Crossy Road

Crossy Road
App icon
Developer(s)	Hipster Whale[1]
Publisher(s)	Hipster Whale, Yodo 1[2]
Engine	Unity3D
Platform(s)	iOS, Android[1][3], Windows Phone, Windows[4]
Release date(s)	App Store Nov 20, 2014[2][5] Amazon Appstore December 18th, 2014[3] Google Play January 8th, 2015[3] Windows Phone Store May 1st, 2015[6] Windows Store May 1st, 2015[7]
Genre(s)	Arcade
Mode(s)	Singleplayer
Distribution	Digital distribution

Crossy Road is a mobile game that was released on November 20, 2014. It was developed by the indie company Hipster Whale and developers Andy Sum, Matt Hall, and Ben Weatherall. The name and concept of the game is a play on the joke Why did the chicken cross the road?^[2][8]

Gameplay

Characters

On the iOS Version there are 89 characters to unlock on Crossy Road, 78 which are unlockable from the prize machine, and 11 that are Secret Characters which can only be unlocked through various unique methods. The Android version has one additional character, the "Android Robot" based on the Android operating system logo.

Secret Characters

• Hipster whale
• Gifty
• Crab
• Drop Bear
• Cai Shen
• Andy Sum
• Ben Weatherall
• Matt Hall
• Phone Box
• Nessie
• Leprechaun
• Piggy Bank

Main gameplay

The idea of the game is to get as far as possible across the roads, rivers, grass and train tracks without dying. The player plays as a mascot, such as a chicken, koala, or bunny, and must tap to go forward, or swipe the screen in the corresponding direction to move the mascot horizontally. There are many obstacles which cause immediate death, such as rivers, cars, and trains. To get past these obstacles the player must advance when the path is clear or use platforms to cross rivers. An eagle will come by and snatch the mascot provided they stay in the same place for 5 seconds or move three steps back, resulting in a game over (dying). Every square unit moved forward will earn a point, with every 50 points earned signified by a sound effect. The more units that are moved, the more points that will be received. Furthermore, gold coins with red Cs are scattered throughout the environment and can be collected for bonus points (either 1 or 5).^[9]

Coins

Coins are an in-game currency with the sole use of buying random mascots with the lottery machine-esque contraption, which spits out characters for one to obtain. The machine can either award you with a new, exciting mascot to play as, or a mascot one has already gotten. Coins can be obtained in-game via landing on them during gameplay, watching advertisement videos, collecting a free gift given every few real-time hours, and using real money to buy them in various amounts. Coins show up in the top right corner as yellow circles engraved with red "C's". 100 coins can be used for a chance at a new mascot from the lottery machine.^[9] If the player owns the Piggy Bank mascot, red coins worth five coins each are added to the game, and the coins received from free gifts or watching ad videos are doubled. If the player develops the Piggy Bank mascot, blue coins are added to the game. These blue coins are three times more than the ordinary coins.

Time

During the time you have the app you earn chances to gain coins via free gifts a topic listed above it takes some time to gain these free coins which commonly come in large amount earned by waiting in intervals these intervals will start at one minute then eventually thirty an hour 3 hours and then 6 hours.

Development

Initially the developers planned to spend only six weeks developing the game, but afterwards realized the game's potential and dedicated another six weeks to completing it.^[10] The game's free-to-play model was based on the one for Dota 2.^[11] According to developer Matt Hall, Crossy Road drew inspiration from Frogger, Temple Run, Subway Surfers, Disco Zoo, Flappy Bird, Skylanders, Tiny Wings and FEZ.^[12]

Reception

The game was a finalist for the Game of the Year Award 2014 for the Australian Game Developer Awards.^[13] It received generally positive reviews with Metacritic giving the game a score of 88,^[14] TouchArcade giving the game 5/5 stars,^[9] BigBoomBoom.com giving the game 5/5 stars,^[15] Gamezebo Gaming giving the game 4.5/5 stars,^[16] and Apple N' Apps giving the game a 4/5 overall score.^[17] Polygon dubbed the game "brilliant" and compared it as an update take on Frogger,^[18] while TIME called the game a mix of Frogger and Flappy Bird.^[19]

References

External links

• Official website