What's the difference between an auto-runner and a boss-runner? It's a good question, and to be honest it's a pretty fine line. Basically in a boss-runner you're pegging it away from a big bad, and you need to try and take them down.
That's the setup of Bendy in Nightmare Run. You play the titular cartoon character from the successful survival horror series, and it's up to you to stay away from the gaping maws of the terrors following you.
There's a lot to like here, and a few niggles as well, but for the most part you're going to be pretty engrossed during your time with this one.
Into the cameraUnlike plenty of other running games, here you're sprinting towards the camera. It's a good job as well, because keeping an eye on what's going on behind you is super important in Bendy.
From behind you come all manner of atrocities, all urged on by one of a number of huge monsters that serve as the antagonists for the different chunks of the game. There's a chest, there's a taxi, there's much worse mutated things, and they all want you dead.
To combat their attentions you've got a pretty simple set of moves. Swipe left or right to change the lane you're running, swipe up once to do a single jump and twice to do a double jump.
Your offensive options involve hurling the objects you pick up at your foes with a tap on the screen, or bouncing on the heads of the smaller creatures that track you by swiping down while you're in the air.
The levels here are pretty long, and the game definitely doesn't pull its punches. You need to be quick, you need to be smart, and you need to avoid making too many mistakes. And there's some help there for that.
For one thing you can always tell when and where your enemies are going to attack, it's just a case of getting out of the way. The game urges you to push your luck though, putting goodies in dangerous positions or letting you trick smaller monsters into getting killed by larger ones.
Boss meYes, at it's heart the game is just another endless runner, but it adds a good chunk of ideas into the mix, and manages to create some real tension in the process. Imagine Temple Run but in the middle of an anxiety attack and you're getting there.
Plus, it looks lovely, and the free to play here is handled really intelligently. It might not be a true Bendy game on the go, but there's enough here that fans of the series probably aren't going to be too disappointed.