Google Play / game_action / TEMPLE RUN 2: ENDLESS ESCAPE
REVIEW
Temple Run 2 is the endless runner that refuses to end.
Imangi Studios' 2013 sequel helped define a genre, then outlived most of its imitators. Thirteen years on, the running still works — the ad load less so.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
Temple Run 2: Endless Escape
IMANGI STUDIOS
OUR SCORE
6.8
GOOGLE PLAY
★ 4.1
PRICE
Free
In-app purchases
Temple Run 2 is the rare mobile game that was foundational to a genre and is still on the storefront, still updated, still played by enough people to keep Imangi Studios shipping seasonal content thirteen years after launch. The first Temple Run, released in 2011, is usually credited as one of the games that proved the endless-runner concept on a phone. The sequel, in 2013, took that loop and added the verticality — the ziplines, the mine cart sections, the spiral drops — that made the trailer go everywhere and the install count cross half a billion within a couple of years.
Most games that old on the Play Store are either abandoned or unrecognisable from their launch versions. Temple Run 2 is neither. The run loop today is essentially the run loop in 2013, with more environments, more characters, and a meaningfully heavier monetisation layer wrapped around it.
That last part is what the 4.1 Play Store average is telling you. Players who keep coming back love the running. They tolerate, with declining patience, the ads and the storefront. The review below treats both honestly.
The core run is as readable as it was in 2013 — tilt, swipe, survive — and that legibility is why the game has outlasted nearly everything launched alongside it.
FEATURES
Temple Run 2 is a third-person endless runner. You play an explorer fleeing a giant primate through procedurally arranged temple corridors — tilt the phone to steer between the rails, swipe up to jump, swipe down to slide, swipe left or right to turn at junctions. Coins on the path bank into a single soft-currency wallet; gems, the premium currency, drop rarely on the path and arrive in bulk via in-app purchase.
Beyond the original Temple Run's flat track, the sequel added rails to grind, ziplines, mine carts that you steer by tilting, and the looping vertical drops the trailer made famous. There's a roster of unlockable characters — Guy Dangerous, Scarlett Fox, Barry Bones, Karma Lee and a long tail of cosmetic and seasonal skins — plus a power-up tree (Coin Magnet, Shield, Score Boost, Mega Coin) that levels up with coins between runs.
Free to download, ad-supported, with optional IAP for gems, character bundles and ad removal. Updated roughly monthly with seasonal themes, the most recent of which keeps the underlying run loop intact and reskins the temple.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The core run is as readable as it was in 2013. Tilt steers, swipe turns, the camera sits just behind the runner's shoulders, and the corridor geometry telegraphs hazards far enough ahead that mistakes feel like your mistakes. That legibility is why the game has outlasted nearly everything launched alongside it — Subway Surfers is the only peer that has held the same shelf space for the same length of time.
The procedural generation still earns its keep. Track segments cut together with enough variation that you rarely feel the seams, and the difficulty ramp — speed creeps up the longer you survive — pushes a 30-second run into a two-minute run and a two-minute run into a white-knuckle one. For a thirteen-year-old game on a four-inch phone or a six-inch phone or a foldable, the controls scale better than they have any right to.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The monetisation is where the years show. A free run is now bracketed by an interstitial ad on roughly every second death, plus a "watch to revive" prompt that's harder to dismiss than to engage with. The gem economy is calibrated so that the cosmetic and character unlocks within reach of pure play are limited; the more compelling unlocks sit behind either heavy grind or a tap on the IAP screen. The 4.1 Play Store rating, down from the high fours in the game's first years, mostly reflects this.
The interface around the run hasn't aged as well as the run itself. Menus are dense with promotions for seasonal events, daily-login rewards, and bundle offers, and the home screen frequently opens to a full-screen sale prompt rather than the play button. A one-time ad-removal IAP exists and is the single best spend in the game; it isn't surfaced as prominently as the gem packs.
CONCLUSION
Install Temple Run 2 if you want to remember what endless runners felt like before the genre fragmented into idle-game hybrids and gacha cosmetics. Pay the few dollars to remove ads on day one — it changes the game from frustrating to fun. Skip it if you came up on Subway Surfers and prefer that game's softer art direction and slightly more generous economy. Imangi's running engine is still good; the storefront around it is the part that needs the next update.