A heart-racing endless runner that puts you literally on the rails!

The endless runner genre took the world by storm following the launch of Canabalt in 2009 and the first Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride two years later, in 2011. They might not have been the first endless runners ever made for that honor goes to B.C’s Quest for Tires in 1983, though that latter game had a very short-lived success and could not set any trend.

Subway Surfers had the almost unsurmountable task of dethroning Temple Run and surprisingly succeeded. The visuals were perfect for that time’s standards, and the urban setting hinted that this was not just a Temple Run rip-off. Unfortunately, some of its faults were readily visible after a few hours (or even minutes) of gameplay. We’ll get into those a bit later.

In this game, you control a kid named Jake (though you can choose other characters later on) who wears a blue denim vest and a white hoodie by default. He gets caught spraying graffiti on a subway wagon and is immediately chased by the inspector and his dog. At that point, you are introduced to the core gameplay.

The running in this game, as well as in other endless runners, is triggered automatically, and there’s nothing you can do to interrupt the action (save for the pause button). Your only concern here is to overcome obstacles by swiping on the screen and earn gold coins, multipliers, super sneakers, magnets, and other items in the process, all of which are found scattered throughout the playable area (mainly on top of trains and on the rails).

If you crash into any of the obstacles (such as moving trains, stop signs, barriers, poles, and other subway-related assets), it’s game over, and you can only continue from where you left off by either watching an ad or spending keys (found in-game, by opening mystery boxes, or from Weekly or Season Hunts).

The items you find in your playthroughs give you some gameplay advantages. The magnet will attract coins toward your character even if not in their path. The multiplier will grant you higher scores at the end of each mission, and so on.

The game also allows you to use hoverboards, which are possibly the game’s main attraction. You get one for free (a red board with dark stripes), and you can additionally purchase the others for gold. The teleporter is an emblematic example. It’s a disk-shaped board that was introduced in Paris and, as the name suggests, enables you to zap from one lane to another instantly, saving you from impending death by a margin of milliseconds.

Oh, yeah, I should talk about the editions, as you might already be asking why I mentioned Paris. So, over the years, the SYBO Games released various editions of Subway Surfers featuring a plethora of “real world” locations (or at least extremely compact versions of them). To illustrate, you can play the North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and “Unknown Continent” editions, each with a handful of cities.

This variety in locations might have been conceived so as to address critics who were very vocal about the game’s lack of variety. This criticism was not unwarranted, as the game’s scenarios were exceedingly short and looped quite a bit, which was kinda fatiguing visually.

This approach of featuring other cities is moderately appealing, though I think the game would have benefitted more from fleshing out the scenarios, even at the expense of fewer ones. You can agree to disagree here, and that’s ok. If you prefer shorter and more assorted scenarios, this game delivers in spades.

You also have access to holiday events and other special modes that SYBO Games offers for a limited time. The fact that SYBO Games keeps supporting and updating this game after ten full years is nothing short of praiseworthy.

Lastly, the number of characters you can choose in this game is huge! Just as with the hoverboards, characters can be bought with gold (with the exception of Jack, of course), and some of them are only limited to certain cities or holidays. Coco, for example, is a Parisian jester who can be bought for 95,000 gold.

These characters can also wear special costumes purchasable with keys. However, the differences between characters and costumes are primarily cosmetic and add no gameplay advantages, at least to my knowledge.

Subway Surfers deserves to be on the list of the most legendary titles in the mobile gaming catalog. It's not for nothing that it was the most used game of the decade.It has also aged very little since its release, though its frequent graphical updates might admittedly have something to do with that. Albeit not devoid of shortcomings, Subway Surfers remains one of those games you can’t afford to miss out on.

Have you surfed those rails yet? Hover over to the comments section and give us your impressions!