Disney Interactive and Pixar have partnered with Imangi Studios to release an expanded version of Imangi’s hit mobile game Temple Run as Temple Run: Brave, showcased alongside an advance screening of the first 31 minutes of Pixar’s upcoming film at the Pixar campus on March 29th.
Temple Run: Brave features all the core mechanics of the incredibly popular (with over 80 million downloads) mobile app – an endless runner where the player is scored based on how far they manage to get from their pursuer, controlled by gestures. Players take control of Brave’s heroine Merida as she flees from the “demon bear” Mordu through improved environments inspired by the Scottish countryside, sliding, jumping, turning – and shooting targets, thanks to the new archery mechanic introduced with the game. While doing so, they collect coins allowing them to purchase various power-ups and accomplish Achievements to compete with friends.
Temple Run: Brave also includes a few additional features. Players start with 2500 coins (equal to the $0.99 purchase price) to purchase power-ups, and can unlock storyboard sections revealing bits of the Brave storyline.
Temple Run: Brave will be released during June 2012 for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android. Pixar’s Brave will hit theaters on June 22.
Trauben’s Impressions:
As someone who’s never played Temple Run, it’s difficult to say how much of an improvement Temple Run: Brave is over its predecessor. Mobile games are not my forte – my smartphone doesn’t cooperate much. So I had to judge Temple Run: Brave on its own merits.
Within about….thirty seconds, Merida had slammed headlong into her first wall.
The game’s reasonably forgiving, with a cooperative tutorial, but some of the slide-gestures can be a bit finnicky. And as with any “arcade”-style score-based game, one has the distinct impression that the rest of the world has only just discovered mechanics gamers already considered largely tapped-out around the mid-80s. This doesn’t by any means make Temple Run: Brave a bad title, though; like most social games, it aims to be candy, not a proper meal, and should be judged accordingly.
Pixar also showcased the first portion of Brave for the attending journalists, and there’s quite a bit more to say about that.
Pixar has an impressive pedigree, and Brave showed many of their trademark flourishes – detailed, vibrant environments, convincing digital “actors” that move and behave with lifelike grace, excellent voice acting, and endearing quirks. Watching a Pixar film is usually a good way to cheer up…and yet, at the same time, a growing sense of déjà vu arises, yet can’t be pinned upon repeated plot elements or motifs.
Brave is charming, endearing…and so far extremely safe, all soft edges and goofy caricatured character designs – particularly the men. Interesting quirks and earnest performances are everywhere, so we have plenty of reasons to care for the cast, but distinctly lacking was any sense of serious danger or conflict.
Granted, it was only the first 31 minutes of the film, but the conflict suggested there was so familiar – especially to the gamer the ISO Standard Rebellious Princess is an old friend, and her entire plot arc of Woman Vs World is so well-trodden it’s become fossilized. It’s rare to see a story centered around this archetype, and Brave‘s first 31 minutes portrayed a familiar cast of familial archetypes: a stern, strict mother, a trio of rambunctious urchins, easygoing father, free-spirited tomboy heroine, even a peculiarly doglike horse.
It’s an interesting exercise comparing Brave with rival Dreamworks’ 2010 How to Train Your Dragon. Dragon shares Brave‘s family-friendly aspirations, but from the beginning painted a world with implied dangers and conflict everywhere alongside its light-hearted dialogue. By contrast, with the exception of a prologue appearance by a fierce black bear, Brave’s first 31 minutes feel largely safe and nonthreatening. Merida’s greatest peril so far is grounding and involuntary marriage at the behest of her well-meaning but overbearing mother.
For a movie called Brave, I’m not yet sure what Merida is going to need to be brave about. To discover that, we’ll have to wait for the movie’s release on June 22nd.