Sonic Jump (2012)

Sonic Jump is a downloadable game developed by Hardlight Studio. It was released in 2012 by Sega for mobile applications and since the release, the game has had updates with new characters, zones and modes. It is the spiritual remake of the older mobile phone game with the same name.

Plot
Dr. Eggman kidnaps animal friends, cages them in the prison unit of his Egg Mobile and flies with them high into the sky. When the chosen playable character witnesses the kidnapping, he/she decides to follow and stop the doctor to free the animal friends from their prisons. In each Zone, Eggman is defeated by the respective character and he retreats, but not before capturing more animal friends. After Eggman's final defeat in Mechanical Zone, the Doctor is seen fleeing towards Cosmic Zone when something hits him and he crashes back on Earth. The chosen playable character is then shown, at long last reunited with all the animal friends.

Gameplay
Like in the original Sonic Jump game, the goal is to get to the Goal Plate at the end of each act by jumping up from one platform to another. Like normally in Sonic games, collecting rings will protect the player from Badniks or spikes. The only way the player can defeat Badniks is to attack their underside. However, if the playable character falls off-screen, the stage is restarted at the beginning of the act. Also, as the player bounces higher, the camera follows as well and does not scroll back down if the player does fall down. There are different types of platforms, as the more sensitive ones will collapse when the player jumps off or even step on them. Each playable character has their own abilities to survive from many situations.

In addition to normal rings, the game has three collectible Red Star Rings per act. The game has springs which bounce the player higher. The game has also monitors, which usually contain different kinds of shields, bombs, magnets or shoes. There are also ring banks, which deposit the rings that the player has collected. With these rings, the player can purchase various items from the in-game store like characters, power-ups or wallpapers. The player can also pay to purchase more rings or characters.

The game has two modes: Story and Arcade. Story mode includes 48 levels, as each zone contains twelve acts and follows the game's plot. The story mode has also three bonus missions per act. The arcade mode is an infinite challenge, which only ends when the player falls or dies by hitting badnik or spikes. The player can challenge other players in Arcade mode to get the highest score on the leaderboards.

It was announced that the game will have free updates, including more playable characters and zones.

Arcade Mode
Arcade Mode contains endless versions of the various Zones which only end when the player falls or dies by hitting Badniks or other hazards without holding Rings. The player can challenge other players in Arcade mode to get the highest score on the leaderboards. Once a Zone is unlocked in Story Mode, it also becomes available in Arcade Mode. Each Zone comes with a preset leaderboard, consisting of height records from both playable and non-playable characters for the player to surpass. The preset leaderboards are the same for every Zone in the game.

Animal Friends

 * Flicky
 * Pocky
 * Cucky
 * Picky
 * Pecky

Badniks

 * Crabmeat
 * Buzz Bomber
 * Caterkiller
 * Bomb
 * Bubbles
 * Spikes
 * Bat Brain
 * E-06 Bladed Spinner
 * Moto Bug

Reception
Reception for Sonic Jump has been mostly positive, scoring 77/100 from Metacritic based on 13 reviews.

The game has been downloaded at least 8 million times.

Trivia

 * The first update of game was released on 26 November 2012. It added Amy Rose as a playable character, Blue Sky Zone and a new mode known as Global Challenge, which required players to collectively jump high enough to reach the moon. Upon clearing this challenge, Blaze the Cat was unlocked as a playable character.
 * This game has often been incorrectly identified as a Doodle Jump clone. This is invalid, because the original Sonic Jump was released on 2005 in Japan (2007 elsewhere). Doodle Jump came out four years later on 2009 while the sequel of Sonic Jump, Sonic Jump 2 came out on 2008.
 * Unlike the normal Sonic level routine, this game has eleven acts per Zone (twelve after the Boss update).
 * Silver the Hedgehog and Rouge the Bat were added in an update on 19 December 2012.
 * This update, titled Boss Battles, made act 6 of every zone another Boss Battle, and added an eleventh act to make up for it.
 * Cosmic Zone is the only zone not appearing in this remake, but there is a music track and an icon (see right) hinting Cosmic Zone hidden in the game's files.
 * The Story Mode's ending also shows Dr. Eggman in Cosmic Zone, although he is actually defeated in Mechanical Zone.
 * Athough it is an app, this is the only game in the series where Rouge and Silver appear and Shadow does not.
 * Assets found in the game's files hint at future playability for the characters Shadow, Cream and Vector.
 * However, Hardlight stated on Facebook that they have no plans to put additional characters in the game.