How to play Desk Hop
Bounce a little ink figure up an endless office. It jumps by itself every time it lands; all you do is steer it left and right onto the next desk, trolley or stack of paper above.
Climb as high as you can. Miss everything and drop off the bottom of the screen, and the run is over.
Rules
- Your score is the height you reach: one point for every 10 pixels, so a plain bounce is worth about 17. Falling back down never takes points away.
- Every landing bounces you about 173 pixels up. A desk with a coiled spring launches you about 464 pixels if you land on the spring itself.
- Plain desks stay put. Filing trolleys, hatched and on two wheels, roll from side to side. Stacks of loose paper hold one bounce and then crumble, so you can’t come back down onto them.
- Staplers turn up from a height of 160. Land on one from above and it’s flattened and bounces you like a desk; touch it any other way, even jumping up into it from below, and it bites and the run ends. From 300, some desks have coffee spilt over one end: land in the puddle and you slip straight through. The dry part is always at least half the desk.
- The sides wrap: steer off one edge and you come back on the other. When you steer with the mouse or a finger, the figure follows the pointer instead and doesn’t cross the edge.
- There is always a way up: every desk on the main path is within a plain jump of the one before, close enough sideways to reach at well under full speed and without the wrap. The gaps widen, the desks narrow and more of them roll or crumble as you climb, up to a height of 2,400. The Expert level is 1,500 and the Pro level 5,000.
Controls
- ← → / A D
- Steer left and right
- Mouse
- Move it over the board: the figure steers towards the pointer
- Touch
- Hold and drag on the board: the figure steers towards your finger
- Space / Enter / tap
- Start, and resume after a pause
- P / Esc
- Pause
Tips
- Look up, not down. The bounce takes care of itself; your job is to be under the next desk when the figure comes down, so choose it at the top of the jump.
- Stop steering early. Full speed crosses the whole office in about a second, and drifting past a narrow desk is the commonest way to fall.
- Paper is a one-way ticket: bounce on it only when the next thing above is already within reach.
- With a stapler overhead, get out from under it before you take off. From above it’s just another desk.
Desk Hop strategy
Reading a jump
A bounce leaves the desk at 720 pixels a second against a gravity of 1,500, so it peaks about 173 pixels up after 0.48 seconds and is back at its own height after 0.96. A spring leaves at 1,180: about 464 pixels and nearly 0.8 seconds rising. A desk 140 pixels up, the widest gap there is, leaves only about 0.2 seconds of falling to land on it, so steer for it on the way up.
Steering in numbers
Full sideways speed is 290 pixels a second, reached in about a tenth of a second from standing. Over one plain bounce that covers about 280 pixels, most of the 320-pixel-wide office; the main path never asks for more than 70% of that. The mouse is gentler: the figure moves 10 pixels a second for every pixel it is from the pointer, so it slows as it arrives instead of overshooting.
Trolleys, paper and springs
A trolley rolls 30 to 80 pixels either side of where it started, at 35 to 110 pixels a second, turning back at each end. Aim where it will be when you come down, not where it is now. Paper crumbles the moment you bounce off it, so a stack on the main path is a step you can take only once. Springs sit only on plain desks: landing within 11 pixels of the coil fires it, anywhere else on the desk is an ordinary bounce.
Staplers and coffee
A stapler sits on a small desk of its own, off to the side of the main path, with nothing you could bounce on within a jump below it, so it only gets in your way if you steer under it. Coming down onto it from above always flattens it, wherever its jaw is in the bite, and counts as a bounce. Coffee covers 36 to 50% of a desk from one end, the end with the tipped mug, so aim for the other end.
Where it gets hard
Difficulty grows evenly with height until 2,400 and then holds. Low down the desks are wide and close, with extra furniture between them. By 1,000 about a quarter of the main path rolls; by 2,400 more than four in ten do and one in five crumbles. From there the climb gets no harder, so a long run is about staying steady, not about anything new.
About Desk Hop
Endless jumpers, in which a character bounces up a column of platforms by itself and the player only steers, became a phone favourite with Doodle Jump (Lima Sky, 2009), where tilting the phone did the steering.
Desk Hop is our own office take on the idea, drawn in sumi ink and charcoal on washi paper: desks are single brush strokes, trolleys are hatched, paper stacks are dry, broken lines, and the only colour on the board is the vermilion of the climber.
Questions
How is the score calculated?
One point for every 10 pixels of the highest point your feet reach. A plain bounce is worth about 17 and a spring about 46.
Is every climb possible?
Yes. The furniture is laid out as a chain in which every desk is within reach of the one below it, with a plain jump and without the screen wrap. Staplers are never placed above anything you could bounce straight up into them from, and coffee never covers more than half a desk.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap the board to start, then hold your finger on it and drag left and right: the figure steers towards your finger. Switching to another tab or app pauses the game.
Does it get harder?
Yes, until a height of 2,400: the gaps widen from about 34–70 pixels to 80–140, desks narrow from about 62 pixels to 40–46, more of them roll or crumble, and the trolleys speed up. Springs appear from 25, paper from 40, trolleys from 70, staplers from 160 and coffee from 300.
