You’re on your morning train to work, doom-scrolling through Twitter. The door to your carriage opens: a dishevelled, broken person hobbles slowly on board before collapsing. Instantly, dozens of armed soldiers rush onto the train towards you. You pull out your gun and start running, bullets flying. This is Speed Limit, and you’d better be fast.

Speed Limit plays like an extended chase sequence in an action movie – think the parkour scene in Casino Royale, or pretty much anything from the Terminator franchise. You begin on a train, running between carriages and dodging grenades, bullets, and knives launched your way and shooting anything that moves. Next, you’ll climb onto the train’s roof and outrun a helicopter, before jumping into a moving car and roaring down the freeway. Each level is seamlessly connected to its previous one – no loading screens or gaps in gameplay to disrupt the pace. Once you’ve selected New Game, you’re running full-pelt to the end. There’s even an unkillable wall of enemies chasing you down that encourages you to keep dashing forward or face certain death.

Classic arcade games were renowned for being notoriously difficult so that players would keep spending their hard-earned coins to try again and again. Speed Limit’s difficulty is faithful to its arcade roots but provides some very welcome modern quality of life adjustments. Checkpoints are positioned with precision throughout each level, maintaining the challenge while ensuring that you won’t be slogging through the same section after each of your many deaths. Death is also painless, with a quick rewind to the previous checkpoint. There’s also a generous “easy” mode that reduces the amount of enemies and changes some of their behaviour – however, using this mode prevents you from unlocking many of the game’s achievements, as well as accessing the game’s actual ending. Beating the final boss on easy mode leaves you with a rather patronising “The End?” banner before the credits roll, which I feel misses the point of providing an accessible difficulty option in the first place. It’s not nearly as bad as the DOOM franchise’s toxic gamer-culture “only babies play easy” attitude, but it did rub me the wrong way as someone who appreciates accessibility options.

Speed Limit isn’t a long game by any measure. With ten levels (plus the aforementioned “real” final level) that go by in the blink of an eye, an exceptionally skilled player could theoretically finish the game in less than half an hour. It does what it needs to do and doesn’t linger, which is perfect for such a fast-paced experience. In this sense, it reminds me of something like the playable visual album Sayonara Wild Hearts: a short, theatrical romp that never outstays its welcome. Speed Limit provides a great time for a very reasonable price, and is a stellar example of how to bring modern design conventions to classic arcade gameplay.