Sonic 
Rick Martin
Line released its mobile game Sonic Dash S, developed by Sega, back in late January. The title was made available in a number of Asian countries, but it hadn’t performed very well until a recent 1.1 update gave it a boost in most of its app markets. Still, this is perhaps the most famous IP that Line has featured in a game to date, and I’d expected it to perform far better.
I hadn’t given the game a serious look until recently, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts here. Sonic Dash is, as has been pointed out before, more or less a Temple Run clone, requiring you to swipe up/down/left/right to avoid enemies and treacherous obstacles. You can gather and use items you collect, as well as use supporting characters (or Chaos [1]).
With the exception of a number of surprising app crashes, I found the gameplay pretty straightforward, with much of the Line integration that we have from the company’s other mobile games. You can get rewards by sharing information to your friends on Line, and even borrow Chao characters from them if you wish. The problem for me is that only one of my 162 Line friends is actually playing Sonic Dash – not a good number in comparison to other Line games I’ve played.
With the new 1.1 update a number of changes have been made to the game, with stages shortened and a new character, Blaze (pictured below), added to the list of playable characters [2]. A new beach course has been added to the game as well.
If you’d like to give Line Sonic Dash S a try, you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android. Let us know in the comments if you find it a tad crashy as well!
