CroZXy Road

16K ZX81 - 2015

My interpretation of Hipster Whale's iconic "Crossy Road".

Crossy Road is arguably the most iconic game of 2015 - instantly recognisable, simple to play, and ruthlessly addictive - and so it seemed only fitting to try and bring it back down to Earth, and back in time by 35 years, in the form of a de-make for the ZX81. The game has hit such a nerve with people - I've seen it played in pubs, on buses, even half way up a mountain side whilst holidaying in Italy - which I doubt will ever happen to my version (please send photographic proof if you try it!)

I initially contacted Hipster Whale early in 2015 about the prospect of a ZX81 conversion of Crossy Road, and I'll admit to being somewhat anxious as I waited for the reply, wondering quite what they'd make of this frankly crazy idea. At the time I'd thought very little beyond the idea that it could be cool, and a couple of mocked-up screens, but despite their hectic schedule they agreed to the project, and have been fully supportive of it since, and indeed named the game after liking my previous work on ZXagon.

Originally I planned the game to be 2D - looking very much like the original Frogger on which it is based, but after Hipster Whale took such an interest in the project I felt that simply wouldn't cut it, and so forced myself into the whole 3D concept, which although sometimes doesn't look so great in a still image (much like Ant Attack & One Little Ghost before it), works pretty well when everything is moving. As is usual with these projects, there were a number of false starts, and a major re-write towards the end of the development when the game quickly ran out of memory trying to get the level logic working.

I'm very proud of the end result, which I think is about as close as a ZX81 can get to the majesty of the original. Okay, so there's none of the collectable nature of the original, but I think that the claustrophobic nature of the original has been preserved. As a last note, it's probably worth mentioning that, despite all the time I spent playing the original game for research, I'm still really quite awful at it!

I've also been officially nerd-herded. :)