The Rayman mobile games have been consistently great to play, but hampered by distribution conventions on the platform. Is Mini any different?
The short answer is yes, because the game is locked to Apple Arcade, a strange subscription service where Apple pays for exclusivity or timed exclusivity. I bit the bullet on it to play this and other things on my fancy new Apple TV, with a controller connected (all Apple Arcade games have full controller support, which is nice). Aside from that barrier to entry, the game itself is a return to form.
The first post-Origins mobile game, Jungle Run, was a pure and excellent autorunner by Pastagames with minor cosmetic in-app purchases. Ubisoft’s in-house follow-up Fiesta Run ramped up the purchasable powerups, and then Adventures—despite having a lot of new post-Legends content and concepts, and different kinds of level goals—went all-in with energy systems, random collectibles, recycling content, etc. and was a worse product for it.
Mini sees Pastagames return and take it more back to basics—with no microtransactions at all!—following their same Jungle Run formula of straightforward setpiece-driven levels with 100 lums to grab as you dash headlong through. Of course, the Legends art style has been applied along with the participation of Barbara-type characters, but with a new setting where our heroes are miniaturised. I always like this conceit, of platforming across leaves and over huge bugs, etc., and they also get some play out of the occasional normal-sized Legends baddie popping up and being a colossus in comparison.
Getting perfect runs requires lots of restarts, but levels are usually bite-sized. And when you’re done with the 48-level campaign, there’s a kind of more slight version of Legends’ renewable challenges. This is a section with weekly infinite levels, with a set of weirdly specific goal lists (eg. jump XXX times). It doesn’t seem broad enough to keep me coming back as Legends’ challenge and race modes did, but it’s a nice little extra I suppose.
Locking the game to Apple Arcade may not be a popular choice, but at least the game itself is internally unaffected by intrusive monetisation strategies. And controller support is a boon. The service does offer a free month trial, and is playable on all newer iOS devices as well as the Apple TV. Not to be a shill, but I prefer this to what they tried with Adventures where enjoyment of the game itself was affected. And it’s the only new Rayman thing going on. But that’s selling it short: Rayman Mini is a great little thing in its own right, and I hope it’s not too long before those two “coming soon” panes on the main menu are filled out with more levels to play!
