Shine Runner

Thanks to its heavy accents and colourful cultural heritage, the American deep south has always been a target for satire.

The Universal iPhone/iPad arcade racer Shine Runner tries to make you laugh while speedboating through twisty southern rivers. And it sort of works.

The Shine Runner is your speedboat, souped up for extra quickness. Your job is to make as much money as possible moving products from one distributor to another.

There are two layers to Shine Runner. The most obvious one is the arcade racing, a stripped-down, speedy ode to the Hydro Thunder series.

Viewing the action from behind, you motor through the short, turn-heavy swampland. There are ramps to catch air, passages to clear, and occasionally a cop to harass.

The controls are great, namely because they’re so darn simple. Your boat automatically accelerates, and you turn by lightly touching either side of the screen.

The other side of Shine Runner is, believe it or not, old skool Wall Street-style trading. Each depot you visit has a handful of goods, but all at different prices. You use loot acquired during the race to buy goods, and when you’re ready you can sell them back to another depot.

The game keeps things straightforward with the wheeling and dealing. If the price of Gator Tails is up (we’re not making this up), a little upward arrow appears next to the item. There's also the down arrow and the neutral tilde icons.

Of course, you ultimately want to buy low and sell high, but there are some random occurrences thrown in that could make the market go wild.

Shine Runner’s mix of arcade and strategy works well, breaking the game up into pocket gaming-friendly spells. We would have liked the arcade mode to have more of a sense of danger, as the only threat obstacles pose is to slow you down briefly, but the action itself is butter smooth.

In all, Shine Runner is a silly, addictive game that’s worth a spin.