Zynga released its own runner game
Zynga has announced the release of its own endless runner, Running With Friends, for iOS. This is the seventh product launched by the company under the With Friends brand. Read our article to learn about the project's features and its initial market results.
You can never have too many runners. Today, this phrase is almost a postulate for many developers. Indeed, these types of projects boast high retention rates. The risks are minimal. All the pitfalls of the genre have long been discovered. The only issue is the high competition and incredibly low ARPU. To start making money, the game needs to be downloaded by many, many people. Moreover, the traffic needs to be quality traffic.
For Zynga, attracting traffic has never been an issue. Therefore, what's surprising is not another clone release from Zynga (a company known for such moves), but the significant time gap between the market appearance of Temple Run (or more precisely, Subway Surfers, which this clone is closer to) and the release of Running With Friends.
On the other hand, considering the current gradual decline in interest in Kiloo's and Imangi's creations, the relative lull in new releases by other developers, and Zynga's desire to strengthen the With Friends brand—releasing a new AAA runner makes for a solid move.
In terms of mechanics, Running With Friends is almost indistinguishable from its predecessors. However, there are some unique features. The main one is the expanded social functionality. For instance, the project allows for asynchronous play with friends. Levels for each round are newly generated, but players "competing" with friends "run" on the same randomly created level. The winner is the one who scores more points.
The project was developed by the team responsible for Scramble With Friends, with help from the studio Eat Sleep Play. There is no information about an Android version of the game yet.
As of Friday, May 10, the iPhone version of the game ranks in the top 10 games by downloads in 15 countries, including the USA, and in the top 100 for revenue in three countries (Australia, Spain, Ecuador).
The game also ranks in the top 5 iPad apps in 14 countries, including the USA. However, its user retention isn't performing as well, as seen by the stats below.
