How to play Hop Hop!
Hop Hop! is our own kid-friendly game in the Crossy Road style, not the Hipster Whale original. You steer a small green frog up an endless strip eight squares wide, one hop at a time. The strip is built from three kinds of row: grass, which is always safe, roads carrying cars in both directions, and rivers you can only cross by landing on a floating log. The first two rows are always grass, so nothing can go wrong before you have taken a look at what is ahead.
Beyond that the run settles into a pattern of hazard rows separated by grass rows, alternating between stretches of road and stretches of river, with the occasional extra road thrown in once you are properly under way. New rows are generated ahead of the frog for as long as you keep going, so there is no end to reach - only a personal best to beat.
Controls
- Keyboard: arrow keys or W, A, S and D to hop forwards, back, left and right. Each fresh press gives one hop; holding a key does not repeat hops. Space or Enter starts a run. Buttons also work with Tab and Enter or Space.
- Touchscreen: tap anywhere to hop forwards, which is the hop you want most of the time, or swipe in any direction to hop that way.
- Mouse: click to hop forwards, or click and drag in a direction to hop sideways or back.
Hops are discrete: the frog is either sitting still or making one complete jump, and an input pressed mid-jump is remembered and played as soon as the frog lands. That means a child can press a little early without losing the move. Sideways hops stop at the edges of the strip and you cannot retreat past the row you started on.
Roads, rivers and the ways a run ends
There are three of them, and each is worth understanding separately. On a road, a car reaching the frog ends the run immediately - traffic runs in both directions, and each lane has its own speed, so two neighbouring roads rarely need the same timing. On a river, landing in the water ends the run; you are safe only while standing on a log.
The third one catches people out. Logs keep drifting while you stand on them, carrying the frog sideways, and being carried off the side of the strip ends the run just as surely as the water does. Riding a log is therefore a countdown, not a rest stop, and the hop off it should be planned before you land on it.
Scoring and difficulty
Your score is the number of rows you have got through, which is the furthest row you have reached rather than a count of hops. Hopping backwards to wait out a gap in the traffic is free - it does not reduce your score, and the same row does not pay twice. The score shows in large numbers at the top of the screen and your best sits beside a trophy, saved in the browser so it survives closing the tab.
Difficulty by working level
Traffic speed follows the working level set for the session, which is what lets the same game suit a five-year-old and an eleven-year-old:
- KS1 (Years R to 2, ages 5 to 7): slow cars with wide gaps between them, and logs that drift gently. This is the setting the game uses until a different working level is chosen.
- Lower KS2 (Years 3 and 4, ages 7 to 9): cars roughly half again as quick, with the gaps between them noticeably tighter and the river moving faster.
- Upper KS2 (Years 5 and 6, ages 9 to 11): the fastest traffic and the smallest gaps, which turns each road into a genuine timing problem rather than a walk-through.
Stickers
Rows feed the site-wide sticker book. 3 rows earns First Hop, 10 earns Road Crosser, 20 earns River Hopper, 50 earns Frog Star and 100 earns Leap Legend. They are awarded as each new row is reached, so a run that ends in the traffic keeps everything it collected.
Tips for a higher row count
- Stop on the grass. Grass rows are completely safe, so use them to watch the next road for a beat rather than hopping straight through.
- Cross a road behind a car, not in front of one. The gap that has just opened is the one you can see the length of.
- Pick your log before you jump. Hopping onto the back end of a log travelling away from the edge buys far more time than landing on one about to leave the strip.
- Use sideways hops on the grass to line up with a gap, rather than trying to correct your position while standing on a road.
- When the river is running fast, take two shorter crossings with a grass row in between instead of trying to chain the whole stretch in one go.
Who Hop Hop! is for
The hop-by-hop structure is what makes this useful with children who find continuous arcade games hard. Nothing happens while the frog is standing still on grass, so a child can take as long as they need to decide, and each decision is a single simple one: go now, or wait. That turns it into real practice at reading a moving scene, judging timing and holding back an impulse, without needing quick fingers.
There is nothing to read and no penalty beyond starting again, and the working-level setting means the same activity can stay appropriate as a child gets more confident. It runs in any modern browser on a tablet, laptop or classroom whiteboard, with tap-anywhere controls that work well on a touchscreen, so it suits 1:1 tutoring and screen-shared therapy sessions equally.
Questions about this Crossy Road style game
Is it free?
Yes. It is free to play in your browser, with no signup, no download and no in-game purchases. Built by a UK SEND tutor with QTS.
Is this the real Crossy Road?
No. It is our own game built in that style, with a frog rather than a chicken, no characters to unlock and nothing to buy. If you are looking for the Hipster Whale game, this is not it.
Can you go backwards?
Yes, as far back as the row you started on. Retreating is often the right move on a busy road, and it costs you nothing because the score records the furthest row you have reached.
Do you need a keyboard to play?
No. A tap hops the frog forwards and a swipe hops it in any direction, so the whole game works on a tablet or a touchscreen whiteboard.