This game was created by Matthew Taranto, who created the charming, long-running webcomic Brawl in the Family. Brawl in the Family combined humor, cuteness, and heart to not merely riff on Nintendo with nerdy jokes, but also capture the spirit of why so many people love it. The depictions of various characters in remain deeply popular to this day, particular Waluigi, whose status as a meme basically started there. As Taranto finished off his series, he dreamed of making his own work, and incorporating what he had learned there... that humor, that heart and softness, and of course the musical chops he had already shown at various key points of the comic
For someone looking for just a good, sweet, short experience, you can finish the campaign in a couple of hours (you can actually finish it in I believe less than one, but you're probably not going to the first time until you get really good at it)
It's a charming little tale of a tadpole getting separated from her family and defying the odds to get back, through constant peril and catchy tunes. For someone just playing through it to get to the end, there's much to offer in that charm, as well as a fairly unique take on the rhythm genre... you are swimming through the sheet music of the song you are currently hearing, with the notes generally being obstacles or sometimes collectibles.
For your need of having something to enjoy the experience of finishing, you can't go wrong there, HOWEVER!
If you find yourself liking it enough to do more, this is where the game does something really clever. For full 100% completion (which is actually worth it, there are loads of tiers of unlockable things based on your progress on the way, all delightful, but the reward at 100% is the perfect bow on the experience), each level is going has multiple criteria that it will need to be finished by, and they each test your skills in surprising ways.
As you may expect from a game with a letter ranking system, one of them is getting S by clearing with the best score you can on a given level, but this does something else I've never seen before... you also need to get F ranks.
The idea behind the F rank is that you have to get the lowest score you possibly can while still finishing the level. Your score multipliers go down when you take a hit, but you also have limited health, so it outright requires strategically harming yourself while still not dying.
There are also additional challenges such as getting every collectible bubble in a single run of a level, and each level has an additional challenge that requires some out of the box thinking to complete. Each of these not only gets you that extra burst of dopamine, but notably aren't just padding-- they require you to continuously look at what seems simple from new angles. This allows a game experience which, like the best that Nintendo has to offer, is as challenging as you are willing to have it be, but, notably, each step of that journey rewards you in some fashion. F ranks, for example, allow you to play through the level with developer commentary, and hear the two brothers who designed the game just being total dorks
Much of completion also unlocks bestiary information, in which you see that each animal in the game was carefully selected and considered from an actual nature perspective in addition to being cute or funny. They did a lot of research to make this balance work. A recent port to the Switch added an additional level shortly before the final one that I think makes the story even better, and I'm rather annoyed that they haven't put that on the steam release yet, but this is still an excellent way to play.
Ultimately, it's everything you could want from a game you hop in and out of--- you'll be rewarded for however much time you put in, and the time will never feel wasted. That care is all over the place, from easter eggs of various sorts to an unlockable secret level, to even, of all things, an occasional, rare alternative pause menu song that is so outlandish it has to be heard to be believed. All of that and more are why Tadpole Treble remains one of my favorite games, and one I recommend to anyone needing a little bit of joy in their day.
