Game Review: Dumb Ways To Die 2 (Mobile – Free to Play)

If you remember the first Dumb Ways to Die was a public service campaign for Metro trains in Melbourne, Australia. They wished to highlight the dangers of trains & made a fun little game about it. You can read the first games review here.

Well, they are back with a sequel that takes the idea from before & makes it bigger. Dumb Ways to Die 2: The Games on Crazygames is still a free to play game & sees you tasked with saving another group of dumb characters from a wide variety of new mini-games. Tasks such as cleaning the teeth of a giant whale, hurdles with electric fences, water-skiing over sharks & not running at the edge of a pool are just a few of the ways in which your characters might have a bad accident.

It’s harder to see exactly what any of these things have to do with train safety & it is arguable that the message is getting lost especially now we have in-app purchases.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the menu option…shop. Inside you can pay 69p for an ad-free experience or £2.99 for 75 tickets into the Dumbest of the Dumb area. 1 ticket allows you access to this area where you are tasked to reach a high score doing a random set of games to unlock a new character.

What kind of PSA involves charging you for kid’s mode? I’m not joking…in the shop there is a mode that removes ads & the shop option but costs £1.99 to be able to use. That there is reason enough to give the game a super low score, sure the game takes what made the first slightly enjoyable & improves upon it but it’s not enough to hold your attention longer than an hour at most.

Simple, really…take a clever little PSA with brief but amusing gameplay & a catchy jungle then try & make money off it. Whatever goodwill the first may have received because of its overall message has been well & truly lost.