Back in 2010, ZeptoLab struck gold with Cut the Rope, an innovative little physics-based puzzler starring the adorable, snaggle-toothed Om Nom. More than 10 years and a billion downloads later, Cut the Rope has grown into a multimedia franchise, with its own merchandise, dozens of new games, and a successful YouTube animated series under its belt. Om Nom has since gotten his own series of spin-off games bearing the Om Nom moniker, of which Om Nom: Parkour is the latest to hit the Play Store.

For such a big-name franchise, there’s surprisingly little flair to Om Nom: Parkour. Typically, new genre spin-offs of established series are given the budget and talent to open with a bombastic introduction cutscene. Om Nom: Parkour doesn’t even have a text crawl to provide plot context -- not that it has to, since there is no plot to speak of (though that hasn’t stopped other games in the slightest). So, after asking for your age, the game boots you right into the stage select menu.

That barebones approach extends to everything from the menus to the gameplay itself. Om Nom marches ever-forward toward the end of the stage, and it’s your job to swipe your screen and help him avoid the obstacles in his path. Typical auto-runner things. You’re technically racing against other Om Nom-like creatures, though the game is easy enough that I outpaced the “competition” so consistently I forgot they were there at all. How well you do determines how many Likes you get as a reward, which are used to unlock new levels.

You get the most Likes by getting first in a stage, but you can get a few more by performing stunts during a run. For example, smashing through windows or performing double jumps will give you a few likes every time you do them. This, in theory, would incentivize players to choose more dangerous routes in order to maximize their potential Likes, but in practice it just means repeatedly double-jumping your way through whatever path you like.

One of the major problems with Om Nom: Parkour is a surprising lack of content, which the level unlock system does a poor job of hiding. Unlike in most auto-runners, completing a stage or even winning it by getting first place doesn’t immediately unlock the next level. Instead, the player has to repeat previous stages over and over until they’ve earned enough Likes to open up a new one. Now, this is a fairly common tactic in free-to-play mobile games hoping to add some padding to the runtime, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game do it from the first level.

Getting first place in a run earns you about 60 Likes. To unlock the second race, you need 200 Likes -- which is about four first-place runs. You need another 300 to unlock the third stage (5 more first-place finishes), then 1200 more to gain access to the fourth stage (20 more runs), and 1800 for the last (30 runs). So, in total, if you consistently place first in all of your runs, you can expect to do around 59 runs to unlock all the stages. And then you’re done, because there isn’t anything else after that.

It’s hard to tell whether this is Om Nom: Parkour as intended, or if there are future updates in the pipeline that will flesh the game out. Currently, without a narrative, dialogue, or any game modes, it feels like a half-baked offering -- more like a vertical slice than a full standalone game.

It’s important to note that the Om Nom brand isn’t being directly developed by ZeptoLab but licensed out to smaller developers under the ZeptoLab Green initiative. Since ZeptoLab Green’s inception in late 2019, only three of the many games it has developed have reached full release after soft launching on the App and Play Stores: Om Nom Idle Candy Factory, Om Nom Run & Cut, and Cut the Rope Remastered.

Currently the game does not implement a monetization model, so there are no in-app purchases, rewarded video ads, or interstitial ads. It does ask for your permission to serve you personal ads, though I haven’t been asked to view any in the few hours of the game that I’ve played.

Om Nom: Parkour is an auto-runner starring the big-eyed protagonist from the Cut the Rope mobile game series. It’s a genre that’s been largely “figured out,” and Om Nom: Parkour doesn’t offer anything new to those who’ve played a dozen auto-runners before. The worst part is that there just isn’t enough content in it to last you a full afternoon.

By Andi Nuruljihad for Gamesforum