Doodle Jump: how to play and how scoring works

How long a round lasts

Endless. There is no timer, no lives and no score cap. A run ends only when you fall past the bottom of the screen, or if you close the tab — in which case the last score the server received is what stands. One entry buys exactly one run: the game-over screen offers a restart, but neither the key nor the tap it names actually restarts anything.

Controls

Arrow keys or A and D to move left and right. There is no jump key — bouncing happens automatically whenever you land on a platform.

Movement is a flat rate with no acceleration and no momentum. Release the key and you stop dead on the next frame. If you hold both directions at once, you always go right, because the right check is tested first.

On touch devices you hold a side of the screen rather than tapping. One caveat worth knowing: the left/right split is measured against the width of the browser window, not the game board, so on a screen wider than the playfield the dividing line does not sit where you would expect it to.

How scoring works

Scoring is unusual and is the single thing most worth understanding about this game. You do not score for bouncing, for landing, or for moving sideways.

Why you can bounce forever and score nothing

Points are awarded per frame, but only on frames where you are both rising and positioned in the upper three-quarters of the screen. A bounce that happens entirely in the bottom quarter scores exactly zero, no matter how many times you repeat it.

This is not a corner case. If you sit on a low platform and let the character bounce in place, the score simply stops moving — the bounce is not tall enough to cross the line, and the world does not scroll either, because the scroll is triggered by the same condition. A player who thinks they are accumulating points can be earning nothing at all.

The practical consequence: how high you are on screen decides whether a bounce is worth 20 points or nothing. Climbing steadily and staying high is the whole scoring strategy, not bouncing frequently.

Platforms are only solid on the way down

Collision is only tested while you are falling. On the way up you pass straight through every platform, including breakable ones — which is why you cannot break a platform by clipping it during a rise.

Landing uses a simple box overlap with no check for feet-on-top, so as little as a pixel of contact anywhere on a platform counts as a landing. Catching the very edge of a platform is a legitimate save.

The screen also wraps horizontally: exit one side and you reappear on the other. You cannot die sideways, and wrapping is often the fastest route to a platform on the far side.

Difficulty steps at 500 and 1,000

The mix of platforms is decided for each platform as it spawns, based on your score at that moment. At or below 500, every platform is a normal one — the opening stretch is genuinely safe.

Above 500, roughly one platform in ten is breakable and one in five moves. Above 1,000 that becomes one in five breakable and three in ten moving, leaving only half the platforms ordinary.

The gaps widen at the same two thresholds: from 90–105 pixels early on, to 100–115 above 500, to 110–125 above 1,000. Since a single bounce rises about 76 pixels, you are never simply jumping from one platform to the next — you are always relying on the scroll and on picking the right landing.

Breakable platforms do not merely crumble — they give no bounce at all. You fall straight through, and they drop away beneath you. Treat one as a hole rather than a stepping stone.

What actually raises your score

• →Stay high on the screen. Bounces in the bottom quarter earn nothing, however many you string together.
• →Never aim for a breakable platform. It gives zero bounce, so it is a hole, not a step.
• →Use the edge wrap deliberately — going off one side to arrive at the other is often faster than crossing the board.
• →Catch platform corners. A pixel of overlap counts, so an edge landing is a genuine save rather than luck.
• →Wait at a wall for a moving platform. They travel at a constant speed and reverse at each edge, so they always come back.
• →Expect the game to change character at 500 and again at 1,000 — that is where breakables and wider gaps arrive.