Why a frog in the sky?

Frogs are built for jumping, and some of them climb too. Tree frogs hold on with sticky toe pads. Wallace’s flying frog, which lives from the Malay Peninsula to Borneo and Sumatra, spreads its webbed feet and glides from tree to tree, sometimes 15 metres or more. A frog that bounces from a pond up to the stars did not feel like a big stretch.

The twist is the climb itself. The things you land on change as you go up: lily pads in the Pond, floating leaves in the Treetops, clouds in the sky, then bunches of balloons among the Stars. Some drift from side to side. Pale ones sink after one hop. Red mushrooms throw you much higher. Nothing up there chases you, and there are no enemies. A run only ends when the frog falls.

A bit of real jumping-game history

Games about going up are as old as the arcade boom. In Crazy Climber, released by Nichibutsu in Japan in October 1980, you scaled the outside of skyscrapers with two joysticks, one for each side of the climber’s body, while windows slammed shut and things fell from above.

The endless tower came later. Icy Tower, a free PC game from the Swedish studio Free Lunch Design, came out on 22 December 2001. Johan Peitz designed it. You jumped from floor to floor up a tower with no top. You could pass through a floor from below and land on it from above, and the run ended when you fell off the bottom of the screen. By 2008 it had been downloaded an estimated 11 million times.

Phones made the bouncing automatic. PapiJump, by Sunflat, was on the iPhone App Store by August 2008. Its hero, Mr. Papi, bounced on his own and you tilted the phone to steer him. In March 2009 the brothers Igor and Marko Pušenjak, who make up Lima Sky, released Doodle Jump. It also used tilt, and its screen wrapped around, so leaving on the left brought you back on the right. For four months it sold about 25,000 copies a day.

Frog Sky Hop keeps the automatic bounce and the wrapping screen. You steer by touch or keyboard instead of tilting, so it plays the same on a phone, a tablet or a laptop.

The four zones

• Pond (0 to 149 m): wide lily pads close together. After the first stretch, yellowed pads start to appear. They sink after one hop.
• Treetops (from 150 m): floating leaves. Brown leaves fall after one hop, and pale green ones drift sideways.
• Clouds (from 400 m): narrower clouds, bigger gaps and more drifting. Grey wisps hold you once.
• Stars (from 750 m): bunches of balloons in the night sky. A single pale balloon pops after one hop. The gaps keep growing until about 1,000 m.

How to play

• The frog bounces by itself every time it lands on something.
• Hold the left or right side of the game to steer, or drag a finger and the frog follows it. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys or A and D. The ◀ ▶ buttons under the game work too.
• Hop off one side of the screen and you come back on the other.
• Catch dragonflies for 25 bonus points each. Missing one costs nothing.
• Fall below the bottom of the screen and the run is over.
• Your rank comes from your height: Pond Hopper, Tree Climber at 150 m, Cloud Jumper at 400 m, Star Frog at 750 m and Comet Frog at 1,000 m.
• Stars each run: one at 50 m, two at the Treetops, three at the Clouds.
• Sound is on to start. Tap 🔊 to mute, or 🎵 for music.
• Earn 3 stickers in this game for your QuickBOP sticker book.

Tips

Steer on the way up. The frog passes up through anything from below. Line up under the next pad while you rise, and you only have to drop onto it.

Bounce in place to wait. A pad that stays still is safe for as many hops as you like. If the next one is drifting, wait until it swings close, then go.

Use the wrap. When the next pad is near the far edge, going off the near edge is often the shorter trip.

Treat a pale pad as a step. It holds you once, so know where you are heading before you land on it.

Drag for narrow pads. Higher up the pads get smaller. Dragging gives finer control than holding a side.

Your turn

The frog is sitting on the big lily pad at the top of this page. Get past 150 m to reach the Treetops, then see if you can make it all the way to the Stars.