Temple Run 2

Temple Run 2 reached a 50 million downloads within the first two weeks of its release in all three platforms, namely, iOS, Google Play, and Amazon Kindle. It has been in the app store since mid-January and continues to be popular among arcade game enthusiasts. Its predecessor, ‘Temple Run’ which had already been downloaded 170 million times before the release of Temple Run 2 had set an expectation that Temple Run 2 had to meet.

The game rules are simple and is same across both Temple Run and Temple Run 2. One has to keep running and stay out of reach of chaser(s) and at the same time avoid falling down bridges, cliffs, hitting on walls, and other obstacles. The game ends once we fail to avoid these obstacles.

The controls in Temple Run and Temple Run 2 are simple to master. We tilt our device to collect coins and avoid gaps in the paths and swipe left or right to turn corners. With several similarities between the two games, Imangi Studios sets Temple Run 2 apart with its graphically more elaborate environment. The boring straight paths of Temple Run gave a feeling of playing an MS DOS game, while the twisted and scenic mountain paths of Temple Run 2 make the environment more realistic. Sliding down ropes, crossing streams, navigating uneven surfaces, and wheeling on a cart under a mine shaft adds to the realistic feel the game gives to the user. One could safely say that Temple Run 2 has certainly met the expectations of the market for a free app.

Since, the app is free, it lures people into downloading the game and if one would like to finish the game faster, then one should purchase in-game coins and life savers by paying money. These in-game coins could also be collected while playing the game, but it takes longer to finish the objectives by solely depending on the coins collected while playing the game. Using the in-game coins, we could buy head starts and characters available from within the game. The four characters available in Temple Run 2 caught my attention.

The Character ‘Guy Dangerous’ is the starting character and comes for free. He is a ‘light skin’ toned ‘guy’. The next character is ‘Scarlett Fox’. She is a ‘light skin’ toned ‘female’ and can be unlocked for 5000 coins. The third character is ‘Barry Bones’. ‘He’ has a ‘dark skin’ tone and can be purchased for 15,000 coins. The fourth character is ‘Karma Lee’. ‘She’ has ‘slanting eyes’ and can be purchased for 25,000 coins. Along with three other characters all these four characters can also be found in the first version of the game. The racial and the gender differentiation is not very apparent in the earlier version as Scarlet Fox and Barry bones cost the same (the light skin toned female and the dark skin toned male), and the price for Karma Lee and the three additional characters were the same. Can pricing a female over male and non white skinned characters over the other two in Temple Run 2 be a mere coincidence?

If you are looking for a game that demands less thinking and at the same time entertaining then Temple Run 2 is worth your notice. The game also goes a step further to ‘quell’ any gender and racial accusations one might have against it.