Temple Run Danger Chase features really bizarre packaging. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
Ok, the first impression I got of Temple Run Danger Chase (from Spin Master) was the packaging, which isn’t great. It’s exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to find at a big box toy store rather than your friendly neighborhood game store: it’s a thin cardboard box (like a cereal box) that opens on the top, and inside you get this molded plastic oblong that sort of holds the boards in place. Estimated empty space: 75%. I’m not sure how you’re intended to store this game — keep it in a ziploc bag? Find a shoebox? One thing’s for sure: you don’t want to stack much on top of this box.
Running along the never-ending path. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
It’s too bad the box is flimsy, because once I got the game out, it’s actually pretty fun. It’s not the same as tilting and swiping a screen, of course, but thanks to the little electronic idol timer, it is speed-based. Here’s the way it works: you set up the five game boards in a row, with the temple at the far left and the Start board next to it. Up to four players begin on the Start board, and the demon monkey starts in the temple. Each player gets one Boost token and one Resurrect token.
The gameplay is a bit like Zombie Dice but with a time limit. You slap the top of the idol to begin your turn, and then roll the five dice. Each die has some combination of blank faces, monkeys, 1 runner, and 2 runners. You can re-roll anything but the monkeys, as many times as you want, and then slap the idol again when you finish. You get to move as many spaces as there are runners, and then the demon monkey moves as many spaces as there are monkeys. If you land on another player, you move forward to the next empty space. Landing on a Boost or Resurrect space gets you another token, and landing on a Magnet space lets you steal a token from somebody else. If you wind up on an obstacle space, then you die, unless you spend a Resurrect token. Oh, and of course, if the demon monkey catches you, you’re dead no matter what.
There’s one more thing to watch out for, though: if you spend too long rolling dice (trying to get those 2-runner faces), you may hear the monkeys screeching:
When that happens, you go to the back of the pack — and if you were already at the back of the pack, you move back one space.
The boards are double-sided, and as you reach the end of the last board, you take the first one and flip it over, adding it to the path. It makes for a fun way to simulate the never-ending levels in Temple Run, and the drumbeats and screeching monkey from the electronic timer are a fun way to keep the tension high as you’re rolling. (There are Easy, Medium, and Hard settings which adjust the amount of time you have before the monkeys screech.) Another interesting aspect to the strategy is that sometimes you don’t want to roll too high, because it’ll land you on an obstacle — in those cases, you might find yourself re-rolling a 2-runner die. The dice do have different distributions of monkeys, but unlike Zombie Dice they’re not colored differently, so as you’re playing you don’t really have time to stop and inspect a die to see which ones are best to re-roll.
My kids enjoy watching me play the Temple Run app, but the tilt-swipe controls are still a bit hard for them (particularly while holding the heavy iPad). The Danger Chase game, while not terribly deep, is a fun way to let them get in on the action. I do wish the box were a little better, and the punch-out tokens are pretty flimsy, too, but the figurines (especially the demon monkey) are pretty fun and the never-ending board is a nice touch. At $29.95 retail, it’s on the edge of what I’d pay for a game like this; overall, though, it was better than I expected. The game retails for $19.99, which is pretty reasonable for its components and gameplay; overall, it was better than I expected.
Come on, was that really necessary? Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
The other game, Temple Run Speed Sprint, strikes me more as pure marketing ploy. It also has a little talking electronic idol, but in this case the gameplay doesn’t make up for its egregious packaging. Estimated empty space: 90%. The exterior box (again, flimsy cardstock) is only slightly smaller than the box for Danger Chase, but in this case it just has a cardboard spacer that holds the small idol device and a deck of 60 cards. I don’t know about you, but if I paid thirty bucks for this game and found this inside, I’d be ticked. The game retails for $14.99 but just doesn’t sound like a great idea to me.
Here’s the way the game works: each player gets one of the Runner cards to indicate their player number, and 10 to 12 cards (depending on number of players) which they lay face-up in front of them in any arrangement they please. The cards say Left, Right, Jump, Slide, and Invisibility. Switch the idol to indicate the number of players (2 to 4) and press the timer to begin.
The timer will announce a runner number and an action: “Runner 2: Slide!” The indicated player needs to discard the appropriate card (or an Invisibility card, which is a wild card) and then hit the timer before the demon monkeys screech. If you’re too late, you draw a card as a penalty. There’s also a “Pass!” command which means to pass any of your cards to another player. Finally, if somebody plays the wrong card, anyone can hold down the timer to pause the game — the player has to take back their incorrect card and draw a penalty before the game continues. The first player to get rid of all their cards wins.
It seems a little bit like playing Uno except instead of choosing a card, you’re entirely at the mercy of the timer. That doesn’t mean that Speed Sprint has more luck, necessarily, but I think it’s an example of a digital-analog mashup that fails to capture the best of both worlds.
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