Funnel Runners

I organised a Saturday night session for seven friends expecting another monster-flavoured co-op romp and got something that genuinely surprised me: a game where the threat is the weather, and the weather does not negotiate. Funnel Runners drops a group of up to eight into procedurally generated American suburbs and gives everyone roughly twenty minutes to scavenge parts, repair a broken van, and get out before an approaching EF5 tornado turns the neighbourhood into airborne debris. No creatures, no jump-scares, just nature as a merciless countdown clock. The core loop is tighter than it sounds. Every run, the system randomises which van components are broken, where fuel cans and parts are scattered, and how the weather escalates. You might spend one session hunting a jack while lightning ignites structures across the street, and another desperately tracking down a fuel canister while acid rain nerfs your visibility and eats your stamina. Gadgets like the portable lightning conductor or the group umbrella add small but meaningful layers to teamwork, and the van repair itself is handled through QTEs that become genuinely stressful when four teammates are shouting part callouts over voice chat. The destruction physics are the real technical showpiece: buildings collapse piece by piece, and once a structure is flattened the loot inside is gone for good, which means dawdling in the back half of a suburb can brick your run with no warning. For a group of friends this is close to the best possible version of low-barrier co-op chaos. Roles emerge naturally. Somebody stays near the van as a mechanic, a couple of scouts sprint houses, somebody with better spatial awareness calls storm direction. If the van is not ready in time, the game does not just end. The objective shifts to shelter-building survival, trapping everyone inside a darkened house while the tornado tears the world apart outside. That pivot is genuinely tense and gives failed runs a second act worth sticking around for. The sound design carries a lot of weight here: the audio of a funnel ripping through the roof of a house you are cowering inside is the kind of thing that makes a group go quiet for a few seconds. The honest caveats are real and matter if you are a solo or light-schedule player. At Early Access launch, content is thin: one biome (American Suburbs), a handful of map variations, and fifteen weather conditions. Runs are short, typically under half an hour, and the objectives do not change much between sessions. Community feedback has flagged repetitive goals, occasional part-scarcity frustration in larger lobbies, and the abrupt feeling when a run ends after a successful escape with no post-session reward loop to speak of. The developers have signalled a roughly one-year Early Access window with plans for three to four additional biomes including Great Plains and Desert variants, more gadgets, quests, and a progression system, but none of that is in the game yet. Patches have arrived quickly post-launch, which is a good sign, but anyone who burns out fast on a single map will want to check back in six months. If your Saturday night group tolerates short, replayable sessions built around communication and shared panic, Funnel Runners earns its Very Positive rating without much argument. If you play primarily solo or need a content-dense package on day one, the current build will run dry faster than the tornado does.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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