Introduction
“Temple Run, the game that every single person reading this blog has played. The games that pioneered 3D Endless Running game, the game that was one of the few games to complete 1 billion downloads. Today, nobody plays them. They are not even part of the top 50 most downloaded games. So what caused the Temple Run games to lose 96% of their popularity? I’ll tell you in this nostalgia-filled blog.
Birth of the Game
Now, to understand the fall, we must also understand the rise. How did Temple Run games become so popular? So, the year was 2009. At the time, some Endless Running Games were released, but they were all 2D. So people used to play them either on a web browser or their mobile devices. You just had to overcome obstacles, and the character was running by itself in the game. Examples of this were Cannibal and Robot Unicorn Attack, etc. The games had different themes, but the basic game mechanics were similar. As Indiana jumped across obstacles, Cannibal is considered the first game of this genre. T-Rex from Google is also a 2D Endless Runner, but it came out in 2014. The motive behind my telling you all this is that the seed of the Endless Running genre was sown by Adam with the Cannibal game, but it wasn’t popular enough to become a part of the main culture. But a husband and wife duo were about to revolutionize this Endless Running genre.
Start of Temple Run
Imangi Studios is the company that made the Temple Run games. It was started by a couple in 2008. They are Natalia Luckyanova and Keith Shepherd. Kiril Tchangov, who was a game artist, joined them. Initially, they made some games like Manji World, Square, Geospark, etc. Though those didn’t fare well, and the revenue wasn’t much, they didn’t know that their luck was going to change when they launched Temple Run on August 4th, 2011. They had already made seven games before that. Their last game, Matt’s Adventure was a commercial flop, so they used the same engine in Temple Run and launched it as a paid game in the iOS app store. Nothing special happened initially. I mean, it received moderate success. It became part of the top 50 paid games chart. People still liked the game, and the downloads were increasing in number. So, the team decided to take a very bold decision. A decision that was probably going to be the best of their lives. To make the game free to play. Yes, the game was made free for all in December 2011, and the rest is history.
Success
It became the number one free iOS app, the top-grossing iOS app too at the time. This three-member team even beat companies like Zynga in popularity. When the Android version was released the next year, it completed 1 million downloads in the first three days. Imangi was not just a three-member team anymore. It was a proper startup with many developers. They started signing toys, comics, and merchandise too. They got opportunities to partner up with big brands too. In June of 2012, we got to know that Disney Pixar partnered with Imangi Studios to promote the movie Brave, and they released Temple Run Brave, where the locations of the movie were there, the characters were there, and everything else was the same. It just looked like a reskinned version of Temple Run but with the added feature of archery. The game did well. However they did one such collaboration again with Disney to promote Oz the Great and Powerful. For this, they launched Temple Run Oz in 2013. Usain Bolt of Jamaica also played Temple Run to relax before races. When Imangi got to know this, they collaborated with him and created a playable character for him in the game.
Temple Run 2
Continuing this legacy, they launched Temple Run 2 in 2013, which some people found unnecessary. But according to the developers, there were several new features that they wanted to introduce, but couldn’t do with the original game, so they had to make a new one. We got to see these new features too like zip lines, mine tracks, waterfalls, and jets of fire. The first game was set in an ancient Temple inspired by the Great Wall of China, but this time new locations were introduced, and our character, Guy Dangerous, was chased by a single enormous Evil Monkey instead of multiple evil monkeys. Overall the graphics were improved, and the gameplay was more enjoyable. That’s why critics gave it good ratings, and the public liked it too. It crossed 20 million downloads in just four days. In 2014, both games had completed 1 billion downloads. However, the developers didn’t know that this was the start of the downfall of the Temple Run series.
Start of the Downfall
A new Temple Run game was announced in 2016 called Temple Run Treasure Hunters. It was made in collaboration with Scopely and launched in 2017. Now anybody who has ever played this will realize when you see the trailer that it’s not Temple Run. But now it includes puzzles that you have to solve to progress in the game. And I don’t have to tell you where they took their inspiration from for this. So this game was quite different from other games in the Temple Run franchise, and it didn’t perform as well as people at home. So it didn’t affect the popularity of the series much. But Temple Run 2 had already completed 500 million downloads in the Google Play Store. This was in 2018. After that, another Temple Run game was released called Temple Run Idol Explorers. And if you watch its trailer, you will realize that it looks like those weird casual games that are in vogue now. The astonishing thing was that this game was not advertised at all. I mean, it didn’t show up on their websites or their Play Store page. It only showed up when searched for. So I think this was a reason for their downfall. They started making different kinds of games and didn’t release a proper Endless Runner game after 2014.
Copycats
There were also many copies of this game. If you make a copycat of, say, GTA or Minecraft, they won’t affect the original games much. But Temple Run is a game where you’re just running, so many clones were made to replicate their level of success like Temple Gun, Temple Jump, Piggy Run, Zombie Run, and Pyramid Run. These were some games that were entire copies. Then apart from that, some other games were made that were not proper clones but were inspired by Temple Run like Agent Dash or Subway Surfers. Yes, Subway Surfers was inspired by this game only which has now become more popular than Temple Run. While the popularity of Temple Run was falling rapidly, Subway Surfers hit an all-time high. Temple Run had to face huge losses due to these similar kinds of games because if you play any of these, that would be enough for you. There aren’t a lot of differences among these, so you will get similar experiences when playing Temple Run and Temple Jump. The developers initially said that it was flattering to see so many games being made on the same concept, but after some time, many clone games were removed citing copyright, though the damage was already done.
No Innovation and Expansion
There was also the point that Imangi didn’t innovate or introduce anything new to this genre. They didn’t make anything new after Temple Run 2, and whatever they did make was a copy of others. They couldn’t expand the franchise either. They did launch some merchandise, and they were in talks about making a Hollywood movie with Warner Brothers, but that didn’t happen, and the popularity of Temple Run started diminishing. In any case, these were games that nobody could play for a long time. The developers didn’t introduce good updates for the games either. Like Temple Run 1 now called Temple Run Classic, it didn’t have any updates. But yes, Temple Run 2 is getting updates, which is helping the game survive.
Birth of Sub-Genre
But yes, credit has to be given to Temple Run and its developers because they did what no one would have thought was possible, making the Endless Runner genre a cultural phenomenon. I mean, yes, Temple Run wasn’t the first such game. The Pepsi Man game was a game that was launched in 1999 on PlayStation. But Temple Run was the game that popularized the 3D Endless Runner game. Subway Surfers contributed to that too, but all the Endless Runner games after Temple Run were inspired by it. Big game franchises started making their endless runners like Crash Bandicoot On The Run, Super Mario Run, and Sonic Dash. Then such games started to be made based on movies like Jumanji Epic Run, Hunger Games Catching Fire, and the latest one Ram Setu The Run.
Made our Childhood Awesome
They also get credit for making our childhood so much fun. Most of you will probably be able to relate to the fact that at the time, we used to play this game a lot, and there used to be competition with friends over who would be able to score more. Those were the times. And hyper-casual games in vogue these days don’t stand a chance against them. You probably feel like downloading these games and playing them once again now because of nostalgia, my friend.
Current Status
But yes, now we talk about the current status of humanity in Temple Run and what the future holds for them. As a fan, I want the series to become popular again and for us to see something new. Anyway, the developers are just giving out Temple Run 2 updates for now, in which a jungle map inspired by India was also inserted, inside of which there are two Indian characters. So this was their gift for the Indians because Temple Run was most popular in India, Pakistan, and other Southeast Asian and African countries. But if they want to become popular again today, it can only be achieved through social media trends, which made Subway Surfers and Getting Over It popular again. And if that happens, developers should take advantage of that and make movies, animated shows, anime spin-offs, amusement parks, and everything else out of it.
