Hop Charge

🕹️ How to play

1. How to start playing Hop Charge: The page opens straight into a live round — no start screen, no sign-up. Press and hold anywhere on the board to start charging, watch the meter on the right fill, and let go to jump. Holding Space or Enter on a keyboard does exactly the same thing.
2. How to control how far you jump: Longer press, longer jump, and the curve never changes: every extra 5 milliseconds of hold adds one unit of distance, from a 120 ms minimum to a 1500 ms cap. The highlighted band on the meter is the exact range of press lengths that lands on the next block.
3. Why the first three jumps are all the same distance: The opening three blocks sit at a fixed 120-unit gap on the widest slab so you can learn what half a second feels like. Missing one of them does not end the round: you bounce back and the game tells you how many seconds short you were. The random generator takes over from the fourth jump.
4. How scoring and the combo multiplier work: Landing anywhere on the block scores 1, a dead-centre Perfect scores 2, and narrow blocks (64 units or less) pay 1 extra. Consecutive Perfects push the multiplier to x2, x4 and x6, but the multiplier only applies to Perfect landings, and any other result resets the streak. One fall ends the round.

📖 Rules & variants

Core rules: your character stands on a floating block and you have exactly one input — hold to charge, release to leap. The landing is decided the instant you let go: hold length sets distance, landing on the next block continues the run, missing it ends it. There are no lives and no levels; blocks cleared and points scored are the whole score.

The five landing grades: the game measures how far your landing sits from the block's centre. Perfect (dead centre) extends the combo and scores 2. Good (inside half a block) scores 1 and resets the combo. Edge (you clipped the rim) shakes the block, still scores 1 and resets the combo. A near miss just past the rim triggers a Rescue, which spends one rescue charge and scores 0. Anything further is a fall and ends the run.

How the combo multiplier works: consecutive Perfect landings drive the multiplier — 1 gives x1, 2–3 gives x2, 4–5 gives x4, and 6 or more caps at x6. The multiplier only ever multiplies a Perfect, and Edge and Rescue both break the chain, so the high-score route is chaining centre hits rather than merely surviving.

The three difficulty tiers: Easy uses 104→84 wide blocks, 110–180 gaps, a 20% Perfect tolerance and 3 rescues. Standard uses 88→64 wide blocks, 100–230 gaps, 15% tolerance and 2 rescues. Expert uses 68→48 wide blocks, 120–280 gaps, 10% tolerance and no rescues at all. Tiers only move blocks and tolerances — the hold-to-distance curve is identical everywhere, so the timing you build always transfers.

Does it get harder forever? No. Blocks narrow monotonically from the widest to the narrowest over the first 30 jumps and the random gap range opens to its maximum over the same stretch, then both hold steady. As compensation, every narrow block (64 units or less) pays 1 extra point, so late blocks are harder but worth more.

Player count: this is a single-player game and a round lasts 20–90 seconds. To play it socially, pass the phone around: everyone takes one round and you compare blocks cleared, or race to be first to hit a x6 multiplier. There is no built-in turn system — a house rule is all it takes.

Common beginner mistakes: the first is tapping instead of holding — a press under 120 ms does not jump at all and simply reminds you to hold. The second is always going for distance: coming up short usually just costs you points, while overshooting throws you clean off the block, so play it short when unsure. The third is watching the character instead of the next block — the highlighted meter band moves every single jump.

❓ FAQ