Senior Hannah Allen is a woman in STEM, a former president of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, and she works at a local veterinary clinic. She was also ranked first nationally in the mobile video game Subway Surfer on Jan. 23. 

“Over Christmas break, I got bored,” Allen said. “I’m really grateful to my parents for giving me not only an education but also the couch to sit on to play Subway Surfers over break. I played it years before, but I really got into it over break.”

Subway Surfers is an endless-runner, single-player mobile game run by two private gaming companies in Denmark. After making its debut in 2012, Subway Surfers has become the most downloaded mobile game of the decade with more than 1.5 billion downloads. Due to its popularity, one of the game’s developers, SYBO Games, has launched an animated series based on the game.

“If I had to explain Subway Surfers to a Victorian child, I’d have to explain a lot of things first — like the iPhone,” Allen said. “But the whole premise is that you’re doing graffiti and getting chased. You try to run and not get hit by subways by jumping over other subways and other obstacles. You collect coins along the way.”

Allen’s alter ego is a glowing blue skeleton called “Bob the Blob,” which is only one of her many characters.

“I’ve gotten to the point where everything is upgraded,” Allen said. “I just have like hundreds of thousands of coins just sitting there. So sometimes I buy a surfboard or another accessory.”

But sometimes, even Bob the Blob slips up. 

Whether she gets caught by the cop chasing her, gets hit by a subway, or trips on a roadblock, defeat is central to Allen’s climb to the top charts.

“I get angry,” Allen said. “Like if I’m having a really good run and I lose that, I become visibly upset.”

Junior Kaeleigh Otting has seen Allen in the midst of these losses but says her biggest worry is Allen’s belief that she, herself, can subway surf.

“I told her: ‘do not try to do that in real life,’” Otting said. “You cannot subway surf. The roof clearance is very minimal in some spots. I know I’m not good enough to do that in real life, but Hannah says she’s the exception.”

Although it may sound humorous, lives have been lost in this pursuit.

Last July, two teenage boys died  in separate subway surfing incidents in New York City. In one instance, one boy died and another was critically injured after falling while the two were riding atop the Manhattan-bound L train when it entered a tunnel. Since 2022, there have been more than 66 subway surfing incidents in New York City. 

“Subway surfing,” the act of riding atop train cars, has been around since 1904 when New York City’s subway system opened. But local law enforcement has blamed social media apps such as TikTok for popularizing the antics.

Other peers are not as concerned as Otting, and some like junior Tatum Linde even envy Allen’s talent.

“After hearing she was first, I decided it 

would be my mission to beat

her and prove that playing Subway Surfers is actually 

not difficult,” Linde wrote in an email. “I have yet to even come close, which is why I humbly write this quote for the Collegian and will gladly confirm her victory. As someone who spent hours trying to beat her, Hannah Allen proves to be unbeatable.”

As she nears post-graduate life, Allen is assessing her hobby.

“At this point, it’s an addiction,” Allen confessed. “People will come up and talk to me and I’ll tell them I can’t have a deep conversation with them because I’m playing. And yes, they understand, but they are definitely confused.”

But despite her self-confessed addiction, Allen said her Subway Surfers habit will not affect her future at all. 

“I think it’ll only enhance my future,” Allen said. “You know, that’s another thing to put on your resume: number one in the nation on Subway Surfers.”