Endless Rush is a game about dodging obstacles, imagine Temple Run, but instead of running you are flying. As a weird moth, don´t really know what the character is supposed to be, you have to collect nectar and, more important, packages that need to be delivered. All of this while obstacles, mainly of a botanic nature -vines, spider-webs, fruits, fungus, etc- get in your way. The premise is simple if you crash against any of these obstacles you lose. There are some power-ups that you can get in order to make the play through easier: a nectar doubler, which, as the name states, doubles the amount of nectar you can collect; a heart, which lets you survive a crash and a bullet time type boost that slows time. You can also buy, with the nectar, that acts as the currency of the game, boosts to start a play-through with an advantage.
This is not a bad game at all, and the fact that has multiple difficulties help palliate the repetitiveness of the gameplay. Music varies, and you can pick it up mid-game -while playing, a little bubble with a musical note will pop-up, if you fly through it the music changes-; this is a concept I had not seen before and it says a lot of the developers’ intentions, they knew the game could get boring pretty fast and actively found ways to avoid that. The difficulty gets harder as time passes, you fly faster as the game goes on. Sometimes this helps the game achieve a flow state, you feel like every movement counts and the smallest mistake could make you crash. In the hardest difficulties, despite the kiddie aesthetic, the game gets very demanding, but is not like is the games fault, that’s what those difficulties are there for.
Now for the bad stuff. As I said this is not a bad game, far from it. But it is not great either. Sometimes, maybe because of the art direction: too many details in screen, it gets hard to differentiate between a prop and an actual obstacle. This hinders the ability of the player to dodge and punishes him for something that is not really his fault. The game is free, but they obviously want you to spend some money on it. Things are expensive in the store, nectar wise, and, if you want a short-cut, nectar is expensive, money wise. Just as an exercise I did the math to give you guys, and gals, an example. In the store, in the upgrades section, there is a prestige skin, which does nothing and is purely aesthetical, that costs 1.000.000 nectar balls, sorry, don´t know the right plural nomenclature for that. You collect about 500 nectar balls per play-through, that would mean playing the game 2.000 times. If you don’t want to do that you can buy nectar, which goes for different prices but, for the sake of the argument, I will use the price that is listed in the biggest amount. 234.000 nectar bubbles cost 49.99, that means that if you buy 4 packs, expending 199.96 dollars, you get 936.000 nectar balls, that still leaves you short for the prestige skin, you would have to buy another pack for 19.99, which gives you 86.000 nectar balls, to complete that amount, roughly expending 220 dollars for a purely aesthetical upgrade. Now, this is, of course, optional, but even for the other upgrades the game, if you don’t want to expend any money, requires some serious grinding.
In conclusion, great game to play while waiting in line at a bank, or somewhere else. Be careful with the store and enjoy.
