Just make Crossy Road (Free). It’s easy! All you need to do is take a classic video game from the 80’s, give it a cheerful, vaguely Minecraft-ian art style, load it with cute characters to collect, and park your car in the garage so the driveway is clear for all the dump trucks full of money. Of course, in reality things aren’t quite that easy. I mean, I don’t think anyone is entirely sure why Crossy Road was such a huge success considering the sheer volume of other fun little time wasters there are on the App Store. Why Flappy Bird, for that matter? Why Temple Run (Free)? Why Doodle Jump ($0.99)?
Still, these questions don’t do anything to deter people from trying to emulate the seemingly random success of whatever is hot at the moment. Which leads me, finally, to Down the Mountain (Free) by Sven Magnus. I wouldn’t call it a clone, since it plays quite a bit differently from Crossy. But it still follows the template I outlined above, with Q*bert (everyone’s favorite swearing blob) replacing Frogger as the inspiration. It’s a mixture that goes pretty well together, as it turns out, though the game isn’t without its frustrations.
Each round begins at the top of an adorable little mountain made up of isometric blocks, and your job is to cheerfully hop as far down the mountain as you can before the environment murders you. Unlike Q*bert, you don’t have to worry about painting tiles a certain color, but you do have to avoid running into all sorts of enemies and traps. There are mountain lions, explosives, cars, rivers, and even special blocks that mess with your directional controls. And by “special” I mean “infuriating”.
Yes, this game can be shockingly challenging at times. Every moment is a constant struggle as you have to keep one eye on the collapsing mountain behind you, the other eye far ahead on the hazards coming up, and a gross third eye in the middle of your forehead on your character to make sure they don’t land on a spike or something. I’ll say it: It’s a really terrible mountain.
Fortunately, the controls are extremely simple. You tap the left side of the screen to hop down and left, and the right side to hop down and right. You can also hold the screen (instead of tapping) to hop continuously in that direction. There’s no way to move backwards up the mountain, and here’s where most of the challenge comes in. Once you move in a direction, you’ve committed to that path, and there’s (literally) no turning back. Step on a puddle of ooze but missed the potion that cures it? Sorry, Charlie. See an enticing chest up ahead but missed the key? Too bad, Chad. It’s kinda neat that you have to plan ahead a little before you take a step, but it definitely feels weird when you find yourself in un-winnable situations. For example, your only choice might be to to hop into a river, but it sends you down a path with nothing but lava and raised spikes on either side.
The difficulty of the game isn’t all that surprising if you view it in the context of something like Flappy Bird or Super Hexagon ($2.99), but it clearly wants to be the next Crossy Road. Everything about it screams “Casual!”, from the cutesy graphics to the horde of blocky characters you can win in the prize wheel. (My favorite, so far, is a cubed Walter White in his yellow cook suit). Even the built-in mission system seems at odds with the challenging nature of the game, with incredibly easy goals like “Hop on 3 Sand Tiles!” and “Play 2 games with So-and-So!” There are two hundred of these goals total, and they obviously get harder as they go along, but when you first start the game it is kind of a weird dichotomy.
I’m not sure if any of these things are real problems, though. If you love Crossy Road but wish it took place in a different setting, had a little more variation, and was harder, then Down the Mountain is a solid download for sure. If you love Q*bert but wish it was a little less puzzle-y and didn’t let you move wherever you wanted, then once again, this is probably for you. However, if you are getting a little burnt out on these “see how far you can go with cute graphics and lots of characters” type games, then this one certainly won’t change your mind. Personally, I’m kind of in the middle of the three. Like being in the center of a triangle. Hey! Mountains are triangles!
