Mini-review: The Bulb Runner

Published by at

Another 'Unity' powered title, The Bulb Runner is an unashamed endless running title, but given tremendous casual re-play value by virtue of being completely randomised every single time you play it. In other words, memory is no help here, all you have are your eyesight and reflexes as obstacles and traps appear in front of your dashing character....

From the Store description:

Guide the Bulb through the darkest of times...

The Bulb Runner is a fun and adventurous platform game, and your main aim is to guide the bulb through various obstacles that come in the way. If you get stuck anywhere, the game is over!

The game is simple, fun and for all ages! Just remember that dark times lie ahead, so run as fast as possible!

Despite the night theme, The Bulb Runner is glossy and polished. The aforementioned randomisation of the world in front of you is the biggest single factor in wanting to play over and over again - it's always different, plus there are plenty of platforms, swings, tyres and so on, all needing to be navigated with simply one-tap gameplay.

The Bulb Runner screenshot

Stylised graphics and a pumping soundtrack, The Bulb Runner impresses despite the lack of colour...

The Bulb Runner screenshot

A swinging and descending beam, just one of the dynamic, physics-based obstacles to overcome...

The Bulb Runner screenshot

And here a tilting beam, from which you have to jump - a double-tap gives a longer jump, and so on. And err... gravity be damned!

I have to confess that, back in the 1990s, when I created my ubiquitous golf games for the Psion palmtops, the thought of sitting there for hundreds of hours creating courses from scratch (or replicating real world courses) was too daunting and I ended up letting the game randomly create holes every single time. Maybe a quick way out for me, but it did mean arguably better replay value for players, with never the same course twice. The same applies here, with the variety in combinations of obstacles meaning that there's even more temptation to 'play just once more', perhaps hoping for a slightly easier time.

You can grab The Bulb Runner here. It's free, but there are left-of-screen adverts on the phone, plus interstitial ads between attempts - and no way to get rid of them, which is a missed opportunity - zapping the ads would be a no-brainer 79p/$1 in-app purchase.

Source / Credit: Windows Phone Store