Price: $0.99   Score: 8/10    Category: Games

The concept itself is revolutionary. 1000 Heroz seeps into your life every single day for 1,000 days straight. Rain, shine, in sickness or in health, every 24 hours there’s a different prehistoric character waiting and they’re ready for the racetrack.

Open the app for your daily fix and with each new character is a new one of a kind racetrack of yesteryear, depicted in cute colors that radiate off the screen like a cartoon you can control. The object of the game is to race your way to the finish line in as little time as possible, but this isn’t some car racer in waiting.

Instead 1000 Heroz is full of cute characters with short clever explanations of how they were named or what they’ve achieved. Each race they run is an obstacle of physics, and instead of rushing forth with fast feet, the key to 1000 Heroz is strategic maneuvering.

Whether you’re scooting down a rockslide or propelling across ice, these courses are full of springing trampoline features, slingshot sticks, puffs of air, and much more. Sometimes there’s more than one route to the finish line, and the point is to beat the clock to bronze, silver, or gold status.

To navigate you play the forward, back, and jump buttons strategically until 15 to 30 seconds have passed and you’re at the Flinstone care finish. The fact that each race is so short makes for quick bursts of nail biting fun, but instead of trying to shave seconds off of a fast pace, these character’s engines are slow moving windmill type feet that stumble on just about anything that comes out of the ground.

The tortoise-like slowness of the cavemen can seem frustrating and the controls themselves tend to drag every, but the animations and the way the characters move make up for some of the logistical flaws. Popo, Folly, Rolp and the rest of the crew weeble-wobble forward like rag dolls learning to run, adding extra appeal to an already interesting game structure.

Earning two out of three stars (which usually means completing the course in about 19 seconds) grants you a trophy relic while other achievements like stars and statuses (e.g. “assistant to the apprentice”) offer motivation to get in gear and race on the daily.

As of the writing of this review, the RedLynx team is on day 17, but if you miss a day you can go back in the archives and catch up quickly. Anyone serious about their score will want to go back in time because each day is a point earning opportunity and the RedLynx team has made it more than appealing to check your time against others in Game Center. Best of all, you can even find other players and set up your own private tournament.

As a reviewer the first day in the races felt just above average from a gamer perspective. After a few minutes with a few characters though, 1000 Heroz became a beloved part of the day. RedLynx changed our typical perception of an app lifecycle and I’m almost sure I’m not the only one who’s come to love my daily prehistoric fix.

Bottom Line: 1000 Heroz has a couple glitches, but for the price this ambitious 1000 day race is nothing short of revolutionary.