Sequels are hard. For hit games, it’s even harder: following up something that was beloved by millions of people involves a balance of expanding your idea while also maintaining the stuff that made people love it in the first place. You only need to look at the lackluster receptions of recent big-budget gaming sequels that have dashed themselves to pieces on the rocky shores of fan expectations, like Destiny 2, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
On the other side of the equation, there are sequels like Alto’s Odyssey (out today on iOS), the follow-up to the mobile gaming classic Alto’s Adventure. It’s the perfect sequel because it confidently recognizes what made the original work — and then, crucially, it...
