Mrs Kim (iOS) Review

There are so many runner-style affairs nowadays, that it's rare to get genuinely excited and curious about a new release. The market is over-saturated to the point of being beyond control. However, there is something about Mrs Kim - from the people behind Yogiyo Korean sauce - that grabs people's attention the very moment they open it in iStore. Is it the story? Is it the drawing style? Maybe it is both…

The story itself will have worldwide appeal. North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un's mother is upset with him because of all the trouble he has caused (you know, like almost starting a nuclear war and the like...) and she thinks he is in dire need of a good bottom spanking. Kim Jong Un doesn't want that, of course, and starts to run away from his mother, who is now hunting him throughout the land.

This, mixed with the manhwa-inspired artwork style, gives a specific personality. Presentation is king in today's f2p industry, and Mrs Kim plays on that exceptionally. Few who see this in their AppStore will be able to avoid being curious about what to expect, eventually downloading it. After that point, however, the title needs to deliver to obtain consumers in the long run.

The gameplay in Mrs Kim is surprisingly well-made. The developer could have easily made a half-baked release and still made a huge profit in this case. Therefore, it is wonderful to see just how polished some parts of the gameplay are, like the good and stable increase of the difficulty of the obstacles over time, and the well-calculated frequency of power-ups (temporary invincibility, obstacle-clearing shout, and so on). This mix helps to really make the action addictive and lead to that all-important desire for "one last try."

While the gameplay is fundamentally good, there are some technical problems and glitches found. None of them are too major, though, but it is worth mentioning that sometimes Mrs Kim does not run as smoothly as desired, sometimes twitching several seconds of gameplay, sometimes causing cheap deaths. This is a rare issue, however, which shouldn't affect proceedings too much and it might very well get fixed in a later update as the game has only just been released, at the time of writing.

Despite these issues, Mrs Kim is still a title that is easy to recommend trying out for fans of the genre as the gameplay is very strong and well designed considering everything from obstacles to power-up frequency. While the developer could have taken the easy road here and still make a great profit, it is good that it didn't, as the result turned out to be marvellous.