Temple Run, the addictive game created by the husband-and-wife team of Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova, along with artist Kiril Tchangov, celebrated the game’ s one year anniversary by reaching 100 million downloads. The incredibly popular free game from Imangi Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina, has been downloaded for over 68 million iOS and 32 million Android devices .
Captivated gamers have now engaged in over 10 billion sessions of Temple Run, since the game made its debut on August 4, 2011. Imangi Studios estimates that players have spent the equivalent of 54,000 years playing the game and that 13 percent of the U.S. population has downloaded Temple Run.
Kevin was incredibly modest upon hearing the news, when he said, “We never imagined that the game we were making and loved would be so well received around the world. The last year has been incredible for us, and we are grateful to fans of the game. We hope to be able to provide them with more entertainment from the brand for years to come.”
Temple Run is a fast moving, action video game. The game revolves around a group of larcenous, wandering explorers. One of the group steals an idol from an ancient temple and the mayhem begins. As soon as the idol is stolen, the player takes control of the explorer and tries to escape, as he or she is pursued by a band of vicious, demonic monkeys. You must be quick on your feet to survive the “Temple Run,” because slowpokes will be eaten.
As a result of the success of Temple Run, Imangi signed a deal with Disney Studios to create a second game named, “Temple Run: Brave,” as a tie-in to the Disney Pixar animated film, “Brave.” The new game quickly rose to the #1 slot on the App Store, where it has been in the top 10 from the first day of release. The game, which sells for 99 cents, is available from the App Store, Google Play and Amazon.
Imangi Studios also signed with the licensing agency, Dimensional Branding Group (DBG). and they have entered into licensing agreements with several companies, including apparel with JEM Sportswear, digital comics exploring the back story of the game with Ape Entertainment, card and board games with Spin Master, arcade machines with Coastal Amusements and sleepwear with Komar.
In a press release on Thursday, August 2, 2012 , Imangi Studios offered a special “thank you” gift to everyone who made Temple Run successful: “To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the game, and the 100 million downloads milestone, all mobile titles released prior to Temple Run by Imangi Studios will be available for free to download for a limited time. Additionally, a new iOS update is now available for Temple Run, which adds retina graphics for the iPad, more achievements, and the ability to enable or disable specific powerups.”
