The Tony Hawk series popularised the skateboarding genre back on the original Playstation. It's twitch-based gameplay made it perfect chasing high scores with friends, but proved difficult to replicate on touchscreen. Transworld Endless Skater has taken that trick-fueled formula and strapped on a unique control system to create a skateboarding endless runner.

Once rolling, your skater moves forward automatically. You can switch between three lanes by swiping the bottom-left of the screen. Each lane is littered with obstacles which you can leap and grind over to create combos and earn points.

The screen is essentially divided four hotspots. Placing your thumb on the desired quadrant prepares your skater, and then a swipe of the screen in any direction will unleash the desired trick. For example, the top right of the screen controls grabs. Holding the screen winds up a jump. Follow the wind up with an upward swipe and you'll perform a Japan Air, while swiping right performs a Melon grab.

This feel very similar to the old Tony Hawk titles thanks to the responsive controls, and the need to learn which tricks to string together to build bigger combos during each short run.

Unfortunately, while the controls work perfectly, the world design and in-app purchases seem to impede the highscore trickery. Though real world settings of the game look nice, they are a little sparse on street furniture. This makes getting big scores difficult as you struggle to find a grind or a jump, losing valuable point-accumulating seconds on each timed run.

The IAP system further compounds this. While the free School environment of TES is a great setting, the Roof Tops takes a huge number of ‘Bucks’ to unlock or a payment of £4.99 / $6.99. With skaters also locked behind a similarly long grind (pun intended) or payment, this makes progress a lengthy - or expensive - process.

Transworld Endless Skater is a skating game that does a decent job recreating the thrills of skating. Though its empty world design and overly aggressive IAPs undermine the controls, genre fans and high-score chasers will probably find fun within the game's free-to-play contrainsts.