Timothy Liu — Looking Outwards — 12

It’s final project time! When I read the prompt for the final project, I immediately knew I wanted to do something related to a game. As referenced in my last 2 Looking Outwards, I love video games and I think it would be really cool to try and build a game experience through p5.js. A game that came to mind was Frogger, a classic concept where a character must cross a road with incoming traffic to reach the other side. For this Looking Outwards, I looked at two examples of Frogger-style games: the classic Frogger on the C64, and Crossy Road on the iPhone.

The original Frogger is a clear flash-to-the-past, with insanely retro graphics and color schemes. Frogger was released in 1981 by Konami, and it was an instant hit; players loved the simplicity of the game as well as its addictive appeal. The premise is straightforward: the player, playing as a frog, must weave through traffic and jump across a variety of animal-backs and logs to reach safety on the other side of the screen. The player then goes through a series of levels to try and set their high score without losing all of their lives. Frogger’s simplicity was part of its charm, but I personally felt their was a level of animated complexity lacking; of course, this was likely because of the datedness of the game (1981 was a while ago, and computers have come a long way since!).

Crossy Road, released in 2014 by the gaming studio Hipster Whale, is an attempt to fix this issue by adding in flashy new graphics, fun animations, and 3D characters. It’s modeled with block/pixel-style characters, seemingly a reference to the game’s historical roots, but it’s clear after playing Crossy Road that gameplay is immensely smoother and more flowy. I’ve played Crossy Road in the past, and it was a great experience. The game was fun, and losing doesn’t even feel bad because of the charm of the game. However, one thing I felt could be improved on is the simplicity of the game; in a weird way, Crossy Road almost does too much to the original frogger to the point where the various rocks, trees, cars, and rivers the player needs to avoid become almost distracting. There’s something sophisticatedly simple about the original Frogger that reduces gameplay distractions, and that’s something I think Crossy Road misses at times.