With Skyrim and Minecraft both out on this Friday, [Editorās note: As folks have said in comments, Minecraftās out next week. My bad.] the next two weeks are already shaping up to be a David-vs.-Goliath showdown. But, as indie as Mojangās hit sandbox construction game is, thereās something even indier than Minecraft coming out on the same day.
Say hello to Nitronic Rush. This student-built game looks like itās melding the checkpoint-based structure of old-school driving games like San Francisco Rush and Crazy Taxi with parkour-infused level design, dousing it all in Rez and/or Tron vector-riffic lushness . Call it free racing, maybe? I call it gorgeous. The racer comes an 11-person dev team at DigiPen Institute of Technology, which has also turned out Narbacular Drop, the game built by Kim Swift and colleagues that laid the seeds for Portal. Nitronic Rush is a free download so you wonāt even need spare cash. Just carve out some spare time this weekend (a dicey proposition, I know) to support some great student work.
You can contact Evan Narcisse, the author of this post, at [emailĀ protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
