Nitronic Rush came out on 11th November 2011 (11/11/11). Upon release, the website crashed due to the amount of people downloading the game.
Over roughly the next year, the team behind it slowly released updates for Nitronic Rush that opened the game to more content.
Kyle Holdwick, the developer for Nitronic Rush and Distance, describes how Nitronic Rush came to be:
[Nitronic Rush] was actually a class assignment we had when we went to DigiPen Institute of Technology. You know, when you go to school there is a tonne of classes, and you have a tonne of assignments from all those random other classes. But we actually worked on Nitronic [Rush] as much as we could… even to the point where we were basically avoiding other class time, making worse grades and all that. We didn’t care.
Nitronic Rush looks a lot like Tron mixed with Spy Hunter gameplay.
This is when the team decided to found Refract Studios and start work on Distance. After some time, they released a Kickstarer campaign and raised $161,981, which was about $36,000 over their goal.
The mini-documentary takes you through the evolution of how Nitronic Rush came to be, and how this spawned the spiritual successor, Distance.
What are Nitronic Rush and Distance?
Both are survival arcade racing games.
Kyle Holdwick describes the genre:
“Where it’s you against the track, and basically there’s this mysterious city that you’re traveling through, and there’s a bunch of these elements, like saws and lasers, and you’re just trying to see if you can actually survive through it.”
Distance is currently in Alpha on Steam.
The mini-documentary will be in multiple parts, each part talking about a different aspect, from info on the dev team, to the games themselves, or the creation process. Part 2 is expected soon.
Nitronic Rush is 100% free, and can be downloaded here.
If you want to get hold of Distance pre-order it here.
