It really did surprise me how much better Chiki's Chase gets once you fall into it's groove a bit more; the early game is slow and uneventful, which one would expect to be an instant turn off in an endless runner where you'll be restarting a lot, but it becomes apparent pretty quickly that it's very much by design. Once you get good enough at navigating the bite-sized platforming gauntlets to start seeing past the first four or five levels consistently, the game quickly ramps up in pace and complexity, and the power-ups you accumulate start interacting to make the game unbelievably hectic. Star Power feeds into this too- it doesn't just make you invincible, but also makes you run at like twice your normal speed, and the fact that you get extensions on it for killing enimies (and through collecting coins, with the right upgrades) makes it incentivize agressive, full-speed-ahead play in a game that's already literally pushing you ahead at all times. It's also just cute! All the playable characters have genuinely charming spritework and designs, and the color palette used throughout is just disgustingly adorable. I do deeply appreciate that it has an "ending" of sorts that can be reached in 6-10 minutes, and then everything after that is an increasingly insane victory lap; it means that individual runs feel like they have a win condition beyond just beating your high score. and it's free and has no microtransactions or ads! about 4 dollars to unlock the ability to earn cosmetics and more equipment slots, which I think is well worth it if you've played the game and know you'll enjoy it. anyway, tl;dr, it's a very, very good mobile game