrind embraces most genre tropes, these sequences are meaningful and effective subversions.
A lingering success is FutureGrind’s execution of acute Game Time Dilation. This doesn’t officially exist because I just thought of it, but it’s noticeable in games like Super Hexagon or Super Meat Boy or basically any game where five seconds can feel like five minutes. FutureGrind doesn’t really even move that fast, but the number of actions that can be performed and the potential for any or all of them to go wrong, or your success in pulling it all off, creates a tangible sense of elation and time distortion. A lot can happen in a short amount of time.
FutureGrind forges, destroys, and rewrites neural pathways until gray matter is shaped to command its style of acrobatic vehicular platforming. Uniracers meets Trials is an easy shortcut, but it undersells the succinct density and progressive challenge of its level design. FutureGrind has the goofy novelty and formidable sincerity of what’s expected from a platformer in 2019.
