Review by Ian Keogh

Playing a Sonic game, the real rush is when he’s heading places at full pelt avoiding what comes his way, and that’s just the type of threat Evan Stanley provides with a new tower that’s popped up from nowhere. It doesn’t take long to discover Dr. Eggman is behind it, and he has plenty of new devices he wants to test.

Amid all the hectic action it’s nice to see Stanley has a fondness for Belle, the wooden robot she introduced in Chao Races & Badnik Bases. She remains secretive about her creator and intends finding him again, but in the meantime Sonic and Tails set her up with the Restoration. Will she fit in with them?

Stanley needs considerably more help with with the art this time, not contributing to the first chapter, and only drawing portions of everything thereafter (sample left), while regular first deputy Adam Bryce Thomas (sample right) draws all the opening chapter, and part of the last. Also filling in is Bracardi Curry, whose art more resembles Thomas for showing the cast at a greater distance. Changes of artist from page to page do the story no harm at all, and that’s the important aspect, not minor differences.

However, for all the energy of the chase through the tower and attempting to find a way out, it’s very little plot stretched a long way. There is a clever, and in fact heartbreaking, solution to Belle’s quest for her creator, as Stanley is good at referencing the past, but Test Run needed something more than a very long chase. Stanley’s next writing gig is a couple of volumes down the line in Trial by Fire, while the next volume chronologically is Zeti Hunt!