Funnel Runners: A decent but lacking game

Intro

There used to be a time where if you said that there was a simulator for anything, you’d think that the person is crazy. Nowadays it feels like we have a simulator for any job, task, or daily activity. That is where this game comes in to fill a niche we never knew we needed; Funnel Runners is a co-op semi-loot extraction game where it is all about running from tornados. This game is developed by Supernova Studios LLC and was released into Early Access on July 16^th, 2026. 

Gameplay

To kick off this review, let’s talk about mechanics and the story since both will be tied together here. In Funnel Runners, we start off in a broken-down van in the middle of a town that has been evacuated due to an F5 tornado that we are currently trying to get away from. In order to fix the van, you must loot the houses around for spare supplies to fix it. Given the tornado on the horizon, they weren’t going to need it anyways. Most of the “fixing” of the van boils down to find this item, complete a quick time event, the item goes on the van with the necessary tools, and repeat. The map does seem to randomly generate however it typically just rearranges the order of the houses and where the van spawns inside of that.

When grabbing loot, sometimes there will be weather effects to avoid. The most annoying of them is the acid rain. I don’t know about you, but I do not remember a time where taking a walk in acid rain would essentially kill you that fast. The counter to acid rain, and hail, is taking an umbrella, which wastes a valuable slot for when you need to hold a tire which takes up your entire inventory. On top of all of this, there also is lightning strikes, which will catch random things on fire. The way to counter this requires you to go out and find a lightning rod conductor.

Graphics

With that out of the way, our last topic is the graphics and sound design. The graphics in this game are your basic run of the mill simulator type with slight stylization. Most of the graphical surprises however are in the tornados and sound design of the storms. The number of times that a tornado spawned near me and the wind picked up furiously, made the experience that much more intense. Even whilst being rained on, the on-screen effects make you feel like you are experiencing these storms in real time. Overall, it is impressive that the game does have that horror factor in these designs that you’d feel in other loot extraction games in the co-op horror genre.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this game is a solid Early Access entry into the co-op horror genre that will get stale after some time. For the price point, I believe it should have a little more variety for 15 USD. For instance, I would love more maps, storm types, and even more side objectives alongside the car. I do feel the difficulty when playing with multiple people (the max size is 8) can be a bit extreme and feel more like a chore than a game about surviving a storm with your friends. That is why this game gets a 6 and will be monitored for further reviews once the updates come out.