14 DAY TRIAL // 
SEGA has been struggling for decades to come up with a Sonic game that doesn’t suck. To keep up with the times, they’ve hopped on the in-app purchase bandwagon, and they quickly made a name for themselves with one of the most gruesome copies of Temple Run.
Now they have a new game on show. It’s called Sonic Jump Fever and stars not Sonic, but Tails (the hedgehog’s best friend).
Form
Sonic Jump Fever is a visual mess. The game uses a very confusing green + blue color theme that seems particularly geared towards tricking the user into buying stuff.
There are too many buttons, arrows, and glitter on the screen at any given time. The graphics, although admittedly very slick, are made in such a way that you can hardly distinguish anything during gameplay. It’s not like the screenshots, trust us.
Function
A more awful Sonic game, there is not. That’s not because you’ll miss half the rings even as an expert jumper, but because of its awful implementation of the in-app purchases system that makes it feel like a slot machine.
It's designed in such a way that your energy bar will drain after a few minutes of play, requiring you to wait a few hours or pay for access via in-app purchase. Almost everything tappable in the main menu hides an in-app purchase in one way or another.
It is clear that Sonic Jump Fever was not designed to delight us, but to trick the user into buying virtual perks in the game. Such as the ability to actually play with Sonic, the iconic SEGA mascot and the character whose name is in the title of the game and its icon.
And the gameplay experience is just awful. For example, because of the poor choice in colors, the player can easily miss in-game alerts, such as the prompt to save the animals. Everything is happening so fast and erratically that it’s hard to make sense what the objective is, which collectibles are important and which aren’t, why do I die when I step on this but not on that?, etc.
Here are some individual criteria that we looked at and found numerous issues.
Design/UI: Despite boasting some pretty fancy graphics, Sonic Jump Fever is such a visual mess that you can hardly distinguish anything during your first minutes of play. The green & blue color set is an extremely bad choice for the menus, alerts, and prompts.
Function: SEGA decided that Sonic would be a paid commodity, so instead of giving us the main character (which it promised in the game’s title and icon), it offers us Tails, the hedgehog’s best friend. The title is not the fun adventure that SEGA promises in the description, but an in-app purchase trap. Combined with the erratic visuals, Sonic Jump Fever makes for an awful gaming experience. At times, it feels like a slot machine. Not to mention that the tilt controls are very tiring.
Security: You can’t keep this one around the kids, that’s for sure. Granted, SEGA does say at the beginning of the game that in-app purchases can be turned off in the settings. It also connects with Facebook to allow you to compete with others. Its tricky nature makes one think twice or three times before tapping on something. If in-app purchases aren’t switched off, it can spell disaster, as some IAPs are worth $99.99 / €89.99.
Battery: It drains considerable levels of juice to display its fancy graphics and to connect to the web for various ads, promos, Facebook integration, and whatever else the game fetches from the Internet without you knowing.
Price: Sonic Jump Fever is anything but free. You can’t even make a proper impression without dropping some cash, and the worst thing about its marketing is that SEGA promises Sonic and you get Tails. The game is a blatant lie and it’s not what we would call a “free” experience.
Compatibility: It works only on iOS 7 devices and also supports iPads natively. iOS 6 and below firmware versions are not supported.
