GAMES REVIEW: Adventure Time Run: An Ooo Expedition

Run Adventure Time run. Run away before the game overheats and crashes again.

The infinite run game has been a classic game type in the mobile market for many years, especially in the last few years with popular runners like Super Mario Run, Geometry Dash, Sonic Dash, Lara Croft Run, Pac-Man 256 and Crossy Road. So, in terms of the market, the endless runner is a very saturated one so it’ll need to do what it does just as good or better than the tops in the category. It already has a leg up by being based on Adventure Time which is arguably one of the most acclaimed animated shows of the last few years. What could go wrong for Adventure Time Run?

The game’s contextual narrative is that you racing through the land of Ooo collecting shards of a big magical stone. What is the magical crystal? Who shattered it to force you to find the shards? Never touched upon as the game wants you to just run run run. Gameplay wise you hold your phone vertically and your first character Finn runs forward, depending on whether you swipe side to side, up and down you control your character to strafe left or right, jump up and roll. As expected you use these movements to strafe, jump and roll past obstacles from the Candy Kingdom’s candy bars to jump over to the Ice Kingdoms ice to jump over with the goal to reach the shard at the end.

It simply should be just like that, shouldn’t it? Nothing is wrong with just a solid endless runner game with a strong aesthetic reminiscent of the source material. It looks and plays great in both respects. It should be a game that I could pull out and play simply. However, I find issue with the game and its method of micro transactions. The way that it has evolved into its menu system has evolved it into a convoluted chore that sucks the enjoyment out of the running.

Starting from the basic game down the levels of menus, you are able to choose 3 runner characters to play as. Throughout the stage, each character has a stamina life meter and when one character is going to collapse, you can switch to the next to take over. A smart mechanic to keep players conscious of the time and distance of each stage they are in. That is completely okay. Then you go one level deeper and each character has their own upgrade skill set, from the defense, attack, HP and more you spend the in game earned currency to upgrade each runner. Although speaking honestly it feels like a very finicky system, the character page lists the three runners you choose and below you can scroll to all the various other characters that you can unlock, Jake, Bubblegum Princess, Marceline, Lemongrab, and Fiona plus their separate unlockable costumes. On a deeper mechanical level, this does set up in game goals for the player to amass enough coins to purchase new characters for runners however with each of their skill lists and upgrades it just feels like a chore to juggle upgrading their stats with the running mechanic.

We put on an endless runner game to test our skills of preemptive dodging and quick thinking, the slow and methodical upgrade system clashes with that game style and lends itself to favoring already beefed up characters and let the newer ones collect dust. There isn’t much of a point to spend on new ones when if you beef up the old characters they can complete the stages just as well. If the characters were bought but didn’t have skills to upgrade that would have developed a quicker paced atmosphere and just opened up the floor to players testing their quick reflexes, not how much they can grind to boost stats. Speaking of stats there is also a treasured aspect of the game. Throughout the levels, you can jump into various mini-levels that will change up the perspective on how you run and add in other various mechanics like if you jump in a level that is fighting monsters you slide your finger to make your character shoot. But beside the point, at the end of each stage you collect a treasure chest and when you complete or lose a level you open your treasure to reveal either character based puzzle pieces (also used as a part of the characters’ upgrade system) or treasure. These bits of treasure have stat boosts to them that will help your run and in the inventory menu you can equip and use them. This system makes sense given Adventure Time as a show likes making fun of the whole adventure trope including weird treasure.

It’s really just the upgrade system that holds the game back for me to replay it. It’s a system that limits each player by the number of hours you play not one’s own skill and that is plain to see. It becomes an experience where it’s not free to play or play to win but just bogs it down pressuring you to pay to quickly advance. At the end of the day, Adventure Time Run feels like a solid game but it is bogged down by too many unnecessary add-ons. It is not worth your time and money to purchase a running game that over-complicates running.

If you want to get Adventure Time Run: An Ooo Expedition for your iOS or Android it can be downloaded via the Itunes App Store and Google Play Store.