Subway Surfers

Subway Surfers is an endless runner game developed by Kiloo and Sybo, and released on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. The game works with a seasonal update system named World Tour since January 2, 2013, where the player discovers a new place such as a city every three weeks or month.

Plot
Jake (or any other character chosen by the player), a young tagger, was drawing graffitis on a subway train until a guard and his dog started chasing him when they discovered the graffitis. He then endlessly runs before the officer while dodging trains and other obstacles and collecting coins and power-ups to help himself throughout the run.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game's popularity kickstarted the mobile game industry with a unique concept that spread around the industry. It consists of the game ending immediately when the player is defeated (and doesn't spend anything to continue the game).
 * 2) The gimmick of the game is that since it runs on mobile platforms, the player must swipe on the screen in various directions to control the character, who can move on another lane, jump and roll on the ground (and fall to the maximum speed in the air). This works very well, since it allows a very fast-paced gameplay to be played fairly well.
 * 3) Coins are not only used as the primary currency of the game to buy items. Those are also important parts of the gameplay, as collecting them in-game adds more points to your score whenever the game is over.
 * 4) A big ton of characters and Hoverboards you can choose from. This includes Jake's crew, the original Hoverboards, and those from the World Tour. This makes the game great if you are a fan of unlocking characters and weapons, and this would also make the player want to play the game more to collect coins and keys to unlock characters, their outfits and Hoverboards.
 * 5) Power-ups are all over the subway, helping the player throughout runs. Super baskets make the player jump at higher heights, coin magnets make the player attract coins to automatically collect them all, 2X multipliers (obviously) double the score multiplier and Jetpacks make the player fly into the skies to make it immune to any obstacles temporarily while collecting coins.
 * 6) The game, as mentioned above, has a seasonal updating system that occurs every 3 weeks or 1 month. After each update, you can discover subways in other cities with limited characters that you can also unlock during their respective seasons.
 * 7) Not just that, but it also has the Weekly Hunt, which makes the gameplay change depending on the week day you are playing the game on. The following week days include:
 * 8) * Monday: random power-ups are added temporarily to the game, like Double jumps and Random Hoverboards.
 * 9) * Tuesday: The jackpot chance in mystery boxes is increased. Additionally, the rewards are even better, with them going up to 1 800 000 coins in one box if you watch an advertisement that doubles the obtained coins.
 * 10) * Wednesday: A limited character becomes available for unlock, but it costs real money to obtain it, and it becomes unavailable again in 24 hours.
 * 11) * Thursday: A random character will now give the player a +5 score boost if selected.
 * 12) * Friday: Super Mystery Boxes will replace the ordinary Mystery Boxes on the subway.
 * 13) * Week-end: Buy an indicated character to collect the letters on the subway to get a Super Mystery Box for each challenge completed.
 * 14) Iconic theme song.
 * 15) Good voice acting, especially the Guard's grunting noises.
 * 16) Speaking of outfits, many characters also come with different outfits. Each of them mostly have three outfits, and those are also unlockable, often with keys.
 * 17) When you bump into a wall or edge, the game gives you one more chance to do not bump into the same things again while the guard approaches to you for a few seconds before he eventually gets further from you. If you bump into a wall or edge the second time in that time, you trip the game is over.
 * 18) At the start of or when you continue the game, you are offered a capacity to use advantages for a few seconds, if you've bought them from the shop. Those advantages are score boosters that raise up the multiplier, or headstarts that allow the player to get a jetpack to fly through the sky at a very high speed to get an item at the end of the power-up. Each of those power-ups can be stacked up to three times to offer a bigger advantage, with the headstart making the player start at the highest running speed when stacked 3 times. Score boosters are very useful if you are grinding for a high score.
 * 19) You don't always have to rely on playing the game for excessive amounts of time to get a bunch of coins only to waste them for items like headstarts, which can cause addiction, because there are rewards you get daily if you complete specified tasks like missions, the coin meter and daily highscore. If you are a pro, you can get a good score end collect hoverboards and other items without having to spend coins on them at all.
 * 20) * Watching an advertisement after the game ends doubles the number of coins you got during the run, making you get up to 3,000 more coins.
 * 21) Nowadays, you no longer always have to spend coins or keys to unlock seasonal characters and hoverboards, after event coins came out. Event coins are the third currency of the game, which each of them last until the end of a season.
 * 22) * Alternatively, some characters and hoverboards require real money to unlock instead of event coins.
 * 23) It had spawned a pretty good animated web series from 2018.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) If you are grinding for high scores, the game can be pay-to-win, but not always. Some characters give you score boosts if you select them to play the game (e.g +5 multiplier, +8), but you need to pay with real money to unlock them right away. By the way, you can wait until the game will travel to a character's place to unlock it with virtual money, so you don't technically need to spend money to get a character who would get a score boost ability later on.
 * 2) The game isn't very challenging. The obstacles are often too easy to dodge even at the highest running speed, so you might never run into walls or trip for hours of gameplay. The fact that keys can also be used to continue playing after being defeated makes the game even easier.
 * 3) Almost every single character is basically reskinned from each other. They all share the exact same animations (except for poses at the character selection screen) and grunt noises, no matter what their genders and species are.
 * 4) Despite the constant World Tour updates, the game's developers never updated its engine since its release. Because of this, some of the problems have never been fixed such as the reskinned characters, and almost nothing new overall has been added to the game, like new power-ups, stages and special powers for Hoverboards. These will be the same power-ups that you will encounter in game, which makes it feel pretty repetitive for some.
 * 5) The ESRB's E10+ rating of the game is incorrect, because there is nothing in the game that would even deserve to have such a rating, and it should be rated E instead. The ESRB claimed it contains "Fantasy Violence", when it just involves the character hitting obstacles into tripping.
 * 6) * This also happened in the App Store where the game is rated 9+ for the same reason, when the game should be rated 4+.
 * 7) Although most of them are indeed funny, there are some glitches such as items disappearing for no reason.

Reception
This game is one of the most played games of all time, with over 1 billion downloads being registered on the Play Store.

On review aggregator Metacritic, the game received a 71/100 based on 8 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". On the same website, the game received an average user score of 6.9/10, which also indicates "mixed or average reviews".

Multiplayer.it gave it a 9.5/10, praising its free-to-play availability. Slide to Play, who gave the game 3/4, described that "the game has a few flaws, but is still a fun experience as a free-to-play game with a good introduction to the 3D-styled runner genre".

Trivia

 * As of 2018, Subway Surfers became the first game to reach about 1 billion downloads around the world, making it the most downloaded game of the 2010s decade.
 * The game was released in 2012, but it became popular after introducing the "World tour" theme in January 2013.
 * Following the success of the game, Sybo Games introduced a web series based on the game, Subway Surfers: The Animated Series, which premired on June 1, 2018 on Sybo Game's YouTube channel. The 10x4 minute episodic Web series was scripted by Brent Friedman and Francesca Marie Smith, and produced by Sander Schwartz. Michael Hegner was the director and Chris Bartleman was the supervising director. The Web series currently has 11 episodes.
 * The game's trailer currently holds the record for being the most viewed game trailer on YouTube.