Just when you thought that every concept that could be tacked on to an endless runner has already been done by some developer or other, Crescent Moon Games decides to create a street racing-themed runner that’s instantly addictive, in spite of a few missteps. If you like your games simple, fast and challenging, this might be worth your time. Let’s take Redline Rush for a spin and see how fast it can make time fly.

Concept

Redline Rush combines endless running and street racing into a format that’s really easy to get into. There’s a range of custom cars to choose from, each with its own benefits like score bonuses and increased powerup time. There are three tracks available to drive on, but you’ll have to unlock two of them using in-game currency.

There’s not much else to wonder about — just pick a car and start driving. The game feels like a budget racer with always-on throttle, leaving you to simply steer in the right direction to collect items and avoid obstacles.

Presentation

Redline Rush looks like every mobile racer you played last year, so don’t expect a novel art style or groundbreaking graphics. While the game’s visuals aren’t bad, it gets pretty boring to look at very quickly — the tracks are uninteresting to begin with and don’t have enough variation as you go along. The cars are modeled well, though, and there’s enough traffic to force you to keep your eyes on the road.

As you weave through streets dodging police cruisers, barricades and commuter vehicles, you’ll find lots of collectible items to get your hands on, including coins, gems and powerups. It’s disappointing to see that these classic elements weren’t appropriately themed to suit the racing take on the endless runner genre, instead looking out of place and marring the experience. This would have been a great opportunity to introduce not only new interpretations of these items but also possibly a new game mechanic that would separate this title from countless other runners, but sadly the developers failed to capitalize on it. Why do I still have to collect magical floating coins while on a freeway?

Gameplay

Having said that, this game isn’t all bad — in fact, it’s not bad at all. The smooth, fast gameplay kept me coming back for more at least a few times a day — even when I was actually busy. The mix of moving traffic and stationary obstacles offer a bit of a challenge, and snaking rows of collectibles tempt you to execute dangerous maneuvers to grab them all. You can also take down other vehicles by ramming into them laterally, and also score points for near misses. The handling feels arcadey in a good way, and this makes the game worth picking up repeatedly for a good while.

Should You Get This Game?

Yes. Just don’t expect too much out of it — the tracks and cars don’t offer much of an experience worth making IAPs for, but you can definitely enjoy killing time during your commutes with this for a couple of weeks. I really wish Crescent Moon had pushed things further and created a novel mashup that brought more racing elements into this runner and made something more than mildly amusing — let’s hope the next iteration ups the ante. Happy racing!