speed-up letters ?

One of the last things I need to add in Bilou: School Rush is meaning for the collectible letters. I have plan to let the player use them in a sort of shop, but I also acknowledge Kirby Kid when he says it is a shame they aren't encouraging the player to play well, but rather to slow down, grab them, and then keep moving.

It's been a few month I'm growing the idea to use a special type of letter for speed runners (e.g. ok, you won't be able to get all the bonuses in normal or hard mode, but can you get at least all the Rs ?). That would keep the game challenging for people who play it for the challenge and nice and friendly for kids toying around in easy mode.

Then I came with a nice function those letters could have. What if every time you hit an R, it would boost your speed by e.g. 10% ?

afterthought: School Rush got 'terminated' without actually trying that. I eventually just allowed letters to provide 1-UPs. It still does't goes "can you play well enough to collect these ?" but instead "have you played well enough to afford collecting these ?" or "will you play well enough to afford leaving these behind and rushing for the ultimate challenge".

necroedit: I've actually played a game, back then, that features that kind of speed-boost-power-ups, and that game is SuperFrog. And I remember it was annoying to be sent back to 'normal' speed once you're killed. If I was to feature something like that in a game, I'd at least have to do something like Shovel Knight floating treasures so you *could* recover most (if not full) speed boost without having to travel to tons of levels again.

It might work better if each speed boosts would bring you significant speed up (by 50% or maybe even doubling max speed) that would work only temporarily ... ehm ... wait ... That's Sonic's shoes.