was a 2015 endless runner game in the '' Sonic the Hedgehog'' franchise for Android and

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. It was developed by

Sonic Team is a video game developer owned by the Japanese video game company Sega as part of its Sega CS Research and Development No. 2 division. Sonic Team is best known for the long-running ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' series and games such as '' Nights int ...

as its first ''Sonic'' game exclusive to smartphones and published by Sega. In ''Sonic Runners'', the

player-character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

constantly ran forward, and players controlled their jumping from a side-scrolling perspective using the

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

. The game was

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, featured a wide variety of playable characters from the ''Sonic'' series, and received periodic updates. Development began in late 2013 and lasted a year and a half. Sonic Team sought to take advantage of the uses of smartphones and built the game using the

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; ...

game engine. They designed ''Sonic Runners'' to have more

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than other endless running games. The game was

soft launch A soft launch, also known as a soft opening, is a preview release of a product or service to a limited audience prior to the general public. Soft-launching a product is sometimes used to gather data or customer feedback, prior to making it widely ...

ed in select regions in February 2015 before its full release the following June. It failed commercially and received mixed reviews; although critics praised its gameplay, they criticized the

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elements, and technical problems. Sega discontinued the game in July 2016.

Gameloft Gameloft SE is a French video game publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company operates 18 development studios worldwide, and publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games ma ...

released a replacement game, '' Sonic Runners Adventure'', in 2017. The game came a few days after the franchise's 24th anniversary.

Gameplay

''Sonic Runners'' was a

side-scrolling video game '' A side-scrolling video game (alternatively side-scroller), is a game viewed from a side-view camera angle where the screen follows the player as they move left or right. The jump from single-screen or flip-screen graphics to scrolling graphic ...

in which the

was constantly running forward. To avoid obstacles and defeat enemies, the character jumped when the player tapped the

. The game featured a wide variety of playable characters from the cast of the ''Sonic'' franchise with unique abilities, such as Sonic the Hedgehog,

Miles "Tails" Prower , better known by his nickname , is a fictional character in Sega's '' Sonic the Hedgehog'' series. Tails also appears in his own spin-off series, comic books, cartoons, and films. He is the second character to consistently appear by Sonic's sid ...

, and

Knuckles the Echidna is a fictional character in Sega's '' Sonic the Hedgehog'' series. He is a red anthropomorphic short-beaked echidna who is Sonic's best friend and former rival. Determined and serious, but sometimes gullible, he has the ability to punch enem ...

. The player started as Sonic and would unlock more characters as they progressed. ''Sonic Runners'' received periodic updates, which often included new characters. For example, Classic Sonic from '' Sonic Generations'' was added on June 26, 2015 to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the original '' Sonic the Hedgehog''. The goal was to obtain

high score In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points (except in game shows, where scores often are instead measured in units of currency), and events in th ...

s by running for as long as possible. While running, the player ran through

vertical loop The generic roller coaster vertical loop, where a section of track causes the riders to complete a 360 degree turn, is the most basic of roller coaster inversions. At the top of the loop, riders are completely inverted. History The vertical ...

s and jumped in cannons and on springboards and platforms. They collected power-ups like

invincibility {{Short pages monitor