Minion Rush

Minion Rush is a mobile/PC action video game in the Despicable Me franchise.

Rules
Players play the game by controlling a minion, and the minion can be either Dave (the default character), Carl, Jerry, or Mel; they can also compete with others in hilarious, fast-paced challenges. While the minion runs, there are three lanes on the track, with some floating bananas on it, which minions can collect by being controlled to move left or right to run through them.

Minions should avoid obstacles (swipe up to jump and down to duck) and attacks from bosses unless they are equipped with certain power-ups, and they can get prizes, including bananas, coins, costume cards and tokens. In addition, minions can run in different costumes once purchased.

The 5-Year Celebration update came with several changes in the core of the game. Several aspects of the game were discontinued such as Downtown, the Jelly Lab, Minion Races and Events, Power-Ups, Props and Mini Games, the Golden Banana and Golden Shield. The update was offered for iOS and Android users only. The official date of the update was October 10, 2018. The official announcement as well as detailed information regarding the new version is at the official forum.

The concept of the game is relevant to the Despicable Me 2 movie. Our minion runners now work for the AVL and need to complete certain missions requiring collecting bananas, jumping obstacles, collecting stars on the Moon and many more. One of the goals of the game is upgrading Rank. For every five Ranks a player upgrades, a new title is awarded to the player, a style resembling the old Jelly Jobs. Such titles are Up-and-Comer (original title), Covert Operator, Clandestine Operative and more. The goal prizes are coins and costume cards. In the previous game version costume cards were introduced for a few costumes (Island Hopper and Mel) and they were a new form of currency to help buy and upgrade them. In this version, all costumes are available in the Wardrobe and require their unique costume cards and coins to be unlocked and upgraded. Almost all costumes are available in the Wardrobe all the time - there are no longer time-limited offers, except for region-bound costumes such as AFL, Bogatyr and Tzarevna. The design team decided to prevent purchasing costumes with Tokens and Bananas, while the blueprint currency has also been discontinued. Additionally, the player can complete daily tasks earning tokens, costume cards and prize pods, and last there's a training mode to help the runner practice and compete with other runners throughout the world and fight for a better place in the world leaderboard and among their friends.

Characters
Main article: Minion Rush/Characters

As mentioned above, there are plenty of characters in Despicable Me: Minion Rush, and they fall in three categories, Minions, AVL agents / characters from the movies (Gru, Lucy, Dru and the girls) and bosses. Only minions and their costumes are playable.

Among the minions, Dave is the minion that is with the most available costumes for purchase and the default character of the game; Carl, Jerry and Mel were introduced in later updates; Paul only appeared in the intro video and is not playable, but the intro replaced with clips for special missions. However, all four characters are now grouped in one category, available in the Wardrobe.

Bosses include Vector and El Macho, who appear in the Despicable Me franchise, while Meena and The Villaintriloquist are non-canon villains, but were designed by Illumination Mac Guff studios. Currently, bosses are only available in Despicable Ops.

The old game modes such as Jelly Lab, Events and Races have been discontinued for iOS and Android platforms. They are however still available in other platforms such as Windows and other versions (see below).

Special Missions
Main article: Minion Rush Special Missions

In special missions, players need to collect special items in appointed locations during the run, and it's independent from Rooms.

There are three (formerly six) stages in each special mission, and the items collected are different in different stages; by completing all of them, players can receive many Market Tickets, Fevers, banana coins and the special mission prize pod as rewards.

Jelly Lab
Main article: Jelly Lab

The beginning of Minion Rush was the Jelly Lab, in which the levels used to be unlocked by completing goals and earning certain fruits that gave power to the Jelly Machine. Skipping levels was not possible. By completing enough levels, new machines and locations used to be unlocked. In each update from 2.0.1 until version 5.7.0, new levels were added. The Jelly Lab consisted of 1098 levels until the end of update 5.7.0.

Events
Events were daily, multiple day, or weekly contests where players compete to win prizes like tokens, prize pods, and bananas. Each event has a goal like highest score, furthest distance, highest despicable multiplier, or most bananas collected in a run, and each one takes place in a particular location. The top prize is typically either a costume or a number of tokens, with less valuable prizes for players in lower ranks. The player can choose any costume to compete, although occasionally particular costumes will get bonus abilities.

Minion Races
Main article: Minion Races

In minion races, players can play as Dave (can be with costumes), Carl or Jerry and race two other opponents chosen randomly in the world. The player should choose a kind of weapon, called gadgets, to participate in the race. Gadgets can be used offensively or defensively. After downloading the game, a whole set of gadgets are given to the player for free, however, after the first few races, players can spend 7,000 Bananas for a basic set of gadgets or use tokens to purchase much more useful sets of gadgets. Players are given prizes for winning continuously in a race, and the number of continuous victories will be recorded on a brand-new counter called streak. However, one will lose the winning streak if they lose once, unless they spend some tokens to maintain the streak.

In addition to defensive and offensive, gadgets are also categorized in three levels: one-star, two-star, and three-star, higher level makes the minion powerful in races.

Other Versions
Minion Rush has multiple versions available across the globe. Currently, the only platforms that release updates at a frequent base are iOS, Android and Amazon Appstore (Kindle). However, other platforms such as Samsung (Galaxy Apps Store), Windows, BlackBerry, etc., no longer release updates. In China, Android devices that run the Qihoo 360 Mobile Assistant have access to another version of the game that is called 神偷奶爸：小黄人快跑. Click here to see the official press release from January 2014. During that time, both the Chinese and the Global version were running in parallel with almost the same layout, game objective, missions (pre-Jelly Lab) and later on Jelly Lab areas, same costumes with almost the same abilities, but the Shop had different prices for the costumes, slightly different gameplay, and most importantly the Chinese version was not linked to any other Global version.

Only iOS and Android versions are updated on a monthly rate. The rest are operative (online servers keep working, daily and weekly events and races are held, etc.). The Chinese version has not been discontinued, however the update rate is significantly lower than the Global version. It features some exclusive costumes for Dave such as the Panda Minion costume and the Monkey King Minion costume, which have never appeared in any other version. It also offers a daily buff, which is basically an extra perk for the day. The currency that is used in the Chinese version also varies and includes Bananas, Tokens, Puzzle Pieces and real money (Chinese Yuan).