Skyhop

Skyhop doesn't hide what it is: a doodle bounces automatically off platforms, there's no jump button, and your only job is to steer it left or right so it lands on the next platform up rather than sailing past into empty space. That's the entire mechanic Doodle Jump popularized in 2009, and Skyhop — one of roughly two dozen small games bundled into game engine developer Frank Force's LittleJS Arcade collection — doesn't try to reinvent it. What it does is implement that mechanic cleanly, on both a keyboard and a touchscreen, in a way that a lot of the genre's mobile ports never quite got right.

A real analog stick, not a D-pad pretending

This shelf exists because too many browser games treat "works on mobile" as a checkbox rather than a design requirement, and Skyhop's touch implementation is the part worth calling out specifically. Rather than drawing a fixed on-screen D-pad in a corner, touching down anywhere on the screen summons a circular analog stick centered exactly on the touch point, and dragging it steers the doodle at a speed proportional to how far the stick is pushed from center. That was confirmed directly — not assumed from a touchGamepadEnable flag in the source, but by dragging the stick during an actual run and watching the character's horizontal speed change with drag distance, on a simulated phone with real touch events. The same run worked identically with arrow keys on desktop. Both climbed cleanly past a score of 130 with zero console errors and zero failed network requests the entire time.

The rest of the presentation holds up at phone size too: the start menu, the in-game height counter, and the medals screen were all legible on a 390px-wide viewport without needing to zoom or scroll, which is a lower bar than the touch controls but one plenty of ported arcade games still trip over.

Not much game once you've seen the trick

The honest limitation is that there isn't a lot underneath the control scheme. Climbing higher introduces moving platforms and the occasional spring for an extra-high bounce, which is enough to keep a single run from feeling completely static, but there's no enemy, no power-up beyond that spring, and no alternate mode — just an ever-rising column of platforms and your own best height to beat. The menu's medals screen only has two entries to unlock, so the extrinsic incentive to keep playing runs out within a few short sessions, after which what's left is purely chasing your own high score. That's a fine shape for a two-minute phone diversion; it's not a game with the depth to hold attention for an extended sitting.

Verdict

Skyhop is exactly what it presents itself as: a small, free, open-source Doodle Jump clone that does the one thing this shelf actually tests for — real, precise touch control — better than a lot of games with far bigger ambitions. It won't surprise anyone who has played this shape of game before, and there's no shame in that; it earns its spot by working correctly rather than by innovating.