Rail Rush Review

Developer: Miniclip SA
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPod Touch 2nd Generation

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Rail Rush is a fast paced and reflex-challenging game. The game has players control a moving rail cart at high speeds to collect gold. The game tests players’ reaction time, judgment skills, and reflexes. It’s a very full-featured app and the graphics, sounds, and other aspects show that developers thought it through. And although much of the design of the game seems similar to Temple Run, all of the extras make it worthwhile.

The goal of Rail Rush is to collect as much gold as possible without dying. Gold appears on either side of the tracks as players move deeper into the mine. Simply leaning to the side to touch the gold is all that is required to grab it. Players can also collect rubies and rock eggs. Rocks eggs can be broken for a chance at a prize, or cashed in for gold.

The controls are very simple and intuitive. Tilting causes the miner to lean to the side and the other movement options are controlled by swipes. For instance, players can swipe up to have the cart jump, swipe down to duck, and swipe from one side to the other to jump from rail to rail.

Players can spend their gold in a shop, which has many upgrades. Some of the items players can buy are three additional characters, over 10 upgrades for the rail cart, and numerous other items. However, some of the nicer upgrades are quite expensive and might cause some players to spend some cash to buy more gold.

Obstacles include missing tracks, having to change tracks, and barriers that need to be either jumped over or ducked under. Also, when encountering many obstacles there will often be multiple ways around, whether it’s changing tracks or staying on the track and dodging the obstacle. Since there are multiples way around many obstacles, it is often very hard to quickly decide which way is the safest and has the most gold. Also, as the miner progresses farther in the cave, the speed of the cart increases, making it ever harder, and the bottom of every level is filled with colorful fog, which sometimes obscures the track.

There are special missions that give players objectives to strive for, such as collecting a certain number of gems or changing tracks 20 times. Also, a really nice touch that I haven’t seen in a game before is an overhead marker that indicates the furthest distance a player has reached.

Rail Rush is a very good game and a bargain for only $0.99. There is a ton of depth will all the levels, missions, and upgrades. The gameplay, graphics, and sounds all work together to create a really enjoyable atmosphere. It looks and plays a lot like Temple Run, but all of the missions, items, and upgrades available to players make the game stand on its own and worthwhile.