I’ve been slowly picking away at 5th Cell’s Run Roo Run whenever I rememeber that I have games that aren’t Tiny Tower on my iPhone. That and Mega Man X, but that’s a story for another day.
In quite a stark contrast to their previous games (re: Scribblenauts), Run Roo Run is a very simple game. The premise is usual video game fare: you are a mother kangaroo who must travel across Australia in order to save your joey, who has been captured and put in a zoo. Just another (minor) twist on the common hero/princess business.
The gameplay isn’t entirely new either. Stages are a single screen long (at least up to chapter 10), and you just have to tap the srceen to make momma kangaroo bounce over obstacles. In each chapter, a new element is introduced, like springs, bouncy tires, and a double-jump kajigger. For the first few chapters, the game is really easy, and only once you reach chapter 8 will you find yourself not getting gold medals on the first try. The game’s main focus is accuracy, so you have to make sure you’re bouncing at just the right time. Once you complete all 15 levels in a chapter, 6 “extreme” stages are unlocked, and in those you need pixel-perfect accuracy to even complete the stage, nevermid score a gold medal.
Run Roo Run isn’t exactly a deep game. Like I said before, for at least half of the game, every stage fits on a single screen. Most of the stages in that first half take less than 3 seconds to complete, too. Only once you get far enough that moving platforms are introduced will your stage times exceed 5 seconds. The rating you get after each stage is handed out based on your time, too. Getting gold stars on normal stages isn’t too diffficult, but nabbing golds on the extreme levels can be even more difficult than 3-starring levels in Angry Birds.
Speaking of those angry avians, Run Roo Run’s menus have a very… familiar look.
The real high point, and I think one of the main reasons I keep coming back, is the music. Scribblenauts had a fantastic soundtrack. Run Roo Run’s music strikes the exact same sweet spot and adds a didgeridoo in a couple spots. The stages proper don’t have much in the way of tunage, but the menu screens provide all the aural pleasure you could want.
As with iOS game developers, 5th Cell is not above trying to wring a couple more bucks out of you once you’ve bought their game. There are a couple purchasable items: a bus that lets you skip a stage, and a “bullet-time” (it may be called something else, I can’t be arsed to check) powerup that slows time for so long. The cool thing is that the bullet-time persists over multiple stages, so you can use one to cheese your way to gold on several extreme stages. I’m not sure if there are more things to buy, as I lost interest in items as soon as I learned it would cost me real money to use them.
Run Roo Run isn’t a particularly robust game, but it’s fun and is over before it wears out its welcome (quite the opposite of Angry Birds). The extreme stages will have you pulling out your hair in frustration from chapter 1, but the regular levels have just the right difficulty curve. Achievements are included, and it’s only a buck. I recommend it and hope that it sells well, because 5th Cell is a great studio, and I’d love to see more work from them.