Activision has launched Crash Bandicoot mobile auto-runner

Without any special announcements or official release trailers, a new Crash Bandicoot game has just been launched for Android in selected regions.

The game is simply called Crash Bandicoot Mobile, and it has been developed by King, a studio famous for their Candy Crush Saga, a game for Facebook/Mobile from 2012, which is still a money-making machine for Activision-Blizzard, owners of King.

Crash Bandicoot Mobile is an auto-runner type of mobile game, which kind of does fit into the usual Crash formula since it is very similar to the classic Crash Bandicoot concept.

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Endless/Auto runners are one of the oldest types of mobile games, but it's a first one in the Crash franchise. Crash Bandicoot has seen a surprisingly small amount of mobile games in the era of smartphones, while in the early days of mobile gaming, we have had games like Crash Twinsanity, Nitro Kart 3D and Mutant Island.

"A new kind of Crash adventure featuring your favourite characters! Crash & Coco team up to put a stop to Dr Neo Cortex's evil plan to destroy the multiverse," says the official description on Play Store. "In this new mobile episode, Dr Neo Cortex has dispatched mutagen henchmen across the multiverse to enslave all dimensions. With the help of his sister Coco, Crash must bash Cortex's minions back to their own dimensions!"

Crash Bandicoot Mobile is currently available only in some regions, but there are gameplay videos already online, as you can see below. Besides the platformer/auto-runner part, the game also features some crafting and building elements, and people on Resetera forum are already reporting typical mobile game freemium mechanics that require you to wait in order do to stuff, or simply pay to accelerate the process of waiting.

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"Unfortunately, the usual mobile game tricks show up in the form of wait timers to craft weapons you need to fight the bosses. There isn't any stamina or lives system as far as I can tell, but I get the sense that one will eventually be added since the game always asks if you want to restart with all your collected items after dying, even though there's no reason you wouldn't want to. Screams "here's where you'd use a consumable to continue without penalty". Seems like it has the framework to be a great little game if they don't get too greedy," says Camjo-Z on Resetera.

From what we see in the captured gameplay, the game does look quite beautiful for a mobile title, and even fun to play, so we just hope that microtransactions system won't be too greedy.