Sonic Prime Dash

Original release: 13th July 2023
Developer: Hardlight
Publisher: Sega
Platforms: Android, iOS
Available to buy: Locked behind Netflix subscription

Another version of the Sonic Dash game, and this one is exclusive to a Netflix subscription. It’s a Temple Run style autorunner game where you race along as Sonic and co (this time in their Sonic Prime show designs) to see how far along you can get, aiming for the highest score along the way. Well, that’s supposed to be the whole point of the game. But that’s not the case with the Sonic Prime games, and certainly not with this.

The “goal” of the game is to grind and level up. There are three ways to level up. The first is completing tasks (which are limited per day) like spinning X times, killing some enemies – just stuff you’d normally do. This also gets gems to build stuff for the animals you rescue, which is the second way to get XP. Finally, upgrading your character will also give you XP, doing this will both make your character better and give you more XP. Levelling up will also unlock more themes to race through.

The gameplay is quite simple: swipe left/right to move, swipe up to jump and swipe down to spin, which lets you take out enemies. You dodge obstacles while collecting rings, power ups and other bonus items. It’s something enjoyable every now and then but not something you want to do for long – but the huge problem is that you can’t really attempt for a high score until you spend countless hours racing level 49 while fully upgrading a character, and you’ll be done with the game long before that – but then there’s still items that mess with the scores.

Score based autorunners can be a lot of fun, but the running needs to be the whole game. All the extra stuff in the Sonic Prime games just make the entire game utterly pointless – there’s no reason to go for a high score when you’ll quickly unlock a bonus that will render it moot. If someone really wants to add extra stuff to a game like this, then you can have systems that unlock cosmetics, but once you mess with the score, there’s absolutely no reason for the game to exist.