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Endless runner or infinite runner is a subgenre of platform game in which the player character runs for an infinite amount of time while avoiding obstacles. The player's objective is to reach a high score by surviving for as long as possible. [1] The method by which the game level or environment appears to continuously spawn before the player is an example of procedural generation. The genre exploded on mobile platforms following the success of Doodle Jump , Canabalt , and Temple Run [2] being other popular examples. [3] Its popularity is attributed to its simple gameplay that works well on touchscreen devices. [4]
Endless runners can be side-scrolling, as in the genre's early titles, top-down, or 3D, but the player is placed in a neverending level in which the character automatically moves forward. The player's only form of control is to have the character dodge obstacles, either by moving out of the way or using a specific button. [5] Some form of points, currency, or other rewards are gained over time by maneuvering in the level or simply staying alive longer. The game progressively increases in difficulty as time goes on. The player has a game over if they are hindered enough by the obstacles that they are "caught" by whatever is chasing them and die. [1]
The genre has its origins in the vertically scrolling video games of the 1970s, primarily racing games. The player always moves forward, avoiding obstacles and other vehicles. Taito's Speed Race , released in 1974, was the first. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the same concept was used in skiing games.
Vehicle-oriented platform games, like Jump Bug (1981) and Moon Patrol (1982), added both jumping and shooting as ways to deal with obstacles in continually scrolling levels. The home game B.C.'s Quest for Tires (1983) uses the forced-scrolling and jumping gameplay of Moon Patrol.
The idea of being chased relentlessly by an indestructible obstacle, monster, or boss to enforce forward progression was greatly influenced by the boulder scene from the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark . This theme appeared in games like Draconian (1984) in which the player must avoid obstacles while being pursued by an invincible giant dragon. This would become a recurring theme of endless running gameplay.
Atomic Runner Chelnov (1988), while also a shooter, has many of the hallmarks of a modern runner with forced scrolling and long jumping onto platforms to avoid hazards.
The 1990 Amiga and TV show game Hugo featured sequences of 3d endless running.
SkiFree (1991) by Chris Pirih and released in Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3 is probably the earliest true endless runner and was inspired by the 1980 Atari 2600 cartridge Skiing . [6] The player skis down an endless slope with procedurally generated obstacles, pursued by large indestructible yetis. Score is based on distance traveled. [7]
Battletoads (1991) has several forced scrolling areas where the player is required to avoid hazards and obstacles. [8] In Genji Tsuushin Agedama (1991) the player is constantly running in a forced scrolled environment. The pinball machine Doctor Who (1992) includes a video mode with forced running and avoiding obstacles.
SFCave (1996) is a Windows 3.1 game that involves flying through an endless cave without hitting the walls.
The 3D platform game Crash Bandicoot (1996) focuses on forward movement within corridors primarily in third person perspective, including obstacles and hazards that prevent backward motion, very similar to the modern Temple Run clone. It also includes levels where Crash must constantly stay ahead of a large boulder or pursuing dinosaur.
The emergence of the touchscreen on smart phones and tablets paved the way for the type of simplistic game controls which gave birth to the modern genre.
Doodle Jump (April 2009), a vertical scroller, was one of the first mobile titles to be endless, with game only ending when falling to the bottom of the screen or hitting an obstacle. It was to pave the way for even more popular titles. [9]
The prototypical endless runner, building on Doodle Jump's success, was Canabalt (August 2009), [10] an indie game developed by Adam Saltsman in which the player flees from a city being destroyed by giant robots that is procedurally generated and infinite. Cannabalt used distance gained as the main scoring system. These were both common elements of subsequent runners. The 2D scroller limited movement to leaping and dodging obstacles simply by touching the screen, overcoming control limitation of touchscreen devices. [11] Adult Swim Games soon asked Saltsman for permission to adapt Canabalt's design into their own title, and released Robot Unicorn Attack (2010). It became an internet meme due to Adult Swim's larger audience and its quirky themes.
Within just months, the App Store was full of 2D endless runner clones. Some of the more popular 2D mobile titles included Tiny Wings (February 2011), Jetpack Joyride (September 2011), Punch Quest (2012) and Flappy Bird (2013). Running with Friends (2013) is notable in its effort to integrate with Facebook to support social multiplayer running.
Endless runners became known for the addictiveness of their gameplay. This also led to them being monetized using the Free to Play model. Monetization tactics used in endless runners included virtual currencies (using In app purchases on mobile and support for: [12]
Hugo featured 3D endless running already in 1990.
Bit.Trip Runner (2010) added rhythm game elements and was also one of the first in the genre to be rendered in 2.5D. [4]
Another of the earliest 3D titles in the genre was Temple Run (August, 2011), introducing an over-the-shoulder viewpoint. [4] Temple Run was followed by numerous clones and 3D innovations. Among the more popular third person 3D titles were Subway Surfers and Agent Dash (2012). Subway Surfers went on to become the most popular game of the 2010s, the first game to reach 1 billion downloads and with a total of 2.7 billion downloads achieved revenues of over $80 million through monetization. [13]
During the 2010s, numerous large franchises adapted their gameplay into endless runner mobile spin-offs. The 2010s these included reboots of classic video games as endless runners including the notable titles: Pitfall! (2012), Rayman Jungle Run (2012), Rayman Fiesta Run , Sonic Dash [2] and Pac-Man Dash! (2013), Crossy Road (2014), Lara Croft: Relic Run [14] and Pac-Man 256 (2015). [15] Original titles were often lost in the sea of generic titles, rare exceptions were Race The Sun (2013) and Alto's Adventure (2015) which received positive reviews. [16]
Google's Dinosaur Game (2014) was released at the height of the endless running craze with developers in September 2018 revealling that it had been played approximately 270 million times monthly. [17] Microsoft was later to do the same with Surf (2020).
Post 2010s the format has been criticised for being uninspired, particularly the adapted franchises, and a genre lacking ongoing innovation. [18] [19]
A platformer is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels with uneven terrain and suspended platforms of varying height that require jumping and climbing to traverse. Other acrobatic maneuvers may factor into the gameplay, such as swinging from vines or grappling hooks, jumping off walls, gliding through the air, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines.
An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, rhythm games and platform games. Multiplayer online battle arena and some real-time strategy games are also considered action games.
Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.
Scramble is a horizontally scrolling shooter arcade video game released in 1981. It was developed by Konami and manufactured and distributed by Leijac in Japan and Stern in North America. It was the first side-scrolling shooter with forced scrolling and multiple distinct levels, and it established the foundation for a new genre.
B.C.'s Quest for Tires is a horizontally scrolling video game designed by Rick Banks and Michael Bate and published by Sierra On-Line in 1983. Versions were released for the Commodore 64, IBM PC, Atari 8-bit computers, ColecoVision, ZX Spectrum, MSX, and Apple II. Based on the comic strip B.C. by Johnny Hart, BC's Quest for Tires is similar to Irem's Moon Patrol from the previous year. A wheel-riding caveman is always moving forward through horizontally scrolling levels, and the player jumps or ducks as obstacles approach. The game's title is a play on the contemporaneous film Quest for Fire.
A beat 'em up is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels, while a number of modern games feature more open three-dimensional (3D) environments with yet larger numbers of enemies. The gameplay tends to follow arcade genre conventions, such as being simple to learn but difficult to master, and the combat system tends to be more highly developed than other side-scrolling action games. Two-player cooperative gameplay and multiple player characters are also hallmarks of the genre. Most of these games take place in urban settings and feature crime-fighting and revenge-based plots, though some games may employ historical, science fiction or fantasy themes.
LittleBigPlanet is a puzzle platform video game series created and produced by British developer Media Molecule and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Most games in the series put a strong emphasis on user-generated content and are based on the series' tagline "Play, Create, Share". The tagline represents the three core elements of the series: playing alone or with others locally or online, creating new content using the in-game creation tools, and sharing creations and discoveries online with other players.
Temple Run is an endless runner video game developed and published by Imangi Studios. The player controls an explorer who has obtained an ancient relic and runs from demonic monkey-like creatures chasing him. The game was initially released for iOS devices on August 4, 2011, and later ported to Android systems and Windows Phone 8.
Jetpack Joyride is a side-scrolling endless runner action video game created by Halfbrick Studios. It was released for iOS devices on the App Store on September 1, 2011 and has been ported to other systems. It was released online as a Flash version on May 11, 2012; on Android on September 28; on PlayStation Portable on November 20 in North America and November 21 in Europe; on BlackBerry PlayBook on December 13, 2012; on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on December 21 in Europe and December 31 in North America; on BlackBerry 10 on March 6, 2013; and on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 on June 5. It was also released on PlayStation 4 on April 26, 2016. A mobile version using the keypad was released in 2021 for KaiOS devices.
Canabalt is a one-button endless runner designed by Adam Saltsman for the Experimental Gameplay Project in 2009. The 2D side-scrolling video game was originally written as a Flash game, then ported to iOS, Android, PlayStation Portable, Ouya, and HTML5. An authorized version for the Commodore 64 was released on cartridge. Canabalt has been credited with popularizing the endless runner subgenre.
Sonic Dash is a 2013 endless runner mobile game developed by Hardlight and published by Japanese game studio Sega. It is Hardlight's second Sonic the Hedgehog game, the first being 2012's Sonic Jump. The game was released in March 2013 for iOS, November 2013 for Android, and December 2014 for Windows Phone and Windows, along with an arcade release in November 2015 as Sonic Dash Extreme. It was initially released as a paid application, but was made free-to-play a month after its iOS release.
Subway Surfers is a 2012 endless runner mobile game which is co-developed by Kiloo and SYBO Games, private companies based in Denmark. It is available on Android, iOS, HarmonyOS, Amazon Fire Tablet, and Windows Phone platforms and uses the Unity game engine. In the game, players take the role of young graffiti artists, led by Jake who, upon being caught in the act of tagging a metro railway site, run through the railroad tracks to escape from the inspector and his dog. As they run, they grab gold coins, power-ups, and many other items while simultaneously dodging collisions with trains and other objects. They can also jump on top of the trains and surf with hoverboards to evade capture until the character crashes into an obstacle, gets caught by the inspector, or gets hit by a train, at which point the game ends. Special events, such as the Season Hunt and others, including the game's birthday events, the Super Runners Challenge and Rivals Challenge, can result in in-game rewards and characters.
Iron Man 3: The Official Game is a mobile phone video game developed and published by Gameloft. The game was released on April 25, 2013, and is based on the film Iron Man 3. It is now discontinued and not supported by Gameloft. The game is an endless runner, where the player attempts to dodge objects to score points and complete the level and defeat villains from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The game received mixed reviews, with critics praising the core premise, but criticizing the game's excessive in-app purchases and freemium-based time restrictions.
Temple Run is a video game franchise of 3D endless running video games developed and published by Imangi Studios. The primary theme of the series is an explorer chased from a group of demon monkeys, however, the characters and theme vary between spin-offs. The game was initially released for iOS devices on August 4, 2011, and later ported to Android systems and Windows Phone 8. The series consists of eight titles and has received commercial success with multiple entries surpassing 1 million downloads.
Chucky: Slash & Dash is a 2013 endless runner video game by American developer Slimstown Studios and published by Universal Studios. The game was originally slated to be released for both iOS and Android devices on November 1 2013, but was ultimately released only for iOS.
Adam Saltsman, also known as Adam Atomic, is an American indie video game designer best known for creating the endless runner Canabalt. He is a founder of Semi Secret Software and Finji video game studios.
Sonic Runners was a 2015 endless runner game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise for Android and iOS. It was developed by Sonic Team as its first Sonic game exclusive to smartphones and published by Sega. In Sonic Runners, the player-character constantly ran forward, and players controlled their jumping from a side-scrolling perspective using the touchscreen. The game was free-to-play, featured a wide variety of playable characters from the Sonic series, and received periodic updates.
Alto's Adventure is a 2015 endless runner snowboarding video game developed by Team Alto and published by Snowman (iOS) and Noodlecake Studios (Android). The player-character automatically moves to the right of the screen through procedurally generated landscapes. The player taps the screen to jump and perform tricks (backflips), and works towards goals, competitive high scores, and upgrades. Snowman, a Toronto-based, three-person indie development team, previously worked on productivity apps before Alto's Adventure. The game was made to emulate the ethereal atmosphere of snowboarding, and was inspired by Ski Safari (2012), Tiny Wings (2012), Jetpack Joyride (2011), Journey (2012), Monument Valley (2014), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000), and Windosill (2009).
Lara Croft: Relic Run is a free-to-play action-adventure endless runner platforming game for mobile platforms. It was developed by Simutronics and published by Square Enix's European subsidiary in May 2015. Players take on the role of franchise protagonist Lara Croft as she searches for a lost colleague while confronting a shadowy conspiracy.
Lucky Luna is a 2022 platformer video game developed by Snowman and published by Netflix through its Netflix Games subscription service. The game features the player character, a girl in a fox mask named Luna, traversing a series of underground levels connected by portals to an abandoned temple. The player moves the world left and right around Luna using the touchscreen while avoiding obstacles and hazards. Unlike in most platformers, Luna cannot jump, and the levels are primarily oriented vertically with Luna falling from the top. The game has six handmade levels with different themes in the story mode, and infinite procedurally generated versions of those levels in the endless mode.