When comparing Tiny Brains vs SpeedRunners, the Slant community recommends SpeedRunners for most people. In the question“What are the best local co-op PC games?” SpeedRunners is ranked 20th while Tiny Brains is ranked 47th. The most important reason people chose SpeedRunners is:
The game is balances up in a way where it's naturally harder for the player in front to see upcoming obstacles, giving players behind great opportunities to get back ahead. This makes the game fun to keep playing in a group as you're unlikely to keep losing to the one over-competitive friend that tries too hard.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Local play makes for good back and forth between friends
Cooperating with players/friends in the same room can be quite fun bringing back memories of console games of the past where friends are yelling at each other in order to solve the levels of the game. When finally completing a level the sense of exhilaration is something that can't be matched over the internet.
Pro Great for couch play
Tiny Brains offers full controller support on PC, which makes it easy to control on a Steambox in the living-room.
Pro Gives everyone a chance to win
The game is balances up in a way where it's naturally harder for the player in front to see upcoming obstacles, giving players behind great opportunities to get back ahead. This makes the game fun to keep playing in a group as you're unlikely to keep losing to the one over-competitive friend that tries too hard.
Pro Fun and intense races
SpeedRunners is an intense race around a 2d course. The camera follows the player in the lead, so if you get too far behind you will go off the screen and instantly die. To stay in the lead you will need to dodge obstacles, use a grappling hook to move faster and intelligently use power-ups.
Pro Easy to pick up and play but doesn't get boring
You can get up to speed in just a few minutes as the controls are very simple to learn, but the game still has plenty of depth, as mastering when to use different skills on different levels keeps it fresh.
Pro Interesting movement mechanics
The game has a freeing walljump mechanic as well as a grappling hook that can be used to swing across obstacles, pull towards ledges, etc. This makes for movements that are intuitive and fun as well as well controlled.
Pro Fun power-ups
The game includes powerups like homing rockets, freeze rays and magma balls that can quickly change the game and add a level of randomness to each match making for a unique experience every time.
Pro 4 Player simultaneous, combined local and online
There are 4 slots per game, and each slot can be filled with a local player, a bot, a friend over the internet, or a random internet stranger.
Pro Short matches
Matches are quick and only take a few minutes to play, so it's a great game to play on your lunch break, or when you just have a few minutes of free time. This also makes for a good game to play with friends that have limited time to play online.
Pro Level designer for extended gameplay
There is an included level designer so users can design their own levels making for endless playtime through inventing and playing ones own levels.
Cons
Con Very short campaign
The campaign itself can be played through within roughly 4 hours.
Con Single player is taxing
Due to the mechanics of the game needing all 4 characters in the level to solve a puzzle the single player mode sees the player hot-swapping between characters quite often in order to advance. This gets old pretty quick.
Con Looks to be abandoned
There are bugs in the game that inhibit connecting online with other players. This has been reported multiple times on the games forums with no response and the last update for the game was in 2014.
Con Difficult to play without a controller
Using a keyboard to play can be difficult as it is mainly designed around using a controller, so for those without a controller they may be handicapped playing against others that do.
Con Buggy
Like most Early Access games, bugs are to be expected. The game may crash to desktop and players may fall through the level, hopefully these get fixed before the full release.