Frogun

If Steam had a middle option between Recommended and Not Recommended, I’d probably put Frogun there. I wish I’d enjoyed it more than I did, but past the good there’s a fair amount to dislike or cause frustration. On a first glance, Frogun looks like it’s going to be a fun platformer reminiscent of old N64 and PSX games, with some cool retro filters to try out from the get-go. The low poly look is pretty cool and works well for the block-based gameplay. There are some fun designs in terms of enemy looks and environment. I wasn’t overly fond of the pixel art portraits, I think just a render could have worked better, but that’s a nitpick. The big problem, for me at least, is that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the distance between objects and platforms. This is especially annoying in the brutal levels later in the game. The colours are bright and poppy, although there were a couple of darker levels in the second half of the game that made platforming harsher than perhaps it should have been, sometimes I felt like I had to make too many leaps of faith. The camera is completely controlled by the player. This works well, until it doesn’t. For the positives, the developer can hide secrets more easily and the player doesn’t have to fight an auto-camera. The negatives become apparent when the player needs to do tricky platforming sections in multiple axes, or the multiple grapple sections. This is often frustrating as you don’t particularly have much room for error, and any pitfalls will send you back to the last checkpoint. In terms of performance, everything ran well. The exception is on Steam Deck which weirdly has frame drops now and then. This could be a quirk of Proton, I’m not quite sure. There are some typos here and there, but nothing too terrible. Gameplay wise, Renata can move, jump and use the titular Frogun, her sentient froggy grapple gun. Overall, the grapple is used well, although comes with its annoyances. The grapple can be used to grapple to walls as well as enemies and objects. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell how the grapple will effect enemies, making it a bit of a guessing game as to whether it brings you toward the enemy or the enemy towards you. I think it could have been cool to have a separate ‘attack’ along with the grapple, as hit detection can feel a bit iffy when it comes to enemies. Sometimes you’ll jump on an enemy and get hurt, other times you won’t. The goal of each level is to reach the end, collecting optional gems and collectibles along the way, including some little expository notes. The gems can be used in shops to buy hats as well as concept art, which is a nice touch and reward for those willing to go out of their way to collect things. There are plenty of enemies, pitfalls and traps in each level, with checkpoints spread throughout. I wasn’t a fan of restarting to the checkpoint when falling down pits, just reduce Renata’s health or something. Sometimes checkpoints feel too far spread, often making you repeat pretty tricky sections if you fail one part. The worst offenders for this are the race levels, which leave very little room for error and just become a chore. In the end I decided to just use a mechanic exploit for the final one, as the brutal difficulty was beyond annoying. I think some of the final levels just border on unfair and were pushing my patience. The bosses are a mixed bag. I liked some of the ideas, but some of their mechanics, such as those of the final boss, feel ill suited to Renata’s slow movement. It can be hard to react at times. As well as this, the sound of them taking damage isn’t very impactful and I was left wondering whether I was doing any damage – I think a damage indicator or health bar would have worked well there. The manual camera can also be a problem here, especially as some of the bosses like speeding across their arenas, making them difficult to track. Only having 5 HP makes the longer ones too harsh for my liking, with no way of recovering life either. The music and sound are a bit mixed. There’s some nice music, although it can get grating on the more annoying or longer levels. The coin sound is really loud and sharp, but luckily it has its own volume slider. In the final levels there is a timing-based platforming mechanic, I think the sound should be more prominent to help the player. Overall, there is some fun to be had, mostly in the first half, but for me the frustrations took away from the experience. It’s impressive from a small team nonetheless.