Mobile games can do a lot of things right, but it’s rare to find one that nails “live” multiplayer. Fun Run, built by Norway’s Dirtybit, grew to a solid international success with over 45 million downloads thanks to how well they pulled off real-time 2D racing. The game’s short, quick races made it easy to challenge your friends, allowing the game to grow virally through high schools (hopefully after class let out) to see who would end up on top of your friends’ leaderboards.
Fun Run is pushing two years old now, but the team is back with a real-time multiplayer system rebuilt from the ground up with the newly launched Fun Run 2. The game brings back your familiar characters and gameplay, and will hopefully give the game’s diehard fans a solid update while still sticking to the 2D “Mariokart” elements that made Fun Run a success.
Dirtybit has been active lately releasing a similar title, Dino Dash, this past June. With that game the company was sticking close to what they know while still experimenting with the real-time racing formula by allowing six players to race at the same time (Fun Run 2 sticks with four) and adding elements like Elimination and Boss Fight.
“We want to make it easy for friends to play together and have a lot of fun, so we’ve taken what we’ve learned from Fun Run, Dino Dash and the feedback from our users into the core of Fun Run 2,” says Erlend Børslid Haugsdal, CEO and CoFounder of Dirtybit.
Fun Run has good name recognition and a good user base to draw from, which is likely why the game has pushed itself up easily to the top slot in the iOS US app store when looking at downloads since its launch on December third. Will Dirtybit have another hit on their hands? Time will tell.
