You know what’s better than crossing a road? Crossing a weird unidentifiable platform in space, that’s what.
Thankfully, developer Hipster Whale finally seems to be wise to this immutable fact, because they’ve added a Space World to smash hit game Crossy Road.
Just in case you’ve never come across this bonafide casual gaming sensation, Crossy Road involves moving up the screen in regular steps, as well as strafing left and right, and hopping backwards.
Cars and trains pass across the screen on roads and tracks, and you need to dodge them. Waterways with incredibly erratic currents allow logs to pass in both directions, at a variety of speeds, and you need to hop on them to avoid getting wet. And dying.
Yes, it sounds an awful lot like Frogger. That’s because it’s an awful lot like Frogger, but with several modern twists to bring it smack bang into the 21st century. For a start, the orientation is isometric rather than vertical, and the whole game has a distinctive, retro, blocky style.
Crossy Road on Poki
The Space World stage makes the whole enterprise even more distinctive by locating the action in space. Instead of cars there are meteors. Instead of logs there are floating girders. Why are there girders floating at pace through space? Nobody knows.
And instead of the trees and bushes that fill the original Crossy Road’s background there are, well, we don’t know what they are. Piles of metal? Colorful misshapen bollards? There are definitely some landing modules, and pressure pads that erect a laser shield to protect you from flying space debris.
Best of all, you have a go on Space World right now, by simply opening another tab and typing, “poki (dot) com.” The best way to play Crossy Road is with a keyboard, using the cursor keys, and Poki is the place to do it – in fact, the only place where you can do it.
The web version of Crossy Road also lets you easily flip between characters and worlds, so you can enjoy all the skins as you unlock them.
