Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!

Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!
Developer(s)	King
Publisher(s)	Activision
Platform(s)	Mobile Phones
Release date(s)	April 22, 2020 (Soft test launch) March 24, 2021 (Official launch - iOS) March 25, 2021 (Official launch - other platforms)
Genre	Endless Runner
Rating(s)	Google Play General Apple 9+
Mode(s)	Singleplayer Online Interactivity

Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! (Stylized as Crash: On the Run!) was a mobile game developed by King released on the Google Play Store and the App Store. It revolved around Crash Bandicoot and Coco Bandicoot roaming various locations in an endless runner style in order to collect ingredients to construct weapons and defeat villains such as N. Brio, Dingodile, Tiny Tiger, Koala Kong, Scorporilla, Nina Cortex and Mr. Crumb.

On the 19th of December 2022, it was announced that the servers of Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! would be terminated. The game was delisted of all app stores on February 16th, 2023 and all servers were shut down, thereby making the game unplayable.

Development

Initially, King wanted to develop a game with a new take on the runner genre. They later approached Activision with the intent of using those ideas for a new Crash Bandicoot game.

The game was first soft-launched in select countries on April 22nd, 2020.

A dedicated Twitter account for the game was registered in May, 2020 but wasn't discovered until July 2020 when a teaser video of a TNT crate and the word "Loading..." was posted.

On the 9th of July, 2020, the official announcement trailer was uploaded to the Twitter account, and the game was fully added to the Apple App Store, being made available for pre-registration on both platforms. A Blue Hyena skin for Crash, like the one from Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, was billed as a bonus for pre-registering.

On the 27th of October, 2020, a new trailer was released announcing the game would come out in Spring 2021. The release date was confirmed to March 25th, 2021, in a second trailer released on March 2nd, 2021.

Story

In the intro, Crash is seen in Turtle Woods, having a meal of Wumpa Fruit, when he is about to bite into a power gem. Coco tells him that power gems are quantum energy sources, not Wumpa Fruit, and so Crash tosses it away, just so that it can land into the grasp of Dr. Cortex. Cortex announces his evil plan, saying that he will use the power gems to create a bandicoot-free dimension, and put an end to all other dimensions. Crash chases him through the level, and obtains the power gem after Cortex's hoverboard goes down. Cortex orders his goons to attack Crash, and at the same time Coco sets up a warp pad for Crash to go through and warp to her base before the goons can harm him. Crash gets the gem, and as soon as he gets to Coco's base, she finds out that Cortex's goons are attacking Turtle Woods, and that they have to defend it.

The game takes place after all existing Crash Bandicoot games, so that any past character or event may collide with it. This is furthered by the background appearances and/or Part description mentions of wreckage from the Deathbot (Crash Twinsanity), Doominator (Crash of the Titans) and Space Head (Crash: Mind Over Mutant).

Seasons

See: Seasons (On the Run!)

• Season 0 - Launch Party! (started on the 25th of March, 2021; ended on the 29th of March, 2021)
• Season 1 - The Return of Nitros Oxide! (started on the 29th of March, 2021; ended on the 3rd of May, 2021)
• Season 2 - Running Outta Time! (started on the 6th of May, 2021; ended on the 7th of June, 2021)
• Season 3 - Battle of the Dragons (started on the 10th of June, 2021; ended on the 12th of July, 2021)
• Season 4 - Survival of the Fastest (started on the 15th of July, 2021; ended on the 16th of August, 2021)
• Season 5 - 25th Anniversary! (started on the 19th of August, 2021; ended on the 20th of September, 2021)
• Season 6 - Mr. Crumb's Dimension of Screams (started on the 23rd of September, 2021; ended on the 25th of October, 2021)

Team Tournaments

Team Tournaments are weekly events featuring only Survival Runs and Team Leaderboards. They replaced Seasons following a decision by the developers to cut down on the development of new content to work on fixes and improvements. The first Team Tournament started on October 27th, 2021 and ended on the 1st of November. Every other Tournaments start on Mondays and last 6 days and a half.

Gameplay

Basics

The base gameplay is similar to other endless running games like Temple Run, Subway Surfers or Sonic Dash. Crash or Coco run forward automatically, but the player can control them by swiping their finger left or right to dodge in that direction, swipe upwards to Jump, swipe downwards to Slide, swipe up then down to Body Slam and tap to Spin.

The main objective is to defeat Cortex's minions to earn Power Gems, which is done by throwing portal weapons at them after a short boss fight. Weapons must be crafted at Coco's Base before fighting, which requires specific materials to create, which are earned by completing Collection Runs. Additionally, the player must wait a certain amount in real time before they can collect a created item. Power Gems unlock new levels and their associated game modes, new gangs to battle against and new stations in Coco's Base.

During gameplay, if Crash or Coco happen to die, either because of an enemy, hazard, or pit, the player is given the option to go back to Coco's Base, respawn from either the beginning, or respawn at the last Checkpoint Crate they broke, keeping the materials and steps they had collected so far in the latter case (they must pay 9 crystals or watch an ad in the latter circumstance.) However, if they have a Aku Aku mask, they can be shielded by any damage. And if all 3 masks are collected, they will be invincible from all dangers for a short time.

Game Modes

• Collection Run: Run indefinitely to collect ingredients, which vary with levels. Exits are placed at junctions.
• Gem Run: A more challenging run with no checkpoint to earn a colored gem. Some requires to break all crates before reaching the end, destroy all spiders or collect all Wumpa Fruits. Each island has 4 colored gems, one per level. After the gem has been earned, these challenges may be re-attempted every 24 hours to earn 2 crystals.
• Challenge Run: A mode in which you are required to perform certain tasks (breaking crates or defeating spiders) to collect certain ingredients used in the crafting.
• Time Trial: Race against the clock for a Sapphire, Gold or Platinum Time Relic. Breaking Time Crates will freeze the clock for up to 3 seconds.
• Battle Run: Run through a level to defeat a Henchman or Boss, and earn a Power Gem with each successful run.
• Survival Run: Run alongside 2 bots as long as possible before dying. Trophies are awarded every 10 seconds. As time passes, the game accelerates and a multiplier (up to 1.8) is added to the trophy count. The last surviving runner earns a bonus of 50 trophies to their score, while the second get just 10 bonus trophies. The only available levels are Turtle Woods, Dino Might! and Bear It, which cycle in and out of availability, only two being available at a time.

Coco's Base

See: Coco's Base

Coco's Base is the location and menu where players go in-between runs. From there, they can select Battle Runs against Henchmen and Bosses, Collection Runs and challenges. They can also craft Portal Weapons at the Labs, collect eggs at the Chicken Coops, or buy ingredients, weapons, skins, and Crystals at the Vending Machine.

Elements

All Portal Weapons, Ingredients, Chickens and Eggs, Berries, Bosses and most Henchmen are defined by a mutagen Element:

• Nitro: "Green, sticky, glowy goo full of power!", an Element present throughout the Crash Bandicoot series and filling Nitro Crates.
• Frosty: "The bluest frost crystals.", an Element representing extreme cold temperatures.
• Inferno: "Flaming hot!", an Element representing extreme hot temperatures.
• Oxide: "Smelly, purple gas.", a gaseous Element with electromagnetic properties.

Skins obtained in the game can have bonuses against bosses of a specific Element.

Characters

Playable

• Crash Bandicoot
• Coco Bandicoot

Henchmen

In Battle Runs, Crash and Coco have to defeat gangs of villains consisting each of four henchmen and one boss. Henchmen can appear either as Nitro, Frosty, Inferno or Oxide. There are currently 15 different henchmen discovered, listed in order of appearance, with icons indicating what types they can currently appear as:

• Ant Drone
• Crab
• Pink Elephant
• Mini Robot
• Araknid
• Lab Assistant
• Iron Crate
• Electro Lab Assistant
• Zombot
• Thorn Thing
• Rok-Ko
• Wa-Wa
• Py-Ro
• Lo-Lo
• Geary
• The Noid (cross-promotion, Running Outta Time! Seasonal Gangs only)
• Sharkbite
• Grumbler

Bosses

Bosses can appear either as Nitro, Frosty, Inferno or Oxide. There are currently 17 bosses discovered, listed by order of appearance, with icons indicating what types they currently can appear as:

• Scorporilla
• Mutagen Nitrus Brio
• Dingodile
• Fake Crash
• Nina Cortex
• Robo Neo Cortex
• Dr. Neo Cortex
• Uka Uka
• Mr. Crumb
• Tiny Tiger '
• Fake Coco
• N. Tropy (female) (Running Outta Time! & 25th Anniversary! Seasonal Gangs only)
• Dark Spyro (Battle of the Dragons & Mr. Crumb's Dimension of Screams Seasonal Gangs only)
• Gnasty Gnorc (Battle of the Dragons & Mr. Crumb's Dimension of Screams Seasonal Gangs only)
• N. Gin
• Koala Kong
• Nitros Oxide (Survival of the Fastest Seasonal Gangs only)
• Pinstripe Potoroo (25th Anniversary! Seasonal Gangs only)

Supporting

• Aku Aku
• Spyro the Dragon

Cameos

• Ajax
• Bentley
• Bianca
• Crunch Bandicoot
• Cyrus
• Elora
• Emperor Velo XXVII
• Evil Crash
• Hunter
• Komodo Brothers
• Megumi
• Moneybags
• N. Tropy
• Pasadena O'Possum
• Penta Penguin
• Polar
• Pura
• Ripper Roo
• Ripto
• Sorceress
• Yaya Panda

Enemies & Hazards

• Small Boulders
• Boulders
• Blobs
• TNT Crates
• Nitro Crates
• Turtles
• Scrubbers
• Spiders
• Spitter Plants
• Penguins
• Mummies
• Seals
• Flying Fish

Battle Runs

See: Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!/Battle Runs

Levels

The game features various areas inspired from previous levels of the first three original games. They are separated in islands (listed here by order of unlock)

NOTE: Right now the whole Collection Runs Maps are having Infinity Items and Runs. (Infinity Runs only available on Wumpa Island map and Sewer or Later. So its useless if you want to go back to island as there is no home route in-game in the selected Infinity Run map.) So you can run in the whole map anytime without waiting for a very long time for things to refill.

Island	Level	Recharge Time	Collectible Items	Gem	Relic Times
Wumpa Island	Turtle Woods	2 hours	21 30 56 (60) 30		1:11:00 57:00 48:00
	Lost City	3 hours	37 26 25		1:16:00 1:09:00 59:00
	Temple Ruins	5 hours	18 37 45 28		1:17:00 1:09:00 59:00
	Dino Might!	6 hours	23 32 17 42		1:04:00 55:00 47:00
Ice Warp Island	Sewer or Later	3 hours	40 39 42		1:04:00 50:00 32:00
	The Lab	3 hours	25 54 49 22		1:10:00 55:00 43:00
	Snow Go	5 hours	31 20 16 37 34		1:10:00 57:00 45:00
	Bear It	6 hours	30 25 8 26		1:05:00 52:00 41:00
N. Sanity Island	The Great Gate	3 hours	37 20 13 31		3:00:00 58:00 49:00
	Road to Ruin	5 hours	17 30 19 13		3:00:00 59:00 48:00
	Beach Jungle	5 hours	26 10 45 19		3:00:00 59:00 48:00
	Upstream	5 hours 30 minutes	37 (38) 9 14 27		3:00:00 59:00 48:00

Items

See: Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!/Items

Items in the game are mainly used to engage in battle with Bosses and Henchmen or to repair and upgrade Coco's Base.

Skins

See: Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!/Skins

Boosters

Boosters are power-ups that were added to the game with the November 2021 UI update. They are only available in the Wumpa Island collection runs as well as Sewer or Later, which were converted to an endless format with the update rather than keeping the original level designs like the rest. There are only two kinds of boosters in total, which may appear at random and last for 8 seconds upon being obtained.

• Crashnado

The Crashnado causes the player character to do a constant super spin, which can defeat enemies and break crates on all three lanes. It also acts as a pseudo-invincibility, rendering the player character immune to damage from explosive crates.

• Wump-O-Matic

The Wump-O-Matic is a vacuum pack that sucks up all nearby Wumpa fruit, regardless of lane or height.

Reception

Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! received "mixed or average" reviews according to Metacritic. Harry Slater of Gamezebo complimented the game's accessibility and presentation, but considered it to be a standard if solid auto-runner. Glen Fox of Pocket Tactics acknowledged the game's authentic presentation and responsive controls and enjoyed the multiplayer mode, but was disappointed by the low difficulty and lack of gameplay variety.

Following its release on March 25, the game was downloaded more than 8.1 million times in one day. The game had also previously been downloaded millions of times from being launched in limited regions for pre-release testing several weeks prior to the game's official release.

Gallery

See: Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!/Gallery

Names in Other Languages

Language	Name
Traditional Chinese	袋狼大進擊：全速衝鋒 Dài láng dà jìnjī: Quánsù chōngfēng
Simplified Chinese	古惑狼：全速冲锋 Gǔ huò láng: Quánsù chōngfēng
Japanese	クラッシュ・バンディクー ブッとび！マルチワールド Kurasshu bandikū buttobi! Maruchiwārudo
Korean	크래쉬 밴디쿳: 온더런 keulaeswi baendikus: ondeoleon
Russian	Crash Bandicoot: со всех ног! Crash Bandicoot: so vsekh nog!
Thai	แครช แบนดิคู้ต: ออน เดอะ รัน! Khærch bæn di khū̂ t: Xxn dexa rạn!

The Simplified Chinese logo

The Traditional Chinese logo

The Japanese logo

The Russian logo

This game was developed in English and was officially localized into Brazilian Portuguese, European Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese.

Trivia

• On the Run! has been localized into the highest total number of languages in the entire series, being available to play in 15 different languages including English.
  • This is the also first game in the series to be localized into Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.
• During early production, the game went by the working title Crash Bandicoot Mobile, before being officially named Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! for the initial launch.
• Many of On the Run!'s voicelines are recycled from Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled and Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.
• This game contains a direct reference to Bandipedia in the description of the It's About Time skins. It is the only piece of official media to do so.