Nintendo’s legendary platformer runs and jumps on to smartphones on 15 December, but will it spring to new heights or plumb the depths?

Quirky social app Miitomo wasn’t the “proper” game fans were looking for when Nintendo announced its long-anticipated move into smartphone games. Super Mario Run almost certainly is that game though.

Unveiled at Apple’s WWDC event in June, it will be an iOS exclusive when it launches on 15 December, although an Android port is expected to follow in 2017.

In November, Nintendo revealed the launch date and confirmed that Super Mario Run will be free to download and try, with a single $9.99 in-app purchase (likely £7.99 in the UK) unlocking the rest of the game.

That month, Nintendo also gathered journalists for a hands-on demonstration of its first iPhone game, with one line in particular repeated several times by the company’s reps: “A true Mario platformer that you can play entirely with one hand.”

The messaging around Super Mario Run isn’t a surprise, with Nintendo hoping to scotch two fears for fans: first, that the classic Super Mario gameplay will be dumbed down for a massively mainstream mobile audience, and second that the translation from joypads to touchscreens will be botched.

Based on the almost-finished code, it’s looking good on both fronts.

From the finely tuned jumping mechanic to the level design, Super Mario Run feels like a proper (and new) Mario game, with plenty of nods back to earlier games for hardcore fans, but a well-crafted one-tap control system to suit its new medium.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Super Mario Run’s World Tour levels.

There are three main parts to Super Mario Run: its main World Tour mode; its Toad Rally challenge mode; and the Kingdom Builder mode that sits between the other two. The free download will let you play the game’s first three levels in both World Tour and Toad Rally modes, as well as a 20-second demo of the fourth.

Once you’ve paid your £7.99 to unlock the full game, there are no more in-app purchases. While spending virtual coins is a key part of the game, they’re only earned by playing, not by paying.

Taking the Tour

Super Mario Run is a blend of traditional Mario platformers and modern endless-runners. Mario automatically runs from left to right and clambers over small obstacles, while you tap lightly for a little jump and harder for a bigger leap.

There’s more to it than that: you can wall-kick your way up shafts, while strategically placed blocks help you stop for a few seconds, jump backwards or take bigger leaps forward.

The interface has been designed so that you tap on the bottom fifth of the screen below the level window, so as not to obscure any action with your thumb. The iPad version has a thinner tap zone to keep more of its screen free for the levels.

As with all Mario games, replayability is key. Each level initially includes five pink coins among the regular gold ones. Collect the five, and a harder “purple coin” version of the level is unlocked.

Collect all five purple coins in that, and an even harder “black coin” version unlocks where, in the words of Nintendo’s demonstrator, “they expect you to be a bit more fancy” with your acrobatics to collect everything.

There are plenty of alternative routes and secrets to find as you play through the game, while a bubble button can be tapped twice per level to float Mario backwards for a while: useful if you’ve missed a crucial coin, or just want to maximise your score by taking another route.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Super Mario Run’s Kingdom Builder mode and its shop.

Rally to the challenge

As you play through the World Tour mode you’ll earn gold coins and rally tickets, which are used in Super Mario Run’s other two modes: Toad Rally and Kingdom Builder.

Toad Rally is a challenge mode that costs one rally ticket to enter. You choose a level, then another player whose performance you want to try to beat. Your score is a combination of the coins you collect and the watching Toad characters that you “impress” by pulling off acrobatic leaps.

Beat the player you’ve challenged, and you’ll earn a bunch of colourful (red, blue, green, purple and/or yellow) Toads, but like spread betting, if you don’t beat the other player, you’ll lose Toads.

What do Toads mean? Prizes. Or rather, you need a certain number of each to unlock items in the game’s Kingdom Builder mode, where you spend your coins buying items to place in your mini-kingdom – some of which are purely decorative, while others … are not.

(Nintendo is keeping some features of the game, the contents of its shop included, under wraps until it launches.)

Coins, raffle tickets and Toads may sound like a potentially confusing system of interlocking virtual currencies. That said, it all seems to make sense within Super Mario Run, and many mobile gamers have already encountered similar systems in freemium games.

Reason for optimism

Given 2016 was a year of unpleasant surprises, Nintendo’s fanbase would be forgiven for fretting about Super Mario Run being a crashing disappointment. Based on the preview code, it’s looking more like one of the year’s silver linings.

Its developers appear to have walked the line between casual and hardcore players with success: you can play your way through the levels fairly easily at your own pace, albeit with the odd moment that may test the reflexes and rhythm of players whose experience is more Candy Crush than classic platformers.

If you’re a speed-runner or a collect-everything completist, though, Super Mario Run looks to have plenty to challenge you, including additional characters to unlock – Luigi and Yoshi are the ones we’re allowed to mention for now.

One question concerns whether Nintendo is planning to expand on the game’s six worlds in the coming months with the new levels and characters that mobile players have been trained to expect from their freemium games.

If Nintendo does follow suit, it will have to decide whether to charge for them, although based on the quality of the first few worlds in Super Mario Run, it will have a good case for doing so. Come 15 December, we’ll get a sense of whether players agree.