Indie Spotlight: Freerun AR

Hey, I'm Wray - 30 years old and part of the two-person development team at Cabal Games. I've always been a huge fan of extreme sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, parkour, and gymnastics. I was never particularly great at them, but I loved them nonetheless. Because of that, I gravitated toward extreme sports video games. My first favorite? SSX Tricky. I remember telling my dad I wanted to be "the guy who made up the Uber Tricks," and that pretty much set me on my path to becoming a 3D animator and game designer for action sports games.

Over the years, I've worked on titles like Skater XL and Skatrix as both an artist and game designer, along with Colossal Cave Adventure VR, Broken Pieces, and Neotokyo Kshatriya. I wouldn't be here today without Team Cascadeur - my job on Skatrix was where a lot of this tech originally took shape.

Discovering Cascadeur's Early Version

Back in high school, I played a lot of mobile games, and my favorite of all time was Vector . I was a big fan of Mirror's Edge on mobile and its 2D Flash counterpart by Fancy Pants creator Brad Borne, but Vector had the best animation quality - something that has always been my biggest priority. At the time, I was making my own Flash games and Pivot animations, and Vector had what I considered the best 2D animation I had ever seen. Not long after beating Vector - around 2013 - I stumbled upon a video (which sadly seems to be lost to time) showing someone animating using a physics animation tool that could best be described as a very early version of Cascadeur.

I saw them create a sequence of a character jumping from one "cat hang" on a wall to another, and the way the software handled interpolation and physics corrections was exactly what I had always wanted as a Pivot animator focusing on parkour and gymnastics. I instantly realized this was how Vector was animated, and from that moment, I dreamed of working with either that software or that company. At the time, I was a prominent Pivot animator, and while the software had a skeletal hierarchy like 3D animation tools, it lacked interpolation or IK, meaning everything had to be done frame-by-frame with onion skinning.

Transitioning to 3D animation was tough - I was used to animating straight-through at 18 fps, but now I had to learn hierarchy math, tangents, and physics-based motion in 3ds Max. I experimented with tools like Endorphin to simulate character physics, which taught me a lot, but the workflow wasn't intuitive. I wanted a tool that still let me animate while handling the small physics corrections automatically. Cascadeur, from what I had seen, was exactly that. It drove me to dig deeper into 3D animation workflows, learning 3ds Max and Maya inside and out. As I progressed in my career, I kept searching for ways to implement those same physical principles into my work.

Freerun AR Character - Rendered Image

Getting into Closed Beta

When I worked on Skater XL, I learned a lot more about physics and animation systems, but I still wasn't connected with Nekki or in the Cascadeur closed beta. I was using Maya scripts like Morgan Loomis' Center of Mass tool - features Cascadeur had built-in, but I had no access to yet.
Then, about a year into my time at Skater XL, I saw that Cascadeur was launching a closed beta. I went all-in - messaging Nekki employees on LinkedIn, showing my Pivot and 3D animations, and practically begging for a beta key. The Nekki team has been incredibly supportive ever since.

I got into the first round of closed beta and animated like crazy. The Cascadeur team took notice, and I spent a lot of time on the forums asking questions and mastering the software. But as much as I loved it, I ultimately didn't switch to using it for my main work. By then, I was deeply embedded in 3ds Max and Maya, and Cascadeur - still in development - didn't yet have the robust constraint systems I needed for skate animations, my primary job at the time.

Skater XL Mocap Editing/Animation Reel

Nekki's Impact on My Career

Even though I didn't end up using Cascadeur for work, Nekki continued to support me. Their team members; Alexander Grishanin and Tom Borovskis, even name-dropped me at a game dev expo, which led to a company called Reality Crisis reaching out. They were making a skateboarding game funded by legends like Rodney Mullen and needed my expertise. I worked with them for four years as a lead game designer and 3D artist.

Once again, I didn't use Cascadeur on that project - not because I didn't want to, but because I was handling so much more than just animation. I was doing modeling, texturing, rigging, and tech art, and I didn't want to disrupt the existing Autodesk-based pipeline. However, not having Cascadeur's features led me to develop my own 3ds Max biped animation tools, integrating key concepts I learned from Cascadeur, like Center of Mass calculation, torque consistency, and ballistic trajectory control. These features are now central to my workflow, and I still use them today.

Explaining Ballistics to Skatrix Team Using Cascadeur

Skatrix Gameplay

Freerun AR and Bringing It to PC

After parting ways with Skatrix, I wanted to create something similar that wasn't similarly limited. A lot of my work on that game - navigation, trick controls, and core gameplay loop ideas - was shelved due to management shifts. Rather than let it all go to waste, I decided to apply those concepts to something I thought could have a similar market demographic: Freerun AR. Instead of skating, we shifted focus to parkour and freerunning, which offered even more freedom in exploration and movement.

Much like Cascadeur, where physics-informed animation allows for natural motion while maintaining animator control, *Freerun AR *and its development tools features a procedural animation system for flips and tricks. The Game and the Cascadeur-inspired 3ds Max Animation Rig calculates Center of Mass dynamically, ensuring ballistic consistency when flipping or vaulting. Rotation mechanics take cues from Cascadeur's torque-based corrections, or more specifically what I learned by viewing them; allowing curve-level control of the rotation speed of each axis, ensuring consistency and animator control and per frame control of axis order. This system enables players to input in-air movement in real-time, much like Cascadeur's AI-assisted animation refinement, ensuring smooth transitions while the rotation prediction system provides physically sound landings.

On a ski trip with Dain, the CEO of Easy Day Studios, he suggested we port Freerun AR to PC - similar to how Skater XL evolved from Skater App. We quickly put together a build, and it felt great on a controller. It's different from mobile, but in my (admittedly biased) opinion, it plays even better. That led us to greenlight a full PC release, with the mobile version acting as a free companion app where players can scan real-world maps to play them at home on their PC.

Freerun (PC) Leaked Gameplay (Pre Alpha)

Cascadeur's Influence on Freerun AR

While I don't directly use Cascadeur for Freerun AR, its principles are deeply embedded in the game. One of the biggest takeaways from Skater XL was how much players love procedurality in action sports games. Animation at runtime allows for greater player expression, which is why the core gameplay - flips - are fully procedural in Freerun AR.

That's not to say Cascadeur won't be part of our pipeline in the future. Run cycles, get-up animations, and pose loops are all things that could benefit from it. But more than anything, Cascadeur has always been a massive inspiration, shaping how I think about animation, physics, and tool development.

Full MAX Rotation & Ballistics System Breakdown and cascadeur similar features Cascadeur closed beta, similar feature

Cascadeur closed beta, similar feature

Final Thoughts

Freerun AR is an indie game with no marketing budget, and getting eyes on it is tough. But I believe in it. We're making something unique - something that could go viral if it finds the right audience. It's been a long road, but we're still pushing forward. Cascadeur has been a major part of my journey, and while I don't use it directly, its DNA is in everything I do, and I see myself using it plenty in the future, as I have in the past.

>>You can download Freerun AR (iOS) for free from the App Store

Subscribe to Cascadeur blog

Thanks for joining!