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Semi Secret Teases New ‘Canabalt’ Update Ideas

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Semi Secret Software’s Canabalt ($2.99) certainly wasn’t the first endless auto-running platformer around, but it’s definitely one of the most high profile and arguably set off the trend off hundreds of similar running games coming out on the App Store since its release in October of 2009.

While some of the games that followed expanded on the core idea with additional character moves, items and powerups, new environments and more, Canabalt always played it cool with its simplistic elegance, a finely-tuned masterpiece that did so much with very little. Even today, two and a half years later, Canabalt is still one of my favorites in the genre that it helped establish.

So, just because Canabalt never felt like it needed anything doesn’t mean that the game’s creator Adam Saltsman hasn’t had some ideas for updates. In a new post on the Semi Secret blog, he explains that recently he’s been thinking long and hard about what sort of new features would make sense for Canabalt while still retaining the simplicity that made it such a hit in the first place.

What he came up with was not necessarily what can be added to Canabalt to make it better, but what can he take away instead. Wait, what? Take things away? Canabalt is already so minimalistic, what on Earth is there to take away? Well, how about the buildings for starters.

That’s just a teaser shot showing just where Adam’s head is at in this whole thing, and we don’t know if such a radical idea will necessarily make it into the game. In fact, Semi Secret is being pretty hush hush regarding just what new features actually will become a reality, but they have committed to a few. First, a local two-player mode (which we heard whispers about back in March), eight new hardcore game modes with associated leaderboards, and Game Center achievements.

Best of all, these things will be coming as a free update to Canabalt, and although we don’t have any sort of timeframe for release just yet we should be hearing more details about it soon. Also, don’t forget that Canabalt is part of the humongous Because We May sale that’s currently running until June 1st.

  • Canabalt

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