Minion Rush rebuilt itself in Unity and lost half its fanbase doing it.

Minion Rush is twelve years old, sits on more than half a million Play Store ratings, and just survived the biggest rewrite of its life. Gameloft moved the entire game to the Unity engine in May 2025 and used the transition to do what Subway Surfers and Temple Run never had to — rip up the foundations and rebuild on top of them. Update 96 landed in December with the Holiday Spirit Pass; Update 97 followed on January 29, 2026 with a new location, a love-themed Day by Day event, and a refreshed Adventure Run.

The franchise hook is doing more work than the design here. Bananas, three-lane dashes, Gru-themed obstacles, costumes that turn the lead minion into a pirate or a firefighter — it is the same loop Despicable Me has been monetising since 2013, and it remains the most visually charming thing in the casual-runner aisle. What the rebuild added is genuinely nice. What it took away is what every other recent Play Store review keeps writing about.

Read the recent review tab honestly and a pattern emerges fast: people who have played for years are mourning specific removed features by name. That is not the noise of a successful relaunch.

features

Two parallel modes share the front menu. The original mission-based loop is still here — short objective-driven runs through Gru’s Lab, the Anti-Villain League, the Residential Area, with three-lane dashes, costume bonuses, and despicable-act multipliers. The new Endless Run mode, added in the Unity rebuild, strips the mission scaffolding and lets you simply run for distance. It is the most obvious answer to a decade of “why does Subway Surfers let me just play and Minion Rush doesn’t” complaints.

The May 2025 update introduced four power-ups — Disco Boot for speed, Bouncer for vertical traversal, Rocket Blade for clearing obstacles, Minion Armor for damage absorption — plus the Hall of Jam progression track that hands out G-Coins, gadgets, and profile cosmetics for collecting bananas. A new Player Profile system layers in nicknames, avatars, and frames, with seasonal Costume Collections rotating themed minion sets through the store.

Update 97’s Minion Express is the latest content layer. The store sells G-Coins and themed Season Passes; in-app purchases also remove the pop-up ads, which is the deal Gameloft has officially confirmed.

missionAccomplished

The visual overhaul is the strongest argument for the rewrite. Lighting, animation weight, and the menu architecture all look a generation newer than the pre-2025 game, and the Unity port is what enabled the Endless Run mode at all. Adding a no-objective distance-running option closes the most obvious gap with Subway Surfers and is the right call.

The franchise IP also keeps doing what it has always done — minions are still funnier than other casual-runner mascots, the costumes still drive collection psychology hard, and the Despicable Me brand keeps the audience replenishing as new films and series ship. For a free game with no real onboarding cost, the surface charm holds up.

roomToImprove

The removals are louder than the additions. The Minion Launcher — the cannon mini-game players treated as a signature — was cut and has not returned. The original Special Missions structure was dropped in favour of the new format, and the ability to switch locations mid-run did not survive the port. Recent reviews specifically call out missing costume power-ups and buffs, not in vague terms but by name, and the Qualitipedia entry tracking the franchise has split the game into pre- and post-2025 eras to flag the discontinuity.

Monetisation is the second strain. The free-to-play loop leans on pop-up ads that any in-app purchase will permanently remove — a transparent enough deal, but the framing tells you how often they fire. Gameloft also discontinued the Apple TV, Samsung Galaxy Store, and Windows versions in the rebuild, stranding anyone who installed there. None of this is fatal at a 4.43 rating across 590,000 reviews, but the trajectory of the recent ones is the part to watch.

conclusion

If you are coming to Minion Rush new in 2026, the Unity build is the best-looking, smoothest version the game has ever had, and the new Endless Run mode finally answers the design complaint that nagged it for a decade. If you played it heavily before May 2025, you already know what is missing, and no amount of new costumes will replace the Minion Launcher. Subway Surfers remains the cleaner habit; Sonic Dash is the faster one; Minion Rush is the prettier one with the franchise tax built in.