Chicken Road: one step at a time

Twenty-four lanes. Each lane either has a car or doesn’t. You step forward. Car = dead. Safe = multiplier grows.

The math

Each difficulty fixes how many of the 24 lanes have cars. Easy: 1/24 (95.8% safe per step). Hardcore: 12/24 (50%). Multiplier per step = 0.99 × (1/survival).

The psychology

On easy you can cross 20 lanes and feel clever. On hardcore you rarely make it past 5, and the multiplier after 5 steps is already 15×+. Two different games with the same long-run return.

The chicken doesn’t know the map. Neither do you. That’s the whole game.