Temple Run is now on Android

When I pulled up my Twitter feed this morning, the first tweet to catch my eye was the news that Temple Run is on Android. I already have the game on my iPhone and it plays pretty well, but I made the mistake of pulling it up on an iPad in Best Buy and that diminished my enjoyment of the smaller version somewhat. Also my daughter C2, who opted for an Android tablet rather than an iOS device like her siblings, keeps grabbing my iPhone to play the game. I'm sure she will be excited to learn that she can finally have the game on her own device.

For those not in the know, Temple Run is part of a genre called "endless run". I've never seen this style of game on desktop PC but it is pretty popular on tablets and phones right now. In an endless run game, you don't control your character's forward motion. He is constantly running and you move him out of the way of obstacles. You are trying to keep him running for as long as possible. In the case of Temple Run, you are being chased by monsters so you try to pick up as many coins as you can along the way to buy power-ups like invisibility or extra speed. I'm not very good at games that require quick reflexes, but every time I crash into a wall on this game I immediately want to try again. It is easy for me to see how this game drew people's attention away from Angry Birds.

I didn't have an iPad handy when I wrote this post, so I compared the Android version to the one on my iPhone. The gameplay was exactly the same in both versions. The only difference I noticed was in the graphics. The colors in the Android version weren't as bright and the edges weren't as crisp. I'm not sure if this is due to the display capabilities of my tablet or the differences in programming for Android versus iOS. However, this is a minor difference and in my opinion it shouldn't keep anyone from enjoying the game. I know it isn't going to stop C2!