Like Crossy Road? Meet Groggy Roads

What a road-crossing hopper actually is

The rules of the genre fit in one sentence. Hop forward across an endless grid of roads, rivers and railway lines, and do not get hit. There is no level to finish and no boss at the end. The screen scrolls behind you, the lanes are generated as you go, and the run ends the first time you misjudge something.

What keeps people playing is that every death is legible. You always know which hop was the wrong one. You were greedy, or a beat early, or you stood in the one safe tile for so long that the game got bored of you. Nobody blames the game. So you go again, and the next run lasts eleven seconds longer, and that is the whole hobby.

The other half of the appeal is that it plays with one thumb, in a queue, on a sofa, in the four minutes before something else starts.

What Groggy Roads keeps

All of it, because it works:

• One-tap hopping. Tap to go forward, swipe to change direction. Arrow keys and WASD for anyone at a desk.
• Endless procedurally generated lanes. No two runs are laid out the same way, and the difficulty ramps steadily over the first hundred and sixty rows.
• Traffic you have to read. Vehicles run at different speeds in both directions. The gap is there; the question is whether it is still there when you land.
• Water crossings on things that drift. Keg rafts, floating coolers, pool floaties, gym mats, charpais. They carry you sideways while you decide. Hop off before the edge does it for you.
• A predator that punishes idling. Stand still for eight seconds, or let the scroll leave you behind, and something comes down for you.
• Collect and unlock. Pickups build a stash. Stash unlocks characters. Three are free from the first run, five are earned.

What makes this one worth your time

Eight characters, and each one brings a whole world

They are not skins. Choosing a character changes the traffic, the express train, the thing you float on, the pickups and the bird that eats you.

The Beast lives in the iron paradise. The traffic is rolling dumbbells, kettlebells, tubs of protein and treadmills that have got loose, with a loaded barbell as the heavy vehicle. The express is the Gains Train. You cross water on gym mats. If you loiter, a buff pigeon carries you off.

Nana has the retirement village, which is worse than it sounds. Mobility scooters, a giant yarn ball, a rocking chair, a bingo cage, and a boat-sized sedan that has never been parked well. The Bingo Express does not brake. The rafts are knitted blankets. The bird is a crow, and it has been waiting.

The Minister crosses the bustling city: rickshaws, donkey carts, a bike carrying three people, minibuses, and a jingle truck that takes up the entire lane. Water is crossed on floating charpais. A cheel takes him, eventually, and it is somehow the most dignified thing that happens to him all night.

Groggy Gary starts you in the suburbs, where every vehicle is healthy food. A rogue carrot. A speeding banana. An emotional eggplant. The milk truck, which is the only one with a licence.

Four vices that change how the game feels

Most arcade pickups add to a number. These do something to you, and they last long enough to ruin a plan:

• Groggy sways and blurs the camera for seven seconds. Your hops go where you meant, roughly.
• Wired runs the entire world 1.65 times faster for six seconds, including you. Some people chase this one on purpose.
• Nodding off drops the world to half speed for seven seconds. It sounds like mercy. It is not: every gap you had timed is now in a different place, and so are you.
• Far out melts the colours for ten seconds and brings UFOs and small green visitors. They are harmless. That is not the problem with them.

Every one of them also adds to your stash, which is how you unlock the rest of the roster. So the best runs are the ones where you took the pickup you should have walked past.

A power-up for telling a bird what you think of it

When the predator comes, it hovers for about a second before it grabs. If you are carrying the flip-off hand, that second is yours: double-tap, or press F, and it leaves offended. The other power-up is a shield, which absorbs exactly one hit, whether that hit is a carrot or a stretch limo. Neither appears before row ten, and neither appears often.

The humour is dry, and it is specific

Nothing here winks at you. Uncle Ray mows at 7 a.m., legally and out of spite. The Freshman has a nine o'clock lecture tomorrow and has had one every day for three weeks. The Mogul owns the strip and cannot find his car on it. The jokes are in the details of each world rather than in a punchline at the top of the screen.

Free, in a browser, right now

No download, no launcher, no account, no email address, no thirty-second unskippable start. The page loads and you are hopping. Your best score and your stash are saved on your own device and nowhere else. The browser version has no ads.

Who this is not for

Groggy Roads is an adult parody. The premise is a cartoon drunk crossing a road he has no business crossing, and the four pickups are a drink, a powder, a syringe and a leaf, drawn as blocky cartoon objects and renamed in each world. Nobody is hurt and nothing is glamorised, but the joke is the joke, and it does not have a family-friendly mode. It is rated for players aged 18 and over. If that is not funny to you, the genre has other games in it, and no hard feelings.

Questions people actually ask

Go and lose a run

The first one lasts about twenty seconds. Read more about Groggy Roads and how it is built, or start from the front page and meet the rest of the roster.