The game and it's Miiverse community features extensive use of Internet memes; for example, the player character is a stick figure with a trollface for a head, and the levels are made up of Lenny faces.

The game was designed to appeal to meme fans, hardcore, and casual audiences, but was widely criticized both before and after its release for its perceived low quality.

scream when the player collects an item—a reference to a Super Smash Bros. Melee match recording on YouTube.

[4] It was intended to appeal to both hardcore and casual gaming audiences by featuring both simple, intuitive controls and substantial difficulty once the character has run far enough.

By pressing B on the main menu, the user would be able to play as a character known as Bigley, an in-joke within the Miiverse community referencing a drawing within that community relating to the Metroid character Ridley and the reasons given for his absence from the video games Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

"[14] The game was hated upon release, Nintendo Life staff writer Lee Meyer gave Meme Run an extremely negative review, calling it possibly "one of the worst releases on any gaming platform this year" and stating that it was certainly not worth its price of US$4.99.