Sonic Runners

 

Sonic Runners was a 2015 side-scrolling endless running video game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise for Android and iOS. It was developed by Sonic Team as its first Sonic game exclusive to smartphones and published by Sega. In Sonic Runners, the player-character constantly ran forward, and players controlled their jumping using the touchscreen. The game featured a wide variety of playable characters from the Sonic series and was free-to-play and received periodic updates.

 

Development began in late 2013 and lasted a year and a half. Sonic Team sought to take advantage of the uses of smartphones and built the game using the Unity game engine. They designed Sonic Runners to have more replay value than other endless running games. The game was soft launched in select regions on February 25, 2015, and officially released worldwide on June 25. It failed commercially and received mixed reviews; although critics praised its gameplay, they criticized the number of pop-up ads and pay-to-play elements, as well as technical problems. Sega discontinued the game in July 2016. A sequel, Sonic Runners Adventure, was released by Gameloft in 2017.