Sonic Dash... OF DOOM!!!

[Nz17]

One of the things I hate for updates is the Android/iOS game, "Sonic Dash." It's a "Sonic The Hedgehog"-themed endless running game. And by God, does the developer, Hardlight Studio, take the opportunity about every 4-6 months to $(%*$ up the game. And with the way they have it set up, you CAN'T BACKUP YOUR OWN DATA. So yes, you can back up the game itself as an APK file and reinstall that. However your precious save data that you spend dozens of hours building up, that can exist only either on your device or (if you opted into the Google file sync option in the game) it exists in the mighty, intangible "CLOUD"... and either option blows chunks.

If you choose to upload to the "cloud" then you are beholden to so very many stars being correctly aligned in case you need to uninstall and reinstall the game for any reason (as by default Android deletes all of an app's data when you uninstall it), but it is better than not opting in. Why? Because then the game WON'T LET YOU RESTORE YOUR PROGRESS FROM YOUR BACKUP even if you made some. The data "doesn't authenticate" so you can't use it and have to START OVER FROM SCRATCH.

Recently the developer, Hardlight Studio, updated the game to a newer version which now features a progress map (or something like that). And for no good reason, starting with this update, the game "runs" like a limping three-legged dog ON THE SAME HARDWARE. And for what? That which is ostensibly supposed to be only a small yet useful frickin' addition.

So I went to roll back the game to the previous version with my backup APK and the current save data. Oh, but it didn't register the save data, of course, so I sign the app back into Google to have permission to sync. I can't even do this until going through the damn tutorial yet again. I hate tutorials!

The game then says, "Oh hey, we noticed a conflict here. Would you like to keep your data with your hundreds of red star rings and your thousands of power rings with a high score of over 1,500,000 points, or would you like 0, 0, and 0 to be your data instead?" Naturally, I chose to retain all my progress. Naturally, the game chose to FORSAKE ALL THAT I WORKED FOR AND OVERWROTE IT ALL WITH ZEROES. And yes, I very much made sure that I picked the right option, but the slack-ass developers must have not made sure that the freakin' buttons worked like they should during development, because now, while I (Thank God!) still have all of the characters unlocked - which is itself an arduous, time-consuming process - all the statistics have been set back to ZERO. All the unlockable wallpapers are gone. Record of all of the completed missions is gone. All of the characters' ability upgrades are gone. All of my settings, records, and high scores are gone. The only things left from those dozens and dozens of hours of work are the unlocked characters and the achievements... and the achievements are only still there because Google kept track of them separately from Hardlight Studio.

At this point, I feel so disheartened by the whole thing, I question if I will ever play "Sonic Dash" again. All of that data destroyed, and for what? For a lousy-ass update that introduced a freakin' little map and took the game's frame-rate down to 4 frames-per-second. Thanks for nothing, Hardlight Studio! You can take your in-app purchases and shove them up your SDK, you piss-poor developer! I'm glad I never purchased a one from you and SEGA!

[Tanooki]

Sorry that happened to you and I'd rage post like that too over such a loss. It goes to show the problems of modern non-tangible gaming. You're beholden to the nebulous cloud and is it really all that trustworthy. You also have to worry if that next update is the last (as they choose to not fix something for a new OS version) or if that update breaks junk (your situation.)

I had been curious about that game, isn't it the one that takes that Sonic 2 halfpipe style event to the next level? I'm kind of surprised with Android being open you can't find a way to reach in there and back up the saved data too.

[FieryReign]

The wonders of mobile updates.

[Guntz]

Not to kick sand in your face, but you were pretty much asking for something like this to happen once you started heavily investing time in mobile games like this. Mobile anything has an extremely short lifespan and is completely temporary, it's throwaway media in the purest sense of the phrase. It's like those evil DivX DVD discs on steroids.

Just get a GBA with the Sonic Advance games, you can thank me later.

[Tanooki]

Yup that's kind of sandy but it's also true. :\

I've got a couple dozen games on my Android device of which I've paid for probably less than 5 just because of google surveys. I've had equally as much or more due to the ipad2 I had hears ago and the 5s now, but those I had to pay something on much of it since they don't do freebies, and i had losses too when those punks played the non-universal angle or just not allowing a game to run on the phone that the ipad would do so I was out my game and money. Sad truth is you can't trust digital rentals(downloads) because they're temporary in ever respect of the word. Go in, expect fun for a bit, but expect it to vanish too sooner than later which is a shame, but that's how they get paid and paid again on the stuff.

While definitely not perfect, one of those AT Games handhelds that do Sega Genesis games that has the SD card to throw pretty much anything (globally) at it would be your best bet. Treat it well it will last for years, and if the battery craps out it uses a standard cheap off the rack mobile phone battery. That thing alone you could fire up a lot of Sonic games with no problem at all and with a 3.5mm a/v to rca cable you could use it as a controller and play on the tv too.

[FieryReign]

Not to kick sand in your face, but you were pretty much asking for something like this to happen once you started heavily investing time in mobile games like this. Mobile anything has an extremely short lifespan and is completely temporary, it's throwaway media in the purest sense of the phrase. It's like those evil DivX DVD discs on steroids.

Just get a GBA with the Sonic Advance games, you can thank me later.

That's an extremely false statement there. My droids been successfully been running the same games/emulators for a few years now. The updates are the main problem here. Developers are constantly trying to update their shit to accommodate the thousands of different mobile devices out there. It's just wrong and I see no type of fix for this bullshit. Aside from Google limiting who they license out their droid tech too. Seems like even the cheapest of companies can manufacture a phone/tablet with droid software on it. Just don't accept the updates. But then you are punished for having an outdated app.

Sonic Advance GBA is not a runner type game. Sonic gbas can be free on your phone, all day, everyday.

[Nz17]

Not to kick sand in your face, but you were pretty much asking for something like this to happen once you started heavily investing time in mobile games like this. Mobile anything has an extremely short lifespan and is completely temporary, it's throwaway media in the purest sense of the phrase. It's like those evil DivX DVD discs on steroids.

No. I have virtual tons of Android games and other software. Some of it is free, open source software (Yay!), most of it is not (Boo!). Obviously the open source stuff inherently has the most freedom built into it. But I can also back up most of the rest of the apps and most of those apps' data. I can then move these backups across all of my computers and disks, making as many copies as I please. It is very easy to do. I use a piece of FLOSS (free/libre open source software) called oandbackup to backup my apps and their data and then later restore them if I please.

The problem is the same in Android Land as it is in any other Land. If you play a game on console, computer, mobile, or any other platform that won't let you backup everything and anything, you are put into the situation where you are dependent on the software working flawlessly and/or parties other than yourself supporting the thing. A prime example is all of the MMO's which are dead now. The difference here is that we are talking about a single-player game which is forcing you to only be able to play when online and to be dependent on a very unreliable company (Hardlight Studio) that keeps putting out updates that can radically change things and introduce bad bugs.

Just get a GBA with the Sonic Advance games, you can thank me later.

I won't thank you later. I already own all of the Sonic GBA games from when they were originally released. And the DS ones. Yes, even Sonic Chronicles, Sonic Pinball Party, Sonic Battle, and All-Stars Racing. As a matter of fact, I own almost every Sonic The Hedgehog game ever released in North America. Additionally, I own several Japanese Sonic games. And many redundant copies of the games such as ports or duplicates for the same platform. As you can imagine, this means I want to play/own all of the Sonic games. That includes even "junky" mobile games like those in the Sonic Dash series. The GBA games aren't going to "solve the problem."