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Tune Runner moonwalking onto App Store and owning your music

Catfight already broken out over Ke$ha's Tik Tok

Tune Runner moonwalking onto App Store and owning your music
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| Tune Runner

I love music and I'm quite fond of games too, so I've been looking forward to Appy Entertainment's Tune Runner.

It's more about music than gaming to be honest.

It works as you choose any tune on your iPhone or iPod touch, the app performing some perfunctory beat analysis and then making you draw symbols on your touchscreen as the music plays.

To give context, there's a little boombox character called Groov-EE, who does animations as you succeed or fail to match the various '7's, 'O's, 'Z's and other simple shapes you're required to trace as they scroll towards him.

So far, so simple.

The clever thing about the game however is it's using your music collection and for each track you complete, you get a score that's globally associated with that track. Of course, if anyone beats your score on your favourite track, you're going to want to win it back.

Free to pay?

Another innovation is the freemium business model. Tune Runner is free to play but after a certain amount of time you have buy a battery to play each track, which range from 99c for 40 batteries to $1.99 for 100.

You can buy the game, and get infinite batteries, and lose those annoying adverts, for $2.99, €2.39 or £1.79 (highly recommended).

So for the moment, I'm happily playing through some of the most obscure music on iTunes: A Camp, The Zincs and Elin Ruth Sigvardsson anyone else?

What will be more significant in terms of the game's longer term success is how well the viral element plays out i.e. does anyone share my taste in music, and how competitive am I about the scores?

Tune Runner is out now and free. Hit the App Store button to get it.
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.