Sidewalk, street, median, bike path, sand, water. Four lifeguard towers to reach before the clock runs out, and a street that answers how you cross it. Pick the blue you grew up with.
Mood, both ways
The game keeps two numbers with you. Every safe hop forward and every lane cleared raise its energy. A hit or a timeout lowers its calm. Time brings both back toward the dial you set. Four words name where it is.
- DAWN warming up. Cool colors, a slow major arpeggio, an ordinary street.
- FLOW a long run of safe hops. Bright colors, the music opens up.
- RUSH hot colors, raster bars in the border, faster lanes, tighter gaps, and a beach ball on the sand worth 200 at a tower.
- DRIFT after hits. The traffic thins, the gaps widen, the clock gives you longer, the notes thin out.
Your side is the dial: CALM (no lives. a hit just walks you back to the sidewalk); PLAY (three beach-goers, one more every 2000 points); RUSH (starts hot: faster lanes, tighter gaps, a beach ball on the sand). The game relaxes toward it. The mood tape from your session stays in this browser, and when you leave, the game hands its mood to the town.
Two machines
ATARI 800XL (1983, POKEY). The Graphics 0 blue with a black border and light-blue text. Raw square waves with a noise bite, in the POKEY spirit. A blue READY and a RUN before the street.
COMMODORE 64 (1982, SID). The blue field inside a light-blue border. A resonant filter sweep on every voice, in the SID spirit. 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE, then LOAD, then RUN.
Nothing is emulated and nothing is copied. The sprites are rects in the machine palette, the pixel font is the one Breakwater drew, and the music and sound were written for this page. Read the research note on Frogger and its home ports, or play Breakwater, the first cabinet in this row.
The rules
10 points for every new row reached. A tower pays 50 plus 10 for each second left on the clock. Fill all four towers for 1000 and the next stage: every lane a little faster, the clock a little shorter, every direction reversed. Thirty seconds a crossing to start. Three beach-goers, one more every 2000 points; no game over on CALM. Water between the towers is a splash.
Controls
- Swipe anywhere on the field to hop, or tap above, below, left or right of the beach-goer.
- Keys: arrows or W A S D hop, Space starts, P pauses, F full screen, M sound, C scanlines, 1 and 2 switch machines, 3 turns the dial.
- FULL uses the Fullscreen API. iOS Safari has none for pages, so the stage fills the screen instead; add to Home Screen for the whole display.