I’ve reviewed plenty of apps in the nearly three years I’ve been writing for Appolicious, and it’s always exciting when I find one that I have a hard time describing. Hanger falls into that category thanks to its offbeat take on the endless runner genre.
While most endless runner games give the player one shot to get as far into the level as they can, Hanger lets players survive much more damage than a single blow can deliver. But it’s not just that one shot doesn’t kill that makes Hanger interesting, it’s the manner the game delivers the damage.
Imagine playing a game of the classic word-guessing game Hangman, where you slowly draw a stick figure body until the entire body is complete and the game is over. Hanger is that process in reverse and minus all of the vocabulary words getting in the way. While players start with a fully-formed cartoon figure, the figure slowly takes damage as it hits various obstacles in its path to run free forever.
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As the figure swings through the level and strikes the large stationary objects that fill up each course its poor cartoon body slowly gets destroyed. Legs are chopped off at the knee, whole arms are lost to hard slams against brick walls, it goes on and on, until it doesn’t. At some point your hangman (or hangwoman) is reduced to just a head, or a decapitated torso, and the game is over.
The process makes Hanger fascinating to play and the endless game is only half of the entire package. There are also over 30 three-star styled levels that serve both as a respite from the endless mode and as a tutorial for exactly how to play the game in the first place.
Hanger feels like it really goes the extra mile in a genre that too often gives players bare-bones options. Regardless of whether or not you’re a fan of endless runner games, Hanger is worth checking out. It’s fun, fast and even a little off-putting in a horror movie kind of way.
