First thing’s first — if you haven’t yet played Crossy Road, the endless Frogger, you need to. It’s a simple, free iOS game in which you hop as far as you can, dodging trains, cars, and using floating logs to get across rivers. Here are some tips to help you play better.
Up until last night, I could claim to be the global #1 in Crossy Road. I still might be. I’m not sure, because it’s a little hard to tell who’s hacking and who isn’t, but Hipster Whale has been good about removing the hackers so I’ll see soon enough.
It’s a wonderfully designed game. Very rarely do a feel like there just wasn’t a path for me to get through, and the camera slows down as it nears you, building tension. The speed builds up in the later stages, and I get a wonderful sense of flow. I would, however, like to have a word to the city planner who designed these roads, but that’s for another time.
Simple though it is, there are some good tips to know. Crossy Road best practices, so you don’t get into too many panic situations like this:
Let’s get into it.
Play In Landscape Mode
The simple one first. You’ll just have an easier time of it.
Stay Near The Middle
The game will kind of force you to do this anyway, as there are rows with a single lilypad that connects rivers to other tiles. You don’t want to be on the side when you come across those. The middle also generally tends to be the clearest area for just straight forward hopping, with less trees and junk blocking your path.
Count Your Hops
This is a good one both for playing well, and also keeping a cool head. Whether you’re waiting to do a dash across three rows, or on a long sprint, you should be counting how many times you tap the screen. That road is three rows long? Count four taps. Two roads next to each other, each with three rows and grass in the middle? Count four taps, then another four taps. Instead of tapping 20 times, tap 3+4+3+5+2+3, if you get my drift. Short sprints. If you just keep spamming your taps, that’ll get you into trouble — you’ll lose track and go a little farther then you wanted, plunking yourself into some water or an oncoming train.
Be Deliberate In Your Swipes
It’s an iOS device. You might be horizontal somewhere, on a bed or couch. It’s easy to get lazy. But it’s important to tap hard and clearly, and swipe even more clearly. For my part, I think over half of my deaths come from tapping when I meant to swipe. It’s a simple mistake, but it’ll getcha.
Traffic Manipulation
Crossy Road will want to make sure there is always a way for you, and part of how it does this is by calming the traffic down a bit if it sees you haven’t moved. This is always a Do Or Die moment, as the camera will be right on your tail by this point, but if you wait for about three cars to pass, you’ll almost always see a gap.
The camera plays into this too — it will follow you, so if you sprint, it’ll keep up. If you need those extra few seconds to spot a hole in the traffic, sometimes it’s best not to get right up to the edge of the road straight away. If you’ve got the space, you can hang back a bit. Then inch forward, slowly, until you see your hole. This works especially well when you see groups of slow trucks (ugh, those slow trucks).
The Safest Place To Be Is Where The Enemy Just Was
This applies to both cars and trains. For cars, you should be spotting the lane with the slowest cars. These are your safe zones, relative to the fast lanes. Hop to the slow lanes when you can, preferably just after a car has passed. You can then horizontally hop behind the car if you need to, and that should give you enough time to hop to your next safe zone. Use it like armour.
For trains? These are even more of a safe zone. You should be always keeping track of which trains have gone, because once they’ve gone, they’re not coming back. That train track is officially a safe zone for you from now onward, so just sit there amidst the chaos and plan your next move.
Proper Log Hopping
You should always be jumping onto a log upstream of your target. Another reason why it’s better to gravitate towards the middle, is you can get to either side easier to do this. Because of the river flow, jumping onto a log when your target is directly in front of you is always risky. When the river is running fast, it’s suicide.
If there are two logs going the same direction, sometimes you’ll have to wait for too long for one to catch up to the other. So if you see this, always find a place to jump both logs at once.
Finally, the whole concept of moving logs kind of breaks the grid-based nature of Crossy Road. It’s effectively a diagonal jump. To reconcile this, when you jump on or from a log, the game will “correct” your jump as best it can. Depending on where you would have landed, it’ll decide if you’re on land or taking a swim. You need to plan for this, and make sure you’re about to land just as the log invades your forward gridspace. If you can time that right, you won’t get any nasty surprises.
Don’t Get Used To The Early Stages
It can lull you into a false sense of security. The early stages are slow. It’s the school zone. You should crave those later stages. Love the fast play. That’s your new home. That’s why after you get a good score, you breeze through those early bits. Good scores come in groups, because you’re thinking fast. You’re thinking 500+. You should be screaming at the early cars for being Sunday drivers, and only feel comfortable when it seems like every damn thing in the game is trying to kill you.
I hope all that helps, and good luck!
Comments
7 responses to “Tips For Playing Crossy Road”
*Timmy’s voice*
“I mean come on guys, it’s free. Why wouldn’t you?”
Huh, I had no idea that trains only came through once. I guess my mad dashing doesn’t really take that into account anyway.
Go fishy, go!
Also, if you go into the settings there is a ‘conserve battery’ option. Not sure how it conserves battery, but if it does, awesome.
That damned eagle keeps getting me, and I have no idea what triggers it, I know jumping backwards 3 times can do it. But other times I just jumping forward and it comes in and grabs me, any ideas?
The eagle is the “Hurry Up” feature, it comes simply when the screen catches up to you. Move forward or die, basically.
It takes you when you’re hopping too slow
the eagle grabs you after 5 seconds of not moving a new step forward
Jung, a note about your Stay in the Middle point… the centre lane is the only lane that is ALWAYS clear. Always contains a lily pad, never has a stationary obstacle planted in it. Particularly important to be in the dead centre lane at higher scores, so you don’t get hung up on an obstacle.
I can’t seem to jump the 82 times straight been trying for 3 Months still stuck any suggestions