It’s hard to watch your beloved franchises leave you — but it’s time to let Crash Bandicoot go. With the soft launch of Crash Bandicoot Mobile, the franchise has officially entered the ‘endless runner’ mobile race.
Created by King Studios (famous for the Candy Crush series), Crash Bandicoot Mobile features endlessly scrolling levels where players attempt to avoid obstacles in their way by dodging and sliding left or right.
Classic villains like Dingodile and Cortex make appearances in the game as players make their way through Wumpa Island — and there’s even a base-building mechanism. The game makes use of all the classic hallmarks of the endless runner genre with a handful of new features chucked in.
While Crash Bandicoot is certainly a popular franchise, the use of the ‘soulless’ endless runner genre (long-hated for its grinding, repetitive gameplay and perceived ‘cheap cash grabs’) is more likely to appeal to a mainstream audience, rather than hardcore Crash fans.
Crash Bandicoot Mobile is free to play, but the game does offer microtransactions — likely to help grow your home base and traverse levels.
You can view the first gameplay footage on YouTube and decide for yourself if the game is right for you:
The footage here features Coco Bandicoot instructing Crash to begin running, with the tutorial instructing players on when to spin, jump or duck to avoid oncoming obstacles. The opening level, based on Turtle Woods from Crash Bandicoot 2, is filled with crates to smash, enemies to spin and an ant boss to defeat.
It certainly looks like a Crash Bandicoot game, but be wary of those in-game microtransaction — it appears you’ll need to spend gems to unlock new levels and that can be a slippery slope for dedicated gamers.
Crash Bandicoot Mobile is planned for release on iOS and Android with the game currently rolling out in select regions. There’s no set date for release, but expect it to launch more broadly in the coming weeks.
As of writing, it doesn’t appear to be available in Australia, but with reports it has launched this week in Malaysia, we can expect the game to be available soon.
Leave a Reply