Get ready to run — a new game is in town and your only escape from the police is to run. A lot. Well, at least enough to reach some of the top spots on the App Store charts. That game is Subway Surfers. Learn what makes it so great right after the jump.
The Catch
The basic gist of Subway Surfers is a combination of Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride. You play as a vandal who was caught in the middle of his act. As a result, you run through the subway tracks, collecting coins and items as you dodge barriers and oncoming traffic, in order to escape the police man who had caught you in the act.
The police are after you — make sure you keep them off your trail as you run through the rails
Controls are also very similar to that of Temple Run. Acceleration is automatic, and you use various swipes and taps to trigger other movements. Swipe left and right to move to their respective sides; swipe up to jump, and swipe down to roll. You can double tap to initiate a hoverboard, which we will get to in a sec.
The Getaway
As mentioned before, Subway Surfers would be the child of Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride. The endurance gameplay mimics that of Temple Run, but the set objectives and the ability to level up add a little bit of Jetpack Joyride into the mix.
As you progress through the game, the missions get more difficult to complete
At the beginning of the game, you are presented with three objectives. These could be tasks such as collecting a certain amount of coins, raking in large sums of points and picking up power-ups, among other things. Once you have completed these three objectives, your point multiplier will boost up to the next level, and three new objectives will be presented. The more you play, the higher your multiplier will be and the higher your scores get.
Power-ups are dispersed throughout the subway tracks. Jetpacks, coin magnets, 2x multipliers and Super Sneakers are there to help you collect coins when you’re soaring through the sky, increase the amount of points you rack in, or even jump over trains. All of these can become extremely helpful when you want to beat some of those objectives.
Power-ups and daily challenges reward you for your hard work
The developers of Subway Surfers also included daily challenges. These make you pick up letters that spell out 4-5 letter words. Once you collect all of the letters in the word, you will be awarded with a mystery box that holds coins or character tokens.
I felt as if these objectives, challenges and power-ups made Subway Surfers’ gameplay absolutely stellar. I have never been a fan of Temple Run, but Subway Surfers hooked me in from day one. It’s fast-paced and semi-structured gameplay make it highly addictive. Trust me — it is a “just one more run” game that will have you playing for hours at a time. However, I have found that gameplay is not very smooth on older devices, like my iPod Touch 3rd generation. I have not experienced any problems on newer devices, but this is definitely something to keep in mind if you own an older device.
Hoverboards and Jetpacks and Magnets — Oh My!
Sit tight, this section will be very long because Subway Surfers has the most extras I have ever seen packed into one game. Remember those coins and character tokens you picked up while running? Well, those do attribute to something, and you are just about to find out what.
Mystery boxes will provide you with character tokens to unlock crazy new characters
Character tokens will go towards unlocking new characters. These are unlocked by collecting mystery boxes throughout the courses. Right now, there are five different characters you can play with. After you have collected the given amount of each character’s tokens, they are unlocked and you are able to play with them. Some characters may only need three of their tokens to be unlocked, while others need hundreds.
Coins can be used for a lot more than the character tokens can. The shop provides many options to spend your hard-earned coins on. You can spend coins on single-use items like hoverboards (which prevent you from dying for a certain amount of time), mystery boxes and head-starts. Coins can also be spent on skipping missions, which is especially useful if you are assigned a mission that is super hard to beat.
Tons of power-ups and upgrades are available to you
Another way you can spend coins is by upgrading the various power-ups that are interspersed throughout the tracks. Upgrading the power-ups makes them last longer, which maximizes the amount of points and coins you get while the power-up is in use.
If you find yourself short on coins, you are able to buy packs of coins via an in-app purchase. 7,500 coins, 45,000 coins and 180,000 coins will cost you $0.99, $4.99, and $19.99 respectively. You can also earn a smaller amount of coins by watching sponsored videos or following the developer on various social networks.
The Graffiti
While graphics on this game are not the greatest, it is definitely an upgrade from Kiloo’s past works. Their 3D styling was done better than I have ever seen it been in any of their previous games, and the perspective in this game is great.
Graphics can be kind of poor on older devices, but look great on the newer ones
The design in this game is also very functional. The user interface elements that read your score and multiplier among other things while playing are unobtrusive so you can keep your focus on the game. On the menu itself, the menus are colorful to match the game — I liked this seamlessness between the menus and game itself.