Temple Run is a running iPhone game, no pun intended. It is like Pacman, only here, if you run against the wall, you fall off. If you jump over a wall, you fall off. If you run through a ravine, you fall off. If you slip on a tree root, you die. And chances are, you are going to do one of these things every two minutes or so. The gnarly things running after you keeps you running, but in return, you get gold coins strewn all over the narrow paths.
Swipe up and you jump. Swipe left or right to turn. Tilt the phone just a little bit to the side to get the gold coins you may miss while running at top speed. You have no time to pause or take a breather – either you run or die. The only reward system is the gold coins, then you die. The makers of the app made sure that even kids would be allowed to play the game – but for adults, maybe a graphic of a horrible death would have been more rewarding.
And that is all you need to know to play the game. Enough gold coins will unlock more runners for you. You can also get a burst of speed using the gold coin technique – difficult to understand how that works in real life. Some power-ups using gold give you some abilities like invisibility or becoming the black hole for gold coins – weird, but it’s fun doing it.
Secrets to the Temple Run
The success of any game is when you begin to find hacks, tips, cheats and walkthroughs for the game. And here, Temple Run is not lacking. For such a simple casual game, it is surprising to know that the makers even bothered to add easter eggs in the program, when they could have probably spent the effort making the game’s visual side more appealing. Probably a judgment call – the game isn’t about the scenery in the first place.
With a jailbroken iPhone, all you need to do is to call up the keyboard at the Temple Run’s title screen and type the following characters — samhines86 makes you invincible, and rxh7nigh unlocks all the other characters. For unhacked iPhones, there is a version issue – the 1.3 version of Temple Run will give you access to the same hacks, but updating to Temple Run version 1.4 bars you from the cheat.
A neat trick to prolonging your life for just a few meters more of running is getting resurrected twice in a single run. When you are counting the seconds in a single run, prolonging your life for 2,000 meters or so is an incredible advantage – scores will be much better on this double life run than on any other single and ordinary run.
You should have a couple of resurrection power-ups at the time. Activate it by double tapping, and be ready to use it. But you have to time using your power-ups precisely – you will be naked and exposed to the game’s dangers for 1,000 meters before you can use the next resurrection trick, so try to go to an easy run for that 1,000 meters of vulnerability before you use the second resurrection. Then off you go again.
If you want to earn some more gold coins without running, all you need to do is activate the advertisements in Temple Run. And, if you are getting bothered by the advertisements nagging you all the time, you can go change your date settings to remove the advertisement – adding five years to your calendar should do the trick. You will have to change back the date settings on your iPhone after playing – all your calendars, emails and appointments will be affected when you change your date settings, so remember that. The legality of this option is dubious – one should always have the option of backing out of advertisements, but so far, there seems to be no problem with it.
Sometimes, you might just want to run forever. You can do this on Temple Run’s tutorial section. But instead of swiping just once when the tutorial asks you to, you need to swipe twice. If done correctly, your character should be running for as long as you need the exercise. Forrest Gump comes to mind – sometimes it is not why you run, but what you are running away from.
Just tilting the iPhone slightly to the left or to the right lets you collect gold coins not directly ahead of you but still on the path. You can use the same maneuver to avoid the little tree roots placed along the path – you don’t need to be jumping all the time. Just swerve a little bit to the side, and you slip by the tree roots with even less effort than swiping. Also, if you have established a good enough lead from those things running after you, slipping on a tree root is not the end – you can still get up and run, through the next time you slip, your lead may not be enough time for you to get back on your feet.
Audience
Unfortunately, this app is not built for any multiplayer platform. It is a solo game, so very little social media network support is needed, except, perhaps to set achievements or records with your character. But what can be more fun is egging on another player, or trash talking the player into slipping or making a mistake – sometimes, real life has to take over voice chats and multiplayer environments relying on technology.
Find a friend, get some competition going, and run the Temple Run on your iPhone.
Temple Run
Category: Games
Price: Free
Developed By: Imangi Studios
Requirements: Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Compatible With: iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
Other OS: Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Facebook
Our Rating: 
HD Gameplay Trailer
About Aurora Freegard
