How to play Frog Crossing
Frog Crossing is a remake of the 1981 arcade game Frogger. Your frog starts on the bank at the bottom of the screen and has to hop across five lanes of traffic to the median, then cross a river by riding floating logs and turtles.
Get a frog into each of the five bays at the top to clear the level. Every level runs faster than the one before.
Rules
- Each press of a direction is one hop of one square. Every road lane has its own vehicles, speed and direction: cars, trucks, bulldozers and a fast racing car. Touching any of them costs a frog.
- The river itself is deadly. A frog has to land on a log or a turtle and is carried along with it, and riding off the side of the screen costs a frog too. Some turtles dive now and then and take any frog standing on them under.
- At the top, a frog must hop straight into an empty bay. Landing on the hedge between bays or in a bay that already holds a frog costs a frog, and so does a bay with a gator in it, from level 2.
- Every frog has 30 seconds, shown by the bar at the bottom. You start with five frogs and earn one more at 20,000 points.
- Scoring: 10 for each hop onto a row that frog has not reached yet, 50 for getting home plus 10 for every half second left on its clock, 200 more for catching the fly in a bay, and 1,000 for filling all five.
Controls
- ↑ ↓ ← → / W A S D
- Hop one square
- Swipe
- Hop in the direction of the swipe
- Tap
- Hop towards the tap: above, below or beside the frog
- P / Esc / Space
- Pause
- Enter / Space
- Start
Tips
- Stop on the median: it is always safe, and only the clock is pushing you on.
- On the river, hop when a log will be under you as you land, not when it is under you now.
- Turtles with cross-hatched shells are the divers. Ride them for a hop or two at most.
- Fast frogs score: a frog home in 10 seconds earns 400 in time bonus, more than its steps and its arrival put together.
Frog Crossing strategy
How the lanes move
On level 1 the racing car covers 3.2 squares a second and the trucks 1.2, while the bulldozers crawl at 0.9 and the cars in the bottom lane at 1.0. On the river the long logs are the fastest ride, at 1.9 squares a second, and the short logs the slowest, at 0.75. Each level adds 14% to every speed, up to 2.2 times the first level’s from level 10. A hop takes an eighth of a second, and you can press the next one while the frog is still in the air.
Diving turtles
A diving group floats for 3.2 seconds, sinks over 0.7, stays under for 1.3 and takes 0.7 to come back up, so it carries you for about four seconds in every six. A frog goes under once the shells are mostly submerged, so watch them fade. On levels 1 and 2 one group in each turtle lane dives; from level 3 every other group does. Divers have cross-hatched shells, the others a plain grid.
The clock is the score
Each frog has 30 seconds, and getting home pays 10 points for every half second left. A clean crossing takes 8 to 12 seconds, worth 360 to 440, against 120 for all the steps and 50 for arriving. So after staying alive, speed matters most: the median is a fine place to wait for a gap, but every second spent waiting costs 20 points.
Bays, the fly and the gator
Only an empty bay takes a frog; a full one is as hard as the hedge. The fly sits in an empty bay for five seconds, with three to seven seconds between visits, and adds 200 to the frog that gets there first. From level 2 a gator now and then takes an empty bay for four and a half seconds, its jaws showing in the bay, but never the last empty one. Fill the outer bays first and keep the middle one, straight above the start, for last.
About Frog Crossing
Frogger was developed by Konami and released in arcades in 1981, with Sega/Gremlin publishing it in North America. Its simple goal, getting a frog home across a road and a river, made it one of the best-known games of the golden age of arcades, and its home versions sold millions of copies.
This version is an original remake inspired by it, with the same road, logs, diving turtles and five bays, plus swipe and tap controls.
Questions
Is this the original Frogger?
No. It is an original browser game inspired by the 1981 Konami arcade classic, free and with nothing to install.
How do I play on a phone?
Swipe on the board to hop, or tap above, below or beside the frog. An on-screen pad appears on touch screens too.
How is the score calculated?
Each new row a frog reaches is worth 10, each frog home 50 plus 10 for every half second left, the fly 200 and filling all five bays 1,000. For a yardstick, the Expert target is 3,000 and Pro is 15,000.
Why did my frog sink on a turtle?
Some turtles dive. Their shells are cross-hatched, and every few seconds they go under for more than a second, taking any frog on them with them.
