Right? You know personally as a gamer that’s what I’m passionate about.īuilding up this sense of playing together and having fun. I think that should be a goal for any game. “And so that’s one of the reasons this system was decided to be put into the game is to see if that could work.”Īnother reason the mentorship program is so important to KartRider Rush+ and Bernardo is because building a community is one of the goals. “Those people at the upper levels always feel like, well, how do I get people up here? How do we teach people to do this? This is an end game feature that offers rewards for mentors while also helping new players get into the game more quickly.īernardo said the mentorship feature partly came from seeing a lack of talent in the upper-levels of esports.
KARTRIDER LEAGUE HOW TO
This allows really high level players to partner with junior players and help them learn how to play the game. Something included in KartRider Rush+ that’s designed to help foster the community is the mentorship program. Players can even earn special Turbo Taps on mobile that give you more boosts than ever. Bernardo says the big “core mechanic is drifting.” Players can combine drift with boosts and do so by tapping on the screen. The game controls acceleration and brakes while the player has to fine tune left and right controls. Unlike KartRider on PC, KartRider Rush+ is similar to Mario Kart Tour. These were things like updated graphics, mobile specific features and controls, new game modes and more.” “Then we started to think about thinks we can do on mobile that we weren’t able to do yet. “Almost everybody has a mobile device nowadays and they’re almost as powerful as a PC,” Bernardo said, adding “When we thought about expanding KartRider to a new audience we felt mobile was a natural fit.
KARTRIDER LEAGUE PC
Being fans of the franchise and the genre, the development team was eaily able to transition from PC to mobile. For example, it had to feel like KartRider, only on mobile. “It’s easy to pick up, hard to master,” he tells me.Īs a mobile game, Bernardo says there are challenges in developing KartRider Rush+. There was that interest in Korea and China and those markets have nurtured that interest and helped it thrive by creating their own leagues.īernardo also explained that KartRider Rush+ is very accessible for players but also has a lot of depth. That’s one of the reasons I think esports for this game has taken off. There are a lot of different nuances to the drifting mechanics and it really promotes and touches on a player’s sort of sense of mastery. KartRider Rush+ hearkens back to KartRider’s roots on PC. When it comes to comparisons with Mario Kart, Bernardo says that KartRider and KartRider Rush+ are unique in the genre, especially when it comes to esports. In the west, we’ve typically been dominated by the likes of Mario Kart with a few other games also achieving some degree of popularity. It’s always been consistently big in Aisa and now we’re trying to branch out more into a global market.” We’re excited to see the potential of this game. “This new version hit the goal much more quickly than we anticipated. “In the US we had KartRider on PC for a while, but it didn’t really take off as much as we hoped.
Bernardo told me that before launch, KartRider Rush+ had over 3 million pre-registrations, which was a surprise. KartRider has existed, as an IP, for over a decade now and it’s taking its first tentative steps into the western market. The fact that KartRider Rush+ is a global version of a game that was relased in China in 2019 also surely helped. So it hasn’t affected us too much yet.”Īs Bernardo told me, KartRider Rush+’s development was clearly unaffacted as it is now sitting on the charts on the App Store and Google Play. “And in terms of developing of this game, ever since the quarantine and pandemic have ramped up recently we didn’t really change too much in terms of what our plans and schedules were. “Our developers and business partners are in Korea, so we already have that pipeline to work and communicate remotely. “Luckily we’re in an industry that can transition to remote work pretty easily,” he said. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we spoke via video chat and I took the opportunity to ask Bernardo if the coronavirus outbreak had affected development. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dennis Bernardo, Producer on KartRider Rush+ to discuss the game and the future plans for the franchise. Alongside KartRider: Drift, which is coming to PC and Xbox One, KartRider Rush+ is an expansion of the brand and a push for larger market share. In that region, KartRider is hugely popular with estimates that 25% of the South Koran population have played KartRider. A spin-off of the incredibly popular KartRider franchise, KartRider Rush+is a mobile take that Nexon hopes will help launch the franchise outside of South East Asia.
KartRider Rush+ recently launched for mobile platforms.