Thank you Gunfish Games for sending us a review copy!

NERVE is a high-octane runner that sends the player hurtling along a track filled with obstacles. The runner genre has mostly come to be associated with casual mobile games these days, but make no mistake – this is a hardcore title through and through, and you’ll be crashing constantly over the five hours it takes to run through the game.

The track curves back upon itself into a cylinder, with the player running along the outside like an infinite pipe. From the get-go you’ll be taught to Boost and Brake to adjust your speed. A little later you’ll unlock the abilities to Surge through breakable walls, to Vault over short walls, and eventually the almighty Focus which slows time to a crawl and increases your maneuverability. The game is organised into ten themed worlds with ten zones each, and capped by a world boss. Crashing into an obstacle will send you back to the start of the zone, but no other penalty is incurred.

Each world introduces a new type of obstacle or feature to spice things up, and the variety will have you using all of the inputs. The tutorial messages are not subtle – obstacles are referred to as “traps,” hinting at the more sadistic setups. Traps include moving walls, projectiles which must be dodged or Surged, gates that must be Braked, drones that manipulate controls, and seekers that can only be dodged using Focus. Often the course will throw you through the same sequence three or four times in a row, only for the last one to change up the ending. I can’t say I appreciated this bait-and-switch; you’re pushed to play with the accelerator held down, but not given enough time to react to these switches the first time you reach them. To be fair though, the tutorials do stress the importance of memorizing the course, and the trolling never approaches the ruthlessness of freeware classic I Wanna Be The Guy.

As you finish each world in the Campaign mode, it is unlocked for World Select. Your time is only submitted to the leaderboards in this mode. This seems a little disjointed to me though – why not merge the two modes and unlock all abilities from the get go? I also found that times load slowly, as if the scores aren’t being cached locally. I gave it a quick shot, submitted a time, and set the filter to my own position… to discover that I was not recorded. Sadly, only the top ten scores showed up. This poor leaderboard implementation will be thoroughly disappointing to any players looking to see how they stack up against others.

As good as its core ideas are, the game is not without design flaws. The tutorials rightfully herald Focus as a game changer since it can be used infinitely, but this infinite use also enslaves the level design to it. Once unlocked, most patterns will require its use, with the net effect that the fast pacing of the core game is replaced with constant mandatory slow motion. The double-edged nature of this mechanic is most obvious with the non-existent telegraphing of the seeker enemies and alternating gates. Seekers will chase the player and then attack, but the time until they attack is not consistent, meaning every seeker is functionally a different type of obstacle. This inconsistent timing isn’t the real issue though; since you’re constantly disabling Focus to optimise times, the continuously changing flow of time already makes it impossible to keep timing straight for anyone with an intellect short of Artemis Fowl with an Atlantis Complex. The seeker’s eye twitch offers a de facto timer, but it’s still inconsistent, and a good driver needs to keep their eyes on the road. Alternating gates have a similar problem; matching speed is impossible when Focus constantly messes with your mental timekeeping.

I also encountered some bugs before I even started the game. After inputting my review key, the game failed to install, and did not show up in my Steam library. I eventually managed to get it working by going directly to the store page. This may have been a Steam issue rather than a game issue though, so I won’t penalize it. The first time I started up the game, it ran afoul of my antivirus and froze; I had to force quit and restart. While running, some obstacles will sink slightly as the player approaches, although this is a minor graphical glitch that’s easy to miss. The one bug that I do take severe issue with is losing control. On several stages, the game stopped accepting any input from my controller and keyboard, and had to be restarted. The game saves after every zone, so I never lost any significant progress in Campaign, but I can imagine this being significantly more frustrating to someone running World Select for a leaderboard placement.

The vector-like graphic designs of the obstacles and bosses are intricate and detailed, and I never had any problem distinguishing between types of walls in the distance. I also noticed that whenever there’s a wall blocking off the tube with only a small gap, there were helpful protrusions to help orient me towards the opening; little visual cues like this abound throughout the game. The electronic tunes feed into the intensity and speed of watching neon tube-scapes blur past. The sense of wonder and alienation I felt from the tube-scapes were enhanced by hints of mystery in the soundtrack.

NERVE is well and truly a fast-paced runner with some interesting designs that will appeal to the hardcore gamers it flirts with, although it definitely lacks polish in a few highly visible spots and is haunted by a double-edged design. Its morals are perfectly clean, making it an entirely suitable recommendation for all ages.