Hey Runagades,
We want to share an honest update regarding where Sprint City currently stands, the challenges we are facing, and the direction we are taking moving forward.
When we launched into Early Access, our vision for Sprint City was heavily centered around an expansive open-world hub where players could seamlessly run into each other, explore together, and start races naturally. However, designing a game around a bustling open world relies heavily on having a high volume of concurrent online players. Without that critical mass, the open world structure can feel confusing, lonely, and counterintuitive, especially for solo players trying to get into the action quickly.
The reality is that sales and funding have not reached the levels we had hoped for. Because of this, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to scale down our development operations. We originally hoped we’d be in a position to continuously pump out new content and expand the world smoothly, but our current situation forces us to take a couple of steps back and rethink our foundation.
What’s Changing?
To give Sprint City the best path forward and ensure the core racing experience is always fun and accessible, we are making a major pivot in design:
Shifting Away from the Open World: For now, we are letting go of the open-world layout. While it might return in some form in the future if circumstances allow, our current focus needs to be on direct, friction-free gameplay.
Focus on Solo & Friend Play: We are streamlining the game structure so it’s easy and satisfying to jump straight into races alone or directly invite your friends into a lobby without unnecessary navigation barriers.
Introducing Bots: We are actively working on introducing bots. This will ensure you always have opponents to race against.
What This Means for Future Updates
Because we have had to scale down, development will take longer than initially planned. The next update will not arrive immediately, and we kindly ask for your patience as we work through these structural changes with a smaller footprint.
We genuinely wished things had turned out differently at launch, but we are committed to making Sprint City the tightest, fastest, and most enjoyable 2D racing platformer it can be within this new scope.
Thank you to everyone who has played, left feedback, or supported us so far. We truly appreciate your understanding and continued patience as we build the next phase of Sprint City.
See ya!
Second Stage Studio