Parents' Guide to Populus Run

This action game surprises with its fast-paced play, its challenging courses, and its addictive soundtrack that you'll keep humming during each race. Populus Run is a quirky action title because you're sprinting from the start to the finish of a twisted, winding obstacle course featuring multiple paths with a group of runners that are clearly trying to get in some exercise. But unlike other games with monsters or traps, the hazards in this game are supersized desserts: lollipops, cupcakes, macaroons, and other sweets that threaten their cardio progress. Colliding with any object pulls runners from your group, but fortunately, replacements are scattered along the track waiting to take their place, and there's a generous set of checkpoints that ensures that you can regain progress if your crew is wiped out. At the end of each stage, you're evaluated based on the number of collectable coins, runners that crossed the finish line and secret characters you've gathered, which will unlock a hardcore mode that will test your reflexes and skills. It's all anchored by an incredibly catchy soundtrack and voice overs that will have you humming along and laughing on each level. Big round of applause for the designers here.

There aren't a lot of negatives, but they do stand out. For one thing, when you start to get more than ten runners, controlling all of them easily gets a bit harder to do with the onscreen controls. The runners tend to slide and bounce into objects more, pulling more runners away from your group. A controller makes things much easier to navigate. The other issue is the lack of levels. There's only twenty levels in the initial launch, without a sense of when new stages will be produced, so it's possible that you could go through the entire game over the course of a weekend, and spend other time hunting for extras. These issues aside, Populus Run is lots of fun, and an amusing way to spend an afternoon.