App of the week: Crossy Road
App of the week: Crossy Road
by Tobi Scott
I have a six-year-old brother who, like most little boys, loves video games. When I’m around and busy, Thomas likes to take my phone and play games on it. Every once in a while, he’ll ask to download a new game that he likes to play on our mom’s phone.
Usually, I delete these games as soon as I’m back at MC, but Crossy Road has remained on my main screen since Thanksgiving break when he introduced me to it.
This is a simple game with simple rules and great rewards. The game is set up similarly to the classic arcade game Frogger; basically, you just tap the screen to avoid oncoming traffic and cross as many roads as possible.
Crossy Road has no levels, but is a continuous game of endurance. The further along you get, the higher your score is. What’s even more rewarding than a high score; however, is the prize you get for collecting “c’s” (which I can only assume are cents).
You can collect c’s randomly as you’re playing by stepping on them in the game, or more abundantly by collecting your “free gift” after playing. Each free gift is a random amount of c’s, and with every 100 c’s you earn, you can “win a prize!”
This is the part of the game that really gets my brother excited. Each prize is a new character that you can play as. In the game, there is a very extensive list of characters that you can scroll through and use. The list always shows every attainable character, but you can only play as the ones you’ve collected.
This list includes, but is not limited to the chicken (get it, the chicken crosses the road, ha!), floppy fish (my personal favorite), poopy pigeon (which actually poops as you are playing) and Crazy Ol’ Ben.
While several of these characters can alter the appearance of the game (i.e. snow, night time, etc.), none of them add a single advantage in actual game-play. Other than aesthetics, they do absolutely nothing.
The appeal of these characters, and the game in extension, is that there are so many characters to collect, and each one adds its own cute characteristics to the game through sound effects and silly actions.
While this is not an especially addicting game, or even a difficult one, it is an entertaining game. If video games were food, this app would be a nice fruit roll up between lunch and dinner: not too heavy to handle, but perfect for a sweet pick-me-up.
Get it on iTunes or Google Play