Apple / games / TEMPLE RUN: LEGENDS
REVIEW
Temple Run: Legends is the endless runner without the begging.
Imangi's Apple Arcade-only sequel strips out the ads, the gem shops, and the energy meters — what's left is the running, which was always the good part.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 4 MIN READ
Temple Run: Legends
IMANGI STUDIOS, LLC
OUR SCORE
8.2
APPLE
★ 4.7
PRICE
Paid
Temple Run was the app that taught a generation what a swipe-and-tilt control scheme felt like. It also taught them what a free-to-play storefront felt like — the gems, the energy timers, the 30-second video ad between deaths, the constant low hum of someone trying to sell you a hat. Fifteen years and several sequels later, Imangi has finally shipped a version of the game that doesn’t do any of that.
Temple Run: Legends is an Apple Arcade exclusive, which is the whole editorial story. Strip the slot-machine layer off a free-to-play runner and what’s underneath is, it turns out, a real game. The mechanics that made the original a phenomenon — the muscle-memory swipes, the tightening difficulty curve, the way a single mistimed tilt sends you off a cliff — are intact. Everything that grew on top of them like a barnacle over the last decade is gone.
The question this version asks isn’t whether Imangi can still make a runner. It’s whether $6.99 a month is the right price to play one without being sold to.
Strip the slot-machine layer off a free-to-play runner and what's underneath is, it turns out, a real game.
FEATURES
The core loop is the one Imangi has been refining since 2011: swipe to turn at the T-junction, swipe to jump the gap, swipe down to slide under the beam, tilt to skim coins along the edges. The Legends build keeps the swipe-and-tilt scheme intact and runs at the frame rate the iPhone hardware can hold, which on anything recent means a steady 60.
The cosmetic surface is where the sequel earns its name. Characters, environments, and power-ups are themed around a roster of "legends" — pirate runs, mythic-jungle runs, ice-temple runs — each with its own track set, hazards, and unlockable runner. Progression is per-character: pick a legend, run their levels, unlock the next one. There are still coins, still power-ups, still upgrade trees. The difference is that nothing on any of those screens asks you for money.
Because it's an Apple Arcade title, the install carries no ads, no in-app purchases, and no energy timer. iCloud sync moves your progress between iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV automatically. Controller support is built in on the TV and the Mac, which makes this one of the few Temple Run games you can play sitting on a couch.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Removing the storefront from a free-to-play runner is the rare design change that improves the game by subtraction. Every Temple Run before this one stopped you every two or three runs to show you a gem pack, a character skin sale, or a 30-second video ad. Legends just sends you back to the start screen. The session-to-session compulsion the original was famous for is finally separated from the slot-machine layer that used to sit on top of it.
The art holds up better than Temple Run 2's did, partly because Imangi could budget for it. Lighting in the ice-temple run, water reflections on the pirate decks, and the way the camera lags a half-beat behind a hard turn all read as deliberate. None of it is technically demanding — this is still a phone game first — but it looks like a sequel rather than a re-skin.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The catch is the subscription. Apple Arcade is $6.99 a month or $19.99 a quarter, and if you only want this one game you're paying for a hundred others you won't open. For a household with kids who'd otherwise be staring at ads in Temple Run 2, the math is easy. For one adult chasing a high score on the bus, it's harder to justify.
The level variety, two years in, is starting to thin out. New legends arrive in updates, but the cadence is slower than the original Temple Run 2's seasonal-event treadmill, and there's no leaderboard system that meaningfully spans the player base — Game Center high scores are global but feel cosmetic. Anyone who's logged a hundred hours in TR2 will hit the ceiling here faster than they expect.
CONCLUSION
Temple Run: Legends is the version of this game you'd actually hand a kid, and the version a lapsed Temple Run player should try if they've already got an Arcade subscription for something else. If you don't subscribe and don't plan to, the free Temple Run 2 still exists and still runs — you'll just be paying for it in attention instead of dollars.