Endless runner games are kind of hard to mess up at this point. Providing that your character is easy to control and the obstacles in their way never end, then they can offer up hours of entertainment—as exemplified by genre classics like Canabalt, Subway Surfers, and Jetpack Joyride.
But with the formula essentially being perfected by many games over the years (including those above and others), standing out in a crowded market isn’t easy—and apart from some Bored Apes you might recognize, that’s where Dookey Dash: Unclogged comes up a bit short, though it provides simple fun.
The sewer-exploring endless runner is back for its second go-around after initially being an NFT-gated game that required you to own (or borrow) a pricey Ethereum token to play. With the new Unclogged release, it's a free-to-play game on mobile and PC, with the top competitors and a few lucky random players eventually earning tickets to play for $1 million in rewards at the end of the season.
By all accounts, Unclogged is very similar to the original Dookey Dash, with a few improvements thrown in to make it more accessible and user-friendly. You still control some kind of ape who sits on a submarine-like vehicle as they fly down the sewers, avoiding obstacles and collecting power-ups with the aim of getting the highest score possible. The further you get down the sewer, the higher your score, with collectables and (weirdly) bouncing off some obstacles further adding points to your tally.
If you’ve played an endless runner, especially a 3D one, then you’ll know exactly what to expect as Dookey Dash doesn’t do anything substantially new. The fact that you’re moving through water means that you have more directions to move, essentially giving you a full 360-degree circle to move around in, so it’s a little more difficult than the likes of Temple Run or Subway Surfers, but mostly it feels familiar.
But being unremarkable isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Dookey Dash: Unclogged is perfectly competent and pretty fun to play. I can’t see myself ever jumping in for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time, but it does enough to keep me coming back to try and beat my high score at least once a day.
It’s a fun riff on the genre if you like endless runner games, and despite occasional annoying deaths to what feels like poorly aligned hit boxes, there’s very little to be annoyed about.
Other than the inclusion of the iconic Apes, which are ultimately little more than character skins at this point, the unique selling point of Dookey Dash: Unclogged is the Faraway platform integration, which allows you to create new vehicles or 2D assets that can be used in the game. Of course, you can stick these creations on the marketplace and let others buy them if they so wish, which is a nice way to open up potential earnings for creators.
The issue is there’s really no reason to buy any of these community creations aside from the look and vibes. They don’t offer any stat boosts, and the lack of any social features outside of leaderboards means you can’t even show them off that much. It also doesn’t help that the marketplace for 2D assets appears to be filled with AI-generated garbage or IP-infringing image flips.
The other elephant in the room is the promised $1 million prize pool, with NFT passes being handed out to the top players and others who get lucky with loot boxes, for a tournament where real money will be distributed.
That’s cool and all, but I’m never going to be good enough to qualify for one of those tickets—and it's likely that your average player isn't going to have the time to devote to reach the top of the charts. With the success of the tap-to-earn phenomenon on Telegram, it’s also arguable that an airdrop system based on your high score might have been a better choice for a play-to-earn mechanic. But Yuga Labs may be betting on there being a big payoff in terms of hype once the proper competition nears.
It feels like Dookey Dash: Unclogged has a lot of potential, some of which still has yet to be realized. Community-made assets could be a cool feature if there was more reason to buy them (and weren’t mostly terrible), and the potential of play-to-earn could be implemented in a way that average players will benefit from.
But with those ideas potentially needing a little more time to cook, the result with Dookey Dash: Unclogged is a perfectly fine endless runner that doesn’t innovate much with its core gameplay. It’s fun, without a doubt—but unless you’re good enough to vie for the big money prize pool, then there isn’t too much of a hook to keep playing.
I’ve played for a week, and after hitting what I think is a solid score, I don’t have much more drive to return. Instead, I’m more tempted to go back to some of the great endless runners from my younger years. But if you’ve got the competitive drive, then Dookey Dash: Unclogged’s sizable prize pool could be a compelling motivator.
Edited by Andrew Hayward