Funnel Runners | Ep. 1 – It’s Coming! It’s Headed Right for Us!

🌪️ Opening Hook

Our second new game of the week arrives, and apparently so does something enormous. Time to find out exactly what Funnel Runners has waiting for us — preferably without being launched into another postcode.

I only picked this one up last week after seeing a few adverts and watching Striker play it. A handful of multiplayer rounds later, it was time for its first proper appearance on stream, complete with tornadoes, questionable medical procedures and a special appearance from #BlameGary himself.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

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⚠️ About the Game

Funnel Runners drops up to eight players into a doomed town with one fairly urgent problem: a massive tornado is coming, your van is broken, and standing around admiring the weather is unlikely to end well.

You have to search houses, shops and whatever remains standing for fuel, oil, coolant, fuses, tyres and other repair parts, while completing side objectives for Apex and dealing with escalating environmental disasters.

It gave me strong Twister vibes, although when I first saw people creeping through dark houses with torches, I actually assumed it was some kind of Phasmophobia variant. It definitely isn’t. This is its own particular flavour of disaster.

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🚐 Where We Are in the Journey

This is Episode 1 and our first streamed session, although I’d already played a few rounds with Striker beforehand.

Funnel Runners is still very early access, with only one main location at the moment, but development is already moving. Just before this stream, a sheriff’s office and new supermarket were added to the map.

I’d also reached level 10 before going live, unlocking hard mode. That would become important later. Unfortunately.

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🔥 What Happens in This Episode

Joining me for our first proper streamed expedition into Funnel Runners was none other than Gary the Lepercorn — #BlameGary himself — who came along for an hour or two of what was supposed to be organised tornado survival.

Gary had never actually played before, despite apparently being given homework to practise, so we started gently on training mode. I talked him through the basics: search everything, grab whatever the van needs, keep an eye on the weather, complete the extra Apex objectives if possible, and remember that stamina will inevitably disappear at precisely the moment your legs become extremely important.

There was even some genuinely useful advice. If the weather gets particularly nasty, climbing into the back of the van and locking yourself inside gives you somewhere reasonably safe to hide.

With all of that carefully explained, there was really only one question left.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turned out.

Our first run was actually suspiciously competent. We split up and started rummaging through houses and buildings, looking for the supplies needed to repair the van while the weather gradually became less cooperative. Tornadoes started carving their way through the neighbourhood, ripping buildings apart and turning what had once been streets and houses into increasingly open-plan architecture.

Strangely, the destruction sometimes worked in our favour. Searching a building becomes considerably easier once a tornado has helpfully removed most of the walls.

There was some confusion when multiplayer appeared to demand more oil than expected, which meant heading back out when we thought we were nearly finished. Eventually I tracked the missing oil down inside the newly added sheriff’s office, and we returned to the van with another tornado closing in.

What followed was a frantic combination of waiting for the storm to move away, wrestling with the repair minigames, getting everything installed, locking ourselves inside and desperately trying to get the van started before the next disaster arrived.

Somehow, we escaped.

Ten tornadoes observed, the objectives completed, Gary already up to level two, and our first training run had ended in genuine success.

This was clearly unacceptable.

The next rounds restored the natural order of things.

New objectives started appearing, including breaking down doors, while we searched for coolant, crowbars and whatever else Apex had decided we desperately needed. I had already explained that the van could be used as shelter, so when another tornado arrived I naturally made a heroic sprint back towards it.

The tornado had other ideas.

Before I could get safely inside, the storm intervened. Gary died as well, leaving us with what would become an increasingly familiar summary of the evening:

“Everybody’s dead, Dave.”

Chat, naturally, immediately began investigating who was responsible. SpiffyMango1274 suggested that Gary had dragged me into the storm, wrecked the car and then hidden in the bathroom.

The #BlameGary campaign was officially underway.

One of our later attempts went considerably better, despite introducing one of my least favourite repair jobs: changing a tyre. Now we weren’t simply looking for oil, coolant and fuses; we needed the tyre itself, a jack and a toolbox, alongside VHS tapes for another objective.

While tornadoes continued dismantling the neighbourhood and visibility became increasingly awful, we slowly gathered everything together. I eventually found the second VHS tape and made the sprint back towards the lights of the van.

Against the odds, we escaped again.

Two successful runs were apparently enough evidence for us to make a truly terrible decision.

Hard mode.

I’d reached level 10 just before the stream and unlocked it, so obviously it needed testing. The repair list immediately became much more substantial, weather stations had to be visited to collect data, and the entire expedition became significantly less forgiving.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, tornado survival was temporarily abandoned while chat investigated an old film quote I’d half remembered about solving problems with explosives. Sane_Psycho_NL eventually tracked it down to Uncommon Valor, with Kevin Dunn becoming part of the discussion.

Because apparently when a giant tornado is approaching and the van still needs repairs, the correct response is to stop everything and investigate decades-old movie trivia.

Then Gary died.

Again.

This time, however, I had a defibrillator.

I headed out looking for Gary’s remains while a tornado loomed nearby, eventually finding him and beginning what can only be described as cutting-edge emergency medicine.

There was a slight problem involving the controls. I pressed the wrong button, eventually managed to “zap his ass”, and somehow reduced myself to almost no health in the process.

As every good medical professional knows, the proper defibrillator technique involves placing one electrode on Gary’s face, the other on his plums, and turning the voltage up to maximum.

Having successfully demonstrated that electricity could revive Gary, scientific curiosity demanded another experiment.

What would happen if we did it again?

“It’s not scientific unless it’s repeatable.”

Chat immediately recognised the importance of our research. “Gary: fried edition” appeared, along with jokes about him being simultaneously charged and fried and speculation about the newspaper headline explaining why a storm chaser had electrocuted his colleague twice.

Unfortunately, our groundbreaking medical work did absolutely nothing to improve the outcome of the round.

The wind finished us off.

Hard mode concluded with everybody dead and essentially nothing to show for it, which I think can safely be classified as minor technical difficulties.

Gary continued to serve as the evening’s designated lightning rod, both literally and metaphorically. He became Grandpa Gary, was accused of hiding secret gold, blamed for disasters he had absolutely nothing to do with, and mocked relentlessly for the noises he made whenever a tornado started chasing him.

Those noises eventually reminded me so strongly of a character from Simon the Sorcerer 2 that I actually pulled the game up on stream to demonstrate the resemblance.

Chat agreed enthusiastically.

From there, Gary’s leprechaun legs, questionable stamina and mythical pot of gold became established parts of the evening’s lore. Whether Gary had caused a particular disaster was no longer especially relevant. #BlameGary was simply a universal explanation.

Chat had plenty of other side adventures going on as well. Hunger Games rounds broke out between attempts, with SpiffyMango1274 winning one before mysteriously becoming unable to enter another. Obviously, “the council” had banned the mango.

Sane_Psycho_NL eventually won that round instead, while discussions involving tea, cheese, dysentery and jump scares continued alongside our increasingly unsuccessful attempts at surviving severe weather.

After the defibrillator incidents, people were already calling for clips and imagining kill-cams. Suggestions for dealing with the tornado included smacking it with a rolled-up newspaper, while the aftermath led naturally to the idea of rebuilding the entire town in Construction Simulator.

Chat estimated that, at my construction pace, rebuilding a single house would probably take about two years.

Back inside Funnel Runners, the evening settled into a rhythm of narrow escapes followed by complete catastrophe. Different runs demanded different combinations of fuel, coolant, fuses, tyres, collectibles and weather data, while the town repeatedly disappeared around us.

At one point I found myself hanging onto life with a single square of health and announced that survival was now entirely up to Gary.

There was just one minor issue.

Gary was already dead.

“Everybody’s dead, Dave.”

Again.

By this point, both of us were absolutely knackered. Gary needed to be up early in the morning, and my ribs were in agony from laughing on top of all the coughing and sneezing I’d already done during the day.

Naturally, this meant there was time for “one more round.”

We deliberately dropped back to training difficulty, hoping for a slightly more dignified conclusion. Even there, dignity wasn’t guaranteed. We headed back into the battered town looking for the familiar collection of fuel, oil, coolant and fuses while chat supplied the expedition with an appropriately dramatic soundtrack: “The Nightmare of No Cheese.”

After an evening filled with deathloops, tornado sacrifices, electrical accidents and increasingly convincing evidence that neither of us should ever be employed as professional storm chasers, we actually made it through.

We finished the night at level 11.

For all the failures, Funnel Runners turned out to be tremendous fun. Its early-access status is obvious — there’s still only one main location at the moment — but the basic idea works brilliantly, and the recent sheriff’s office and supermarket additions already show that the map is expanding.

There are plenty of things I’d love to see added as development continues too. Being able to break into abandoned vehicles and scavenge useful components from them feels like it would fit perfectly into a game built around desperately hunting for repair parts while the town is being dismantled around you.

So I don’t think Funnel Runners will necessarily become something we play every week. Instead, it’ll probably follow the same sort of pattern as Phasmophobia: when a substantial update arrives, we’ll head back in, explore the new locations and features, and discover what fresh methods of dying have been added.

And after roughly half a dozen rounds, that was enough extreme-weather science for one evening.

We wrapped up the stream and sent everyone onwards with a raid into Kingyork1985 — leaving behind a devastated town, several questionable medical procedures, aching ribs, and an important scientific conclusion.

When everything goes wrong, #BlameGary.

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🎬 Watch the Episode

If watching two supposedly responsible adults repeatedly challenge a tornado sounds like your sort of evening, you can watch the full episode here:

Watch Funnel Runners Episode 1

You can also explore the Funnel Runners playlist and find more gameplay over on the Dr Ravenholm YouTube channel.

If you enjoy the episode, give it a like, leave a comment with your favourite disaster, and subscribe so you don’t miss our next highly professional encounter with early-access physics.

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🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The recordings capture the disaster, but the real chaos happens live — where chat can witness the bad decisions forming before there’s any opportunity to edit them out.

Come aboard on Twitch or join us live through YouTube. Funnel Runners will return as the game expands, and judging by tonight, we’ll need as many witnesses as possible.

You never know who might appear, what we’ll end up playing, or which unfortunate member of the crew will become the next community running joke.

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📡 Community & Links

The tornado may have scattered half the town across the countryside, but the crew is still very much intact. If you want to stay connected between streams, there are plenty of ways to join us.

Live — catch the chaos as it happens.
Twitch
YouTube

Community — join the crew between expeditions.
Discord

Socials — follow the signal across the wider network.
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Support — help keep the machinery running.
Merchandise
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More — venture beyond the streams.
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🌩️ Until the Next Storm

For a game I nearly left sitting in the library until it had more content, Funnel Runners made one hell of a first impression.

We’ll be back when the storms get bigger, the map gets larger and there are even more opportunities to make terrible decisions under pressure. Until then, keep an eye on the horizon — and if you see Gary carrying a defibrillator, run.

— Dr Ravenholm