Frogatto & Friends (PC) - Guest Post

And now for someone completely different. Veteran guest poster Ocean returns from his 18 month exile with an in-depth report on an indie platformer that he played for a bit recently.

Now for Frogatto and Friends!


This one I would have never found or checked out on my own but Ray happened to mention that I should get it and I liked the art so I figured I'd give it a try! You can find it here: http://www.frogatto.com/ though it's not free. I got my own copy as part of a bundle.

(No pixel art was harmed during the making of this post. Click the pictures to view them at the correct, non-blurry, resolution.)

Once upon a time, I was a prince who was turned into a frog.

Well that's not actually what happens but with a house like this, I kinda feel like royalty! Man check out that cabinet. That is some amazing pixel art by the way, it's really the main reason I got this game in the first place! It's such a nice colorful style.

(Just as point of reference, this is how the game looked like earlier in development!)

I went downstairs in my frog mansion and found this chef. I'm still not exactly sure what it is. It kind of looks like a potato; but I think a potato would hate being a chef right? It might get mistaken for an ingredient. (I think he looks a distant cousin of classic platformer hero Dizzy. There's definitely some resemblance there in the boxing gloves - Ray.)

He/it tells me that lunch isn't ready yet and that I should go outside. You know, this frog only just woke up, why is he already concerned about lunch? Not that I wouldn't be. Never mind.

Wandering outside in my mansion's fields I found a tutorial level.

You can visit the question marks to get tips on how to proceed or what things do. It's pretty easy to figure out on your own anyway but they don't wall-of-text you at least. Now to take a bathroom break in the outhouse and uh, save my game. I do not wish to know. All I know is that the process is super fast, which is really nice. You're in and out of there in a split second.

Like I said, question marks tell you info about the game. Like that you can swallow items and spit them out, either at enemies/objects or doors if you have a key for it. You can also swallow fruits and toss them at enemies to explode nearby.

Luckily this isn't a "going in water is instant death" type of platformer. Which wouldn't make sense, he's a frog. You also have a bubble attack instead of tongue when you're underwater.

I'm pretty sure you don't run out of oxygen so there's no risk of drowning down here, though I can almost hear that Sonic the Hedgehog underwater panic music playing in my head (youtube link).

After going through the forest (insert 'first level has trees' tag here), I end up in my friends house. She's a... purple cat thing. I think that's a cat. Do cats ever eat frogs? I went to yahoo answers for this important research and they have generally agreed that yes they would unless it's poisonous. I damage enemies if I jump on them so maybe I'm a poisonous frog. Who knows?

Ah yes, anyway my cat friend is merciful and gives me a quest! At least it's not mice in a basement this time. The last time that happened to us in Morrowind we got beaten up terribly. We won't speak of it.

So I'm down in the basement to fix my friend's ant problem. It's hardly a tough task; I think there were only two ants in here. At least the reward was pretty nice...

A heart capsule acquired! The game hasn't been hard at all yet for me to really need it but it's always appreciated. I'm sure in the future it'll come in handy.

After all that intense labor (of killing two ants), I went up to my friend and she gave me a new skill! Now here's hoping I don't burn my friend's house doing this! Unlike your tongue, this skill does use up mana. That's that green bar up there. It does regenerate though so you don't have to worry too much.

Back outside to acquire another chest! I saw it and couldn't resist getting it, even if it took me a bunch of tries to get up there. It's nice not to have a time limit!

I'm getting a bit of a Mega Man vibe just looking at this screen again but it's probably just the enemy type here. LOOK AT THOSE CLOUDS. That's some seriously awesome pixelling.

After all that I got through the forest just fine. I arrived to see... a cat on a plane. It's adorable! It is however the boss of this section.

Not a very difficult boss really but just don't expect to damage it by jumping on it or using your tongue on the plane. You don't wanna stay around too long, the bombs it drops will explode the floor and soon it'll break off.

I had to resist putting up a bunch of other screens but the game just looks that nice! So far I've not really had any trouble playing or figuring out the game. Some things took me multiple tries (like getting that chest) but it's been easy enough so far.

You can use the world map to go back to places you've been to. I'm actually curious about that purple city.

This mole wants a golden ant for the collection. You can find one sort of nearbyish, but I am dumb and I killed it accidentally so I never found out what you get for it. Maybe I'll try again unless it's a one time attempt deal!

You get achievements too, if you're big into that. I know certain people who write this blog are. I just don't really care too much unless I know the achievement requirements and it's something easy enough that I can do quickly. In some games like this they're kind of just there, but you don't see them pop up that much. Which is fine by me really. I think achievements can be a bit too manipulative if the gameplay revolves around them.

I went along and found a shop. You can't cash in your achievements but you can use the money you've been collecting! You can recover your health in these shops and buy health capsules, skills and upgrades! Like... a longer tongue. I don't want to see the surgery for that.

I keep being weirded out that the main character talks. I'm not used to that in a platformer! Basically the idea here was to rally up the townspeople to revolt. But I think the frog wants to do everything himself. Not sharing my victory with anyone else!

I was able to sneak into the town. It's overrun by :X cats! We need to collect keys to open the doors here and save the villagers from these evil :X cats. These villagers have massive houses too, I can't imagine how much property taxes would cost in this world. Maybe that's what the :X cats are doing here, they've come to collect on the tax that these villagers haven't been paying!

I stopped playing the main story here for the purposes of this post. Though out of curiosity I figured I'd try out the other game modes: Coin Race, Run and Climb.

Run and Climb are simple: for Run the screen scrolls horizontally and you have to survive as long as you can running to the right, in Climb the screen scrolls vertically and you have to jump up instead. In Coin Race, you have to collect all the coins in the stage before the time runs out.

A Run example. You move along with the blocks while avoiding obstacles/enemies so you can get as high a score as you can.


How did I like Frogatto & Friends? I think the art and music are really nice. The gameplay wasn't bad either; a bit simple right now but not frustrating either and easy to get in to. That may change in the late game but I haven't gotten THAT far yet. I still want to get to that purple city....I really don't have much bad to say about the game! Maybe it'd perhaps be nicer to have a little more tile variety, but the pixel art is really well done.