Ghostrunner

Mirror’s Edge meets Metal Gear Rising in 2020’s most exhilarating action game

PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

As the steel doors slam shut, a voice calmly tells us what to do. “Each guard has a built-in lockdown chip,” it says. “Disabling them will open the doors.” Luckily for us (although not for those poor guards) we have a particularly efficient way to deal with the problem. We set off, sliding down a long ramp and diving headlong towards the first guard, cutting him down with our sword. Turning sharply, we juke to the right to dodge incoming fire from another, before sending his remains tumbling over a gap, which we wallrun across as a third trains his gun on us. Instinctively, we tap the right trigger, somehow parrying the bolt from point-blank range. He doesn’t stand a chance when we flash our blade once more. Doubling back, we skid under a set of pipes and surgically slice the next unwitting sap in half at the midriff. A makeshift ramp takes us up to a huge curved screen, which we scamper across before leaping right and then left between two more walls, delivering the finishing blow to our fifth and final opponent with a slo-mo flourish. Lockdown lifted. The voice gives us one more instruction: “Go.” In a game where staying still is usually fatal, we obey the command.

Developed primarily by Warsaw’s One More Level, in conjunction with Danish porting experts Slipgate Ironworks and 3D Realms, Ghost runner is one of the most immediately thrilling action games we’ve played in a long while. Set in a grimy dystopia that owes an obvious visual debt to Blade Runner (which is cheerfully acknowledged by the studio), this firstperson action game feels like Mirror’s Edge meets Metal Gear Rising, casting you as a powerful, agile cyborg ninja. When we put that combo to the studio, it adds one more game to the mix, likening the movement mechanics to the pilots in Titanfall. (We play it again later and the devs are absolutely right.)

It’s the pace and kineticism of your protagonist’s movement that’s most instantly striking, and the fact that it flows so naturally. Within a minute or two you’ll have the basics down, jumping with the right bumper and using the left to trigger a sensory boost: a dash that can boost you to ledges when it looks like you’re about to fall short, and that doubles as a lateral dodge when a projectile is headed your way. What makes the action more exhilarating still is the fact that you’re only ever one hit away from death. And what makes it so moreish is that restarts are instantaneous. Checkpoints are generous, which solves two problems: they make a challenging game more accessible and allow for such swift returns, since the game only needs to reset yours and your enemies’ positions when you die.

The one-hit-kill approach comes from One More Level’s last game, God’s Trigger, a top

down co-op action game inspired by Hotline Miami. “We wanted to take that and put it in another perspective,” game director Radosław Ratusznik tells us. “It was a big challenge for us, because there are not a lot of firstperson games where you have just one health point.” We’re about to chip in, but he beats us to the punch. “Apart from Superhot, for example, that’s kind of similar. Basically, we wanted to make a fastpaced action game with one-hit-one-kill mechanics, and because we’re huge fans of the renaissance of cyberpunk, we wanted to make a game in this theme.” As for why you’re playing a cyborg ninja, the answer is simple: “There was nothing particularly original behind it, we just thought that it would benefit the gameplay, because we always put that first. The story and narration of the game needs to support the gameplay, not the other way around.”

“There is a distinct way that you need to tell a story in a game like this,” writer and narrative designer Jan Gasior adds. “I mean, the tempo is really fast, so it’s not like you’ve got time to listen to stories that other characters have to tell you, or read lore about the world.” We already know that the game takes place in Dharma Tower, a megastructure designed to temporarily shelter humanity in the wake of a cataclysmic event, and that our goal is to steadily climb it. The section we’ve played introduces Whisper, the aforementioned voice who guides you to release him from some kind of a virtual prison. As for what to expect from the rest, Gasior suggests we’ll have to put the pieces together ourselves, using clues from the environment and background dialogue. “There are these breadcrumbs that are spread throughout the game that you follow up on, but only if you’re interested. To grasp the whole picture of the story, you’ll have to connect the dots yourself.”

In truth, as we play, we feel like we’ve got more than enough to think about, and One More Level acknowledges that plenty of players will be more interested in shaving seconds off their best times. That’s why it updated the game’s Steam demo within 24 hours, adding a timer to encourage speedrunners. “We’ve observed some crazy styles,” Ratusznik says, adding that the studio has seen players try strategies even he wasn’t anticipating. “Some people are using ledge-boost tactics, which are really cool. We want to leave them there in the game because it’s great to see players finding their own way to play Ghostrunner.”

Even with just the basic abilities (including a delicious electro-grapple that can latch onto hooks and certain surfaces) you have a range of possible approaches to any given area. And while One More Level is keen not to lard Ghostrunner with too many systems, an upgrade system will allow you to lean into your individual playstyle. “It’s more about extending what’s in the demo,” Ratusznik says. “We also have a skill meter that fills over time and as you kill enemies, which lets you use an ultimate ability, which is another tactical aspect of the game, because you need to choose when to use it.” Facing shielded guards that block frontal attacks would appear to be a good time to use your blink ability, which lets you target a distant enemy and carve through anyone between you and them.

There will be boss fights, too. Ratusznik admits they have been tricky to implement in a game in which you’re only ever one hit from death. “We don’t want to you have to face a guy that’s like a bullet sponge, or has one million HP, where you have to hit him 1,000 times, because that totally doesn’t work with our core gameplay. Like the rest of the game, you’ll need to be precise, you’ll need to time your moves right, and dodge incoming attacks. And yeah, you’ll probably die several times before you figure it out. But we think we have some fights that are unique and satisfying.”

That’s not a bad summary of Ghostrunner itself, in fact. Sure, perhaps it could give us clearer warnings about incoming fire, though it’s rare we have cause to blame a death on anyone but ourselves. Which might explain why we can’t resist coming back for more, our completion times coming down with every attempt. Time for another run? We remember that voice giving us the green light – and, well, we don’t need telling twice.

“We wanted to make a fastpaced action game with one-hit-one-kill mechanics”