Frogger’s Simpler, Easier, but Slightly more Welcoming Cousin
Gaming’s struggle to cross a road continues with Risky Roads. First there was Frogger, then there was Crossy Road, and now we can add Risky Roads to the pile. Never has there been a greater need for a Lollipop Lady.
Risky Roads has a different perspective on things, quite literally. Rather than being the conventional top-down road-crosser, Risky Roads is in profile. You have to move left or right across the screen, watching as traffic moves into the camera to meet you. It gives Risky Roads a slightly more panic-inducing flavour. It feels like you’re crossing the road with the chicken.
Where we’re Going, we Don’t Need Roads
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to a bus stop, as it happens. Your goal is to cross enough roads that you can reach your mates, hop on a bus, and – theoretically – be part of the problem. Now you are going to be a vehicle that another chicken has to avoid. There’s something poignant in that, I think.
All of this is done with one, solitary button. We’ve played several of the recent One-Button Games compilations on the Xbox, so it’s unusual to find another one-button game out in the wild. You only have the A button, and that A button, when held, will move you backwards rather than forwards. You are perpetually moving in a forward direction, so it’s a kind of intervention, a reverse to stop yourself from getting run over.
Roads become a bit of duck-and-weave with this A button. If you keep moving, you might be in the path of a truck. But if you reverse, you might get pummelled by a camper van. The only option is to delicately tap or hold the A button between the two, hoping that you’ve found the few pixels that mean safety.
Less Risky Than you Might Think, Actually
It is an exceedingly simple approach to Frogger. There’s only one plane, two directions, and one button. You can imagine Risky Roads starting its life on mobile or tablets, where finetuned controls are impossible.
You might assume that it’s a little too simple to hold the attention, and you’d only be partially right. Risky Roads, at least for half an hour, is arcadey fun. I expected to hate it, but I found myself getting caught up in its rhythms. I soon learned how much distance I needed to put between my chicken and the oncoming cars. I could sneak by just in time, notching a ‘Close Shave!’ warning as I went. I’d master the art of threading the vehicle needle. I knew when to repeatedly tap A on the side of the road, patiently waiting for a gap in traffic.
Don’t get put off by the overly simplistic, early CD-ROM graphics. This is more-ish. I went on a twenty level run through Risky Roads before deciding that I better stop. That’s testament to the intuitive controls and the way it tries to mix things up. Power-ups begin to appear, from bouncy springs to floating balloons, and they each complicate the whole tappy-A, holdy-A approach to success.
One Raccoon and a Party Hat, Please
It was at the point of pausing the game that I realised the collected coins actually did something. You can buy hats for your chicken and even convert the chicken into racoons, frogs and other animals. It’s basically ‘choose your roadkill’.
My honeymoon with Risky Roads didn’t last all that long. There is, after all, only so much you can do with one button and a left-right perspective. Risky Roads runs out of new power-ups, and the levels begin to echo each other. It tries to mix things up with wider roads, faster cars and combinations of power-ups, but that road was always going to be an uphill one.
It meant that Risky Roads got put aside after thirty-odd levels and an hour or so of play. The achievements were exhausted, the levels repeating, and there wasn’t much else to do – not beyond buying more hats. The well ran dry, which is completely understandable. And for £4.19 that may be justified.
If you’ve ever enjoyed a bout of Frogger but wished it would do something new, or wanted to dial its difficulty down a notch, then Risky Roads will be your (traffic) jam. It’s ugly and its fire burns out after an hour but, for a short period of time, Risky Roads will astrally project you in front of an arcade cabinet circa 1981.]
Important Links
Buy Risky Roads, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/risky-roads/9pc7cs16j1pz
Buy an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/risky-roads-xbox-one/9nz1s1lcmnxt
There’s a PC drop too – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/risky-roads-windows/9pdpgrkkmdwl
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