In Happy Hopper you hop until you drop from boredom. It won’t take long until you get to the latter part.
Happy Hopper is a very simple game. Your goal is to jump as far as you can. You can jump one or two blocks at a time by clicking on the different sides of the screen. Some of the blocks are deadly, and there’s also a lethal monster chasing after you.
From the in-game store you can buy new playable characters with real money. Fortunately, Happy Hopper isn’t a pay-to-win game as different characters have only cosmetic effects. You can also unlock new characters randomly by collecting 100 coins.
The game looks great. The world is very colorful and has some nice details in it. You can clearly separate different blocks just by the way they look. The layout is clear and pleasant to view. Furthermore, the characters are really cute. You would like to grab them out of the game world and pet them.
Nevertheless, the best way to play the game is by having it on mute because the sound effects are really annoying. Every time you get 50 points you hear MLG air horns. If that isn’t pesky enough, every time you die you hear “WA WAA”. Moreover, even the sound of jumping can be quite irritating with some of the playable characters, and in a game where all you do is jump you’ll be hearing the jump sound over and over again.
There isn’t much to say about Happy Hopper’s soundtrack as there is none. Besides the aforementioned lovely sound effects all you hear is birds singing. It fits well when you play as the basic bunny character as you’re hopping in the nature. However, if you play as a ghost in a dark, nightmare-like world or as a sugar cube in a candy land the bird sounds are very out of place.
In addition, the game feels unfinished. It has many glitches and errors. Some of the blocks are invisible which results to unnecessary deaths. The game lags every now and then which can also be fatal. There are also typos in menu texts, for example “access” is spelled “acccess”, and the menus are sometimes unresponsive.
Now take a look at the screenshot about disabling video ads and ask yourself how seriously you can take the game when you see something like that. Yes, the pop-up window is funny, but when you combine it with the sound effects that are more common in restless Let’s Play videos on YouTube than in actual games, and that one of the characters is actually named Wallet Warrior the game as a whole feels like an inside joke. It’s a joke that might be amusing at first but it gets old very fast.
Furthermore, playing Happy Hopper becomes boring really quick as the difficulty level doesn’t increase enough to keep the gameplay interesting. Therefore, one of the most common reasons for losing is the lack of your own interest to pay attention. It’s not a good sign that after playing a few rounds you would rather clean your whole house than play a minute longer. In conclusion, Happy Hopper isn’t a game worthy to spend your time and money on.
2/10
Developer: Marimo Games
Publisher: Marimo Games
Platform: Android, iOS
Release date: 14.10.2016
Age rating: PEGI 3
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