The controls are extremely well done and feel very native to mobile. No on-screen joystick or arrows. You swipe in the direction that you want to go. I am a fan of good native controls and this game nails that.

My only complaint about the controls is that sometimes my swipe is not registered which leads to death. Most of the time, I blame myself for trying to go too fast.

Mobile Features

If you're anything like me and play a variety of mobile games, then you are certainly aware of features that are consistent across the medium.

Usually a game implements a few of these, but this game seems to have every…single...one.

Level based gameplay AND infinite mode

Three star system for each level

Lives system to prevent binge gaming

Watch an ad to revive

3 Missions rewarding certain behavior

Player level system

Spin the wheel luck mini-game

Watch an ad to double your reward

Video reward ads for in game currency and power-ups

Skins with stats

Constantly asking you to subscribe, rate, and pay to remove ads

Changing colors of the environment every few levels to mix things up

I'm actually surprised and almost disappointed there isn't a daily reward.

I'm not going to go into each of those systems in detail as that would be way too much to take on. If you have played mobile games then you know the basics of how they work.

And I'm also not saying that it's good or bad that all of these are in the game. Plenty of people will be upset about some these mechanics while I could argue in favor of some of them.

But that's besides the point. In this article I want to talk about a couple aspects that I really enjoy.

Obstacles/Enemies

The piece of design I do want to deconstruct is the obstacles/enemies. Again, you swipe to move through this maze-like-tomb and collect dots. There are obstacles like spikes, bats, and flying arrows that kill you if you touch them.

Each mechanic is introduced to the player slowly over the course of different stages. The first stage in which the player encounters an obstacle will be fairly simple as the game teaches the player how to handle the danger. Then the game will mix that obstacle with the existing ones to make things more difficult and interesting.

Each obstacle is also unique in how it functions within the game. If the enemies are different, then so should their behavior. For example, there are bats and snakes in the game but both are dangerous in different ways.

This table shows the obstacle distribution of the first 50 levels.