Developer: FlukeDude Ltd
Price: Free
Size: 164.51 MB
Version: 1.0.0
Platform: iPhone & iPad
The Impossible Game touched down on iOS in April 2010, just a couple of months ahead of the iPhone 4. Needless to say, it’s been quite a wait for the sequel.
Not a whole lot has changed in the intervening 12 years. This remains an extremely easy-to-play yet tough-to-master autorunner-cum-rhythm-action game, but with slightly slicker graphics, a more modern free-to-play pricing structure (with no ads!), and two major new modes.
Levels switch back and have a surprising amount of depth
It’s those two new modes that are the real point of conversation here, but let’s deal with the basics first. A round of The Impossible Game 2 sees you tracking a little cube as it slides and hops through a succession of simple but fiendish 2D obstacle courses.
The only thing you need concern yourself with is tapping the screen to jump at the appropriate point. Which is a good thing, because the timing on those leaps, and the rapid-fire nature of some of the jump sequences, is brutally unforgiving.
Some of the jumps require pinpoint timing
Miscalculate your tap by a fraction of a second, and you’ll impale yourself on a spike, smack into a solid wall, or plummet to your death.
Thankfully, the relentless pace of the game means that you’re back up and running again instantly, without so much as a button press required to restart. With frequent checkpoints woven into the fabric of each level, The Impossible Game 2 becomes a war of attrition.
Gun pick-ups let you shoot through blocks
There are little embellishments to the formula this time around, such as block-busting guns and double-jump collectibles. But essentially, this is the same punishing auto-runner as before.
With such exacting mechanics, we were a little alarmed to encounter some performance issues in these regular single player levels. It isn’t much, but the odd pause or frame rate hitch is enough to cost you in a game like this.
Multiplayer is TIG2’s biggest addition
It’s also unexpected playing on an iPhone 13 Pro as we were. This is not a graphically ambitious title by any stretch of the imagination.
Technical gremlins aside, let’s talk about those extra modes. One is a level editor that lets you create and share complete levels. It’s the perfect game for such a tool, and we’re sure some people will get a lot of mileage out of it.
The level editor lets you create and share your own levels
Way more exciting and, we suspect, broadly appealing, is the multiplayer mode. The developer calls it Battle Royale, but it’s really just a good old-fashioned race to the finish, as up to 60 players race along the same course.
This proves to be the most transformative addition to The Impossible Game 2. Given the franchise’s 12-year hiatus, you might have hoped for more, and we’d certainly expect a hitch-free performance given that the wheel (or rather the block) isn’t being reinvented here.
Still, The Impossible Game 2 remains a fun, challenging, and newly social auto-runner experience.