Some mobile games don’t get the credit in the gaming world they deserve. The endless runner created by a husband and wife team Temple Run, first released in 2011, is one of those games. There are now 8 different Temple Runs, including the newest that came out in August 2024: Temple Run Legends. I got a chance to play 50 of the 500 levels on the (NO) Blue Monday Show this week and dug it.
Before we get to that, let’s look at what made Temple Run a success. It’s simple, replayable with that “just one more” vibe. It has power-ups, stats and, yes, it’s free. Well, sort of free. It followed that model of pay to remove the ads free (see: Microtransactions, what do you think? Royal Match outearns average spend over Candy Crush in 2023). With an asterisk *free*, as it should be known.
The 2010s spawned a bunch of endless runner games including Subway Surfers, but I mostly remember playing Temple Run. It wasn’t the first endless runner, but it stuck out for me with the over the shoulder view, those wild chasing monkey creatures creating the tension that you better not slow down.
The newest Temple Run game, as mentioned above, Temple Run Legends is available to play on Apple Arcade without any monetization schemes.
Sadly, some of these type games have been exploited for excessive ads and pay to stay alive schemes. My memory of Temple Run is it stayed out of most of this stuff and certainly at Apple Arcade, the newest game doesn’t have any ads or monetization. Apple goes out of their way to promote they don’t do microtransactions at Apple Arcade, which makes their use of mobile games somewhat unique.