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Video Game / Crossy Road

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Crossy Road is a 2014 Mobile Phone Game available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, tvOS, and Windows 8.1 and 10, created by Indie Game studio Hipster Whale.

You remember how addictive Flappy Bird was, with its simple, see-how-far-you-can-go gameplay? Remember how challenging Frogger was as you tried to safely cross a busy road and turbulent river? Now, imagine those two concepts put together, and add several Secret Characters for you to collect. Oh, and if you love Disney, there was a version of this game (released on March 28, 2016) that features many of the company's characters, too. (In fact, the Characters tab above is actually for characters that appear in this version.) However, that game has now been removed from all app stores, with all in-app purchases disabled. Disney Crossy Road ceased to be playable on March 12, 2020.

See The Crossing Dead for its zombified spin-off.

Crossy Road provides examples of:

Gameplay

  • 1-Up: In a first across both games, the Mulan world in Disney Crossy Road has one in the form of Cri-Kee in a cage. Picking him up will enable your character to get hit once without losing the round; instead being transported to the nearest safe area with no traffic. You can only find it and pick it up once, however.
  • Advancing Wall of Doom:
    • In the Pac-Man 256 theme, instead of being snatched by The Eagle, you will be swallowed up by The Glitch if it catches you.
    • The Alice Through the Looking Glass area in Disney Crossy Road also has rust bearing down on your character instead of a bird, and your character turns to rust and disintegrates if it catches you.
  • Allegedly Free Game: Downplayed; most characters don't have to be bought with money and can be bought with in-game currency. Some characters, at first glance, seem to only be acquired as part of bundles that cost real money, but even they can be bought through the ticket machine.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Further updates have made it easier to get both the normal and premium in-game currencies over time, including adding blue coin/Pixel-based free gifts to Disney Crossy Road.
    • Also in Disney Crossy Road, if you find it worth five bucks, you can double all blue coin/pixel payouts you receive (via gift boxes or getting duplicate figures from the prize machine, for example) by buying the Genie in his lamp, trivializing the difficulty in getting the blue coins and making the Awesome, but Impractical coin/pixel exchange almost completely unnecessary.
  • Art Shift: A very slight one in the Disney version; originally, most of the human characters lacked any facial features beyond their noses like the human characters in the original version. Later, though, more facial features were added to them, presumably to make them more recognizable.
  • Auto-Scrolling Level: The game scrolls slowly, which you'll notice trying to navigate a tricky set of obstacles and/or grabbing some hard to reach coins. Fail to escape the scroll and a hawk will getcha.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: It is possible to exchange normal coins for blue coins/Pixels, but eventually you will realize that the exchange rate for the Pixels is utter garbage. It takes five hundred normal coins just to get more than a hundred Pixels. Unless you have more normal coins than you know what to do with or you have all the characters available from the prize machines, you're better off just gathering Pixels by getting duplicate characters from the standard prize machine or buying the Genie in the Lamp.
  • Background Music Override: Certain characters, especially in the Disney version, have their own music that plays when you play as them instead of the standard music:
    • Crossy Road:
    • Disney Crossy Road:
      • "Try Everything" plays when you play as either Gazelle or Clawhauser in the Zootopia world.
      • Unsurprisingly, "The Bare Necessities" is the background music when you play as either incarnation of Baloo in the Jungle Book world. Additionally, "I Wan'na Be Like You" plays when you play as either version of King Louie, and "Trust in Me" plays when you play as Kaa.
      • The default music in the Pirates of the Caribbean world is the main theme of the movie series, but playing as the skeleton Helmsman, the Stray Cat or other characters from the classic attraction changes it to "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me)".
      • "Arabian Nights" plays if you play as Gazeem in the Aladdin world.
      • The default music in the Moana world is "Shiny" (befitting the setting of the world, namely the realm of monsters), but playing as certain characters will change the music to "How Far I'll Go" (Moana), "Where You Are" (Tui, Sina, Pua, Tala), or "You're Welcome" (Maui).
  • Cap: 99,999 coins.
  • Character Level: At least in Disney Crossy Road, the Beauty and the Beast update now makes it possible to level up your characters and earn extra bonuses with them through the use of pixels/blue coins. Depending on their classnote , they may have a different amount of stars, up to six, each with a corresponding bonus or boost:
    • One star: Ten bonus tickets.
    • Two stars: 25% more standard coins will appear on the playfield.
    • Three stars: A 2x multiplier is added to all coins picked up, meaning every coin you pick up counts as two.
    • Four stars: 250 bonus tickets.
    • Five stars: All pixels/blue coins picked up have a 2x multiplier. (Only Enchanted characters can achieve this bonus, the four star bonus can also be achieved by it and the Legendary characters.)
    • Six stars: All tickets picked up have a 2x multiplier. (Only Diamond class characters can achieve this bonus.)
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • Disney Crossy Road:
      • Normally, in the Aladdin world, the Magic Carpet will pick you up if you lag behind. If you are playing as the Carpet itself, Iago will pick you up instead.
      • Playing as Hun-affiliated characters in the Mulan world (i.e. Shan Yu, Hayabusa the hawk) will result in the parade dragons that serve as the trains in the world being replaced by Imperial Army soldiers.
      • The Lilo & Stitch world has a mechanic where you can collect fruits/veggies to give to Mrs. Hasagawa, who appears periodically in-game by a table, for bonus points. If you play as Mrs. Hasagawa herself, Nani will be standing by the table instead.
  • Don't Look Back: If you try to go in reverse, The Eagle snatches you and the game ends.
  • Empathic Environment:
    • Certain characters have custom versions of the game's look. Emo Goose's is raining and washed with a blue filter, The Dark Lord's is a blasted hellscape, Frankenstein's resembles a black-and-white movie, etc.
    • A fair few characters in Disney Crossy Road have this happen as well within their worlds. For example, the Jungle Book world is largely based on the 2016 live-action remake, but the "classic" 1967 versions of Baloo and King Louie can be unlocked in the area. Playing as them changes the more realistic setting of the area into that of the animated movie. Other characters have the setting change to night. (Such as Babyhead, a.k.a. the baby-headed spider toy in the Toy Story world and Gazeem in the Aladdin world.)
  • Endless Game: The game only ends when you die.
  • Everything Dances: The vehicles in the Mickey & Friends world sway to the beat of The Mickey Mouse Club theme song. Most vehicles in the Lilo & Stitch world also sway to the beat of "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride".
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Any collision with a vehicle will kill you, as will falling in the river, and, for some characters, landing on the mouth of a crocodile.
  • Freemium: You can unlock a single character for $0.99. Every now and then you'll get an offer to buy a character, which comes with 250 coins for a few goes at the prize machine. The Piggy Back, which speeds up coin collecting, can only be unlocked by buying it for $2.99. (The Piggy Bank in Disney Crossy Road is Hamm and costs two more dollars. The Disney version also has a character for speeding up blue coin collecting as well, namely the Genie in his lamp, that costs the same price.)
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • Lower-end mobile devices can have trouble running the game and may lag, causing taps to occasionally be delayed and/or incorrectly read at best, frequent crashes at worst.
    • Specific to Disney Crossy Road:
      • One update included a bug that caused players to start the Weekend Challenge mode, only for the game to suddenly act as though the player completed them all and kick them out of the mode without giving them any of the rewards for completing it. It doesn't completely break the game per se, and it was fixed in the next update, but it did render the two playable characters players could get from the challenge unobtainable until the special prize machine that vends missed Weekend Challenge characters was added several updates later.
      • The "Dory's Parents Bug", where Jenny and Charlie would not be unlocked even after the player fulfilled the conditions for doing so.note  This was fixed in the update that added Beauty and the Beast (2017) content.
      • A bug with the Lilo & Stitch update can cause the user interface at the title screen to disappear at random, forcing you to close and reopen the app if you want to switch characters. Fixed as of the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales update. (However, Windows players are not getting this or any future updates as Disney and Hipster Whale have decided to no longer update that version.)
  • Gotta Catch Them All:
    • There are 115note  characters. Better hope the Random Number God is kind to you!
    • And that's not even counting how many characters are in Disney Crossy Road, which contains all manner of characters from various Disney and Pixar movies. It's far from limited to the main characters as well; you can play as everyone from Lenny the wind-up binoculars, to Mortimer Mouse, to a random grub, to almost every single one of the Sugar Rush racers and Nicelanders, to much of Disney's and Hipster Whale's respective staff as an Easter Egg. In total, there are more than 500 playable characters.
    • The Android version currently has an astounding 244 characters (a very small handful of which are only available on said platform.)
  • Hair-Trigger Explosive: The missile truck. It explodes spectacularly if you run into it.
  • Hailfire Peaks:
  • Holiday Mode: The Christmas 2016 update for Disney Crossy Road added Christmas versions of certain characters, and playing as them results in their respective worlds becoming Christmas-themed. (i.e. snow, gifts, Christmas trees, etc.) Characters decked out for other holidays (such as New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day) have since followed.
  • Kidnapping Bird of Prey: One will snatch you up should you dawdle.
    • Some of the settings in Disney Crossy Road replace the bird with setting-appropriate equivalents. For example, Mr. Ray leaves with your character in the Finding Nemo setting while the Claw will pick up a slow character in the Toy Story area. The Alice Through the Looking Glass setting forgoes even having something carry you off at all and has your character out-running the rust from a time paradox.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler:
    • The ghost of Moana's grandmother Tala is one of the playable characters in the Moana world in the Disney version. The presence of Matai's spirit as a playable character in the same world can also be this; while the existence of character themselves is not strictly a spoiler, they appear this way during a critical moment within the movie itself.
    • The game will ruin most of the plot twists of Wreck-It Ralph if you play the game before you watch the movie.
      • Vanellope is playable by herself and in her princess outfit (which she gets at the very end of the movie).
      • The game also doesn't even try to hide the fact that King Candy is the movie's true villain as they are part of a set of villain characters used to unlock Mother Gothel in the Tangled world and his Cherry Bomb super mode involves him turning objects a glitchy red color, like he does when Vanellope exposes his true identity as Turbo. Most egregiously, a re-arrangement of the character select screen that came with an update puts both King Candy and Turbo right next to each other.
      • Additionally, King Candy is playable in his Cy-bug form.
  • Level Ate: The setting of the Beauty and the Beast world, based on the famed "Be Our Guest" sequence.
  • Luck-Based Mission:
    • Unlocking certain Secret Characters is sort of like this, with their unlock conditions being randomized throughout another characters' gameplay.
    • The weekly challenges can become this as well; the board is still randomly generated, including things you might have to find (such as birds to scare, logs to jump on, etc.), and the spawning of traffic and obstacles has the potential to trip you up. You're pretty much left at the mercy of the Random Number God if you want to quickly complete the challenges and get the rewards. Sometimes you can go several hundred steps before finding another bird or a unique obstacle.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: There isn't any underlying story; just venture as far as you can with your selected character until you die.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: You only get one life per game.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Subverted in Disney Crossy Road; the second Pirates of the Caribbean update saw several characters suddenly removed from the game, making them this for everyone who hadn't gotten them yet. Said "retired" characters eventually returned in the Cars update with no adequately explained reason, with no one knowing if the characters disappearing was a bug*  or the developers returning them to the game after the playerbase rejected the idea of retiring characters.
  • Pinball Scoring: In Disney Crossy Road, some worlds have additional items/objectives you can go after which gives you more points than what you can get from merely hopping forward. The biggest example is the Wreck-It Ralph level, whose multiplier mechanic usually allows you to score thousands pretty easily (whereas you have to be very skilled/patient to score 500+ points in most other levels).
  • Railroad Tracks of Doom: Double Subverted. Train tracks are much safer than roads, since trains don't appear as often, but when they do, you only have a second between when the rail crossing signal sounds and the train whooshes by.
  • Random Number God: The main method of unlocking characters is to spend 100 coins at the prize machine and hope you get a new one. You can purchase specific characters with real money, and as you unlock more characters and getting new ones becomes harder, it'll get pretty tempting...
  • Revenue-Enhancing Devices:
  • Squashed Flat: What happens when you get hit by a car or train (except for the Rusty Robot in the original version and certain characters in the Disney version). The game will occasionally take a picture of it!
  • Super Drowning Skills: Like Frogger before it, falling into the river ends the round. It's even more absurd when one of the characters is a flopping fish.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change:
    • Crossy Road:
      • If you select Pac-Man as your character, the theme will change to one based on Pac-Man 256, a Pac-Man anniversary game also developed by Hipster Whale. In addition, the traditional vehicles will be replaced by Ghosts, and the game will shift to Pac Mode, where instead of keeping track of total lines moved forward, the game tracks how many Pac-Dots you have eaten. Power Pellets also appear, and if you consume one, you can eat Ghosts to get them out of your way and accumulate even more points.
      • Purchasing PSY and playing as him enables Dance Mode, where you must guide PSY across a black dance floor path. While on the dance floor, the floor will light up, and the background dancers surrounding the area will dance while PSY's song "Daddy" plays in the background. You will also gain a point for every half second you spend on the dance floor as an alternative method of keeping score.
    • Disney Crossy Road:
      • The Wreck-It Ralph world is based more around getting a high-score than it is being based around how far you can go. Picking up candy and attacking non-vehicle obstacles after picking up a Cherry Bomb (but only with certain characters!) will add to a score multiplier (up to 10x).
      • The Cars world doesn't just have a "points-per-hop" point system like the other worlds. You also score by completing laps around a racetrack while avoiding other racers, who come from behind you instead of from the sides in all other worlds. You can also increase your character's speed by picking up enough gas cans on the track.
  • Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: Drop Bears occasionally leap from trees and attack you when you play with any of the Australian characters. This is actually how you unlock the Drop Bear for play.

Characters

  • Aliens Steal Cattle: Stepping near a cow when playing as Specimen 115 will cause it to go up in a Tractor Beam.
  • Animals Not to Scale: Like Frogger before it, all the playable animals (other than the Flea) are at least comparable in size to a car's grill. (Or Bruce the great white shark in the case of whale shark Destiny and beluga whale Bailey in the Disney version's Finding Nemo/Dory world.)
  • Bunnies for Cuteness: In the original version, there are three playable rabbits: the Grey Bunny, the Brown Bunny, and the Lovely Bunny, which is pink and emits Heart Symbols. The Disney version also includes the White Rabbit as a playable character in the Alice world and the Easter Bunny in the Nightmare Before Christmas world.
  • The Cameo:
    • AmazingPhil voices the Emo Goose. You're occasionally given a link to his Twitter account when playing as said goose.
    • PSY voices his own character. He also says "Crossy Road!" at the start, and "Game Over." when you finish.
  • Camera Fiend: The Hipster Whale will occasionally snap pictures from his camera.
  • Chicken Joke: Essentially the reason the game exists. The game's icon and starting character is, inevitably, a chicken.
  • Creator Cameo: The Hipster Whale is a playable character, and occasionally shows up swimming in the rivers. In fact, hopping on the whale is what unlocks him.
    • At least some of the developers are in-game characters, although one can not get them through the prize machine.
  • Gray Rain of Depression: Accompanies the Emo Goose.
  • Guest Fighter: The original game has acquired quite a collection of characters from other indie games such as Monument Valley, Framed, EPOCH and Shooty Skies to even characters from Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy.
  • Little Green Men: Specimen 115 in the original game and an LGM from Toy Story in the Disney version.
  • Made of Explodium: The Rusty Robot is more malfunctioning than rusty, constantly emitting sparks and smoke. As such, it'll explode when it gets run over or falls in the river.
  • Messy Pig: The Big Fat Pig and the Piggy Bank. Hamm as well.
  • Mythology Gag: You can play as Scar in the Disney version's The Lion King world, but not through the prize machine. How do you unlock him? By playing as Mufasanote  and getting run over in a wildebeest stampede, obviously!
  • Shout-Out: Two of the available dogs are Doge and the Pew Die Pug.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Michael Boom. Explosions happen around him constantly. Psy causes a lot of explosions around him, too.
  • The Theme Park Version: The Kiwi sees an exaggerated New Zealand, with many, many sheep; the Australian animals have rivers that include crocodiles.
  • Token Robot: There are three: the Rusty Robot, a Retraux toy robot, and Epoch, a more advanced model with a machine gun. Four if you count Baymax in the Disney version.
  • Trigger-Happy:
    • Epoch and the Mad Wizard will occasionally fire off blasts from its machine gun/magic staff, charring whatever it hits. This is purely cosmetic, as the charred obstacles still function as such, so don't go thinking you can clear away cars and trees.
    • Emperor Zurg and Jessie continue this trend in Disney Crossy Road, (Zurg with his Ion Blaster and Jessie with a plunger gun) but like with the two aforementioned characters this is only useful for knocking away falling blocks in the Toy Story world and can't eliminate any obstacles besides those. Calhoun and Hero's Duty!Ralph also occasionally fire their weapons in the Wreck-It Ralph world, but this time it is possible to clear non-moving obstacles this way. (Via picking up a Cherry Bomb.)

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