Well I was gonna review this once I finished it, but tragedy struck. For whatever reason, the game wasn’t taking my inputs in the title screen, so I mashed buttons and when it finally started taking inputs, somehow I did exactly what I needed to delete my save. I was nearly at the end, but I’m not quite willing to replay through the whole thing right now to get to the end properly… So this isn’t quite a review, but close enough.

SO ANYWAYS! I’ve seen this game pop up at events with new trailers and stuff for a little bit. I thought it looked fun, and doing the PS1-ish graphics was pretty cool. So I was curious enough to grab it.

So let’s go, see if it’s good!

Developer: Top Hat Studios
Publisher: Molegato
Release date: August 2, 2022
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S (Switch version played)
Genre: 3D Platformer

Review

You play as Renata. Her parents are inventors and archeologists or something, and their latest research trip was too dangerous to bring her along. However, after a bit of time with them not coming back, she grabs the Frogun which is a thingy her parents made, and goes to find/save them in some ruins. And that’s pretty much it for the story. There’s another character with a snake companion that races against you for treasure, and big villainous bugs that want you dead. I didn’t get to the end (as noted in the intro), but I doubt there’s much to it even once you get to the end and probably find her parents. Not a game you’ll play for the story, certainly.

The graphics are great. Renata looks like something out of a Megaman Legends minigame or something, she’d fit right in with that game. While obviously this wouldn’t run on a PS1 as-is, it mimics the style perfectly. It’s colorful, everything is as detailed as it needs to be for the gameplay and it has pseudo-fog for a simulated viewing distance limitation which looks good. I will note the Switch version’s framerate is mostly consistent, there’s minor itches here and there but nothing too bad. Overall this game looks solid. It’s funny how, nowadays, we look at NES-like pixel graphics as an aesthetic, but we’ve not seen it as much with early 3D games of the PS1/N64 era, outside of a few Doomlikes/Quakelikes. I like it, it’s a nice change of pace.

So gameplay! While the environments show a square grid graphically, and the levels are designed on a grid, your movement isn’t restricted to the grid, which works out. You move fairly swiftly which is nice, though there’s no way to walk slower. You can jump, with a BIT of extra height if you hold the button (which, in a few cases, leads to jumps that are JUST enough to get to a spot that was definitely not the intended path). But the main mechanic of the game is the titular Frogun. It’s a frog-shaped gun that shoots out his tongue.

It has 2 functions, that being grabbing things, and grappling onto things. There’s a decent range to it. Most enemies and pots will be drawn to you if you shoot at them, which you can then throw, either to break things or kill enemies. Aiming at walls and certain objects/enemies draws you towards them. This is used for getting to platforms that are too far away to just jump to, or just to move around faster which is useful in some cases. As far as using it in the air, you get one shot of the frogun per jump, though grappling into a wall or grappling onto objects like floating skulls replenishes your one shot, so you can do a combination of grapples. Also you do pause in the air while shooting, which is nice (and has some strategic uses for combat and platforming).

One thing with the frogun is that it’s really hard to aim. Basically, the tongue will go in the very precise direction you are shooting and, if you’re not entirely accurate, you’ll miss. You can set the game to auto-aim which gives you a bit of extra leeway so you can be slightly off-target and still get the shot. The game does show a red target icon at what you’re aiming at, which helps. For most of the game, the auto-aim is fine, with a few spots where I found that turning it off was greatly helpful. But there’s one part where it becomes really hard, and that’s with the aforementioned combination grapples, when the next grapple point isn’t in the same direction you were going. You get a very limited time to grapple again, and, even with auto-aim, you need to be extremely precise for you next shot (since there’s no verticality to the frogun, you have that short moment where you’re at the same height as the target to get your shot out… and since some targets make you bounce when you grapple to them, timing the grapple as you’re descending is very difficult… to me at least). Since you only get one shot, if you miss, you die.

There IS an aim function, where you get a laser to aim and you spin around in place, but it’s not very usable while in the air since it’s very slow and you just don’t have the time. But it is useful for other parts.

So the goal of the game is to go through each of the levels in an area, followed by a final level with a boss, then do the same for the next area. Each level has the main goal of just getting to the end, though there’s a bunch of extra goals. There’s 2 emeralds to find, there’s a sub-level with an obsidian skull, there’s notes from Renata’s parents, there’s a large amount of coins on each level (you have to get them all) and then there’s a reward for finishing the level from the start without dying, as well as finishing it under a target time. Each goal is represented as an extra gem on the emblem you get for finishing the level (white wings for the time challenge, a purple head for the obsidian skull, and so on). There’s actually another goal on each level, which I had to check since I didn’t finish the game. I actually had this award in the first 6 levels of the game but couldn’t figure out what it was for. Once you finish the game, an extra target time appears for all the levels for you to try to beat, which is tougher than the standard time challenge and will require good use of the frogun for faster movement and possible shortcuts. So basically, for 100% completion (if you’re into that), it will require a few replays of each level. The time challenge is just plain not doable at the same time as the collection challenges, and of course not dying in a level can be a bit difficult in the later parts of the game so you might want to do a no-death run separately from the other challenges.

If you die, you restart the whole level, or at the latest checkpoint. Checkpoints are nice because they both save all the collectibles you got and it also heals you so you can take more hits. I did notice some finicky things regarding dying, like one time I got coins after dying somehow and the checkpoint saved those for some reason so I didn’t need to get them again. Actually, dying in general is a bit weird because, rather than dying from falling for too long or something, there’s literally invisible spots in the air that kill you if you touch them. They’ll usually be down holes, but not always, so it’s possible in a few places where you might bounce up into a death spot (likely meant for later in the level) and die unfairly, I’ve done that in one of the levels with skulls. One very annoying thing is just having to re-collect everything you’ve already collected when you die (that you’ve collected after the checkpoint), because it’s generally a big amount of time.

Of course I need to talk about the variety of glitches I got. There’s a level with a series of retracting platforms, just walking normally across it with the incorrect timing, I fell off but ended up being pushed into the wall. I was stuck there. Nice. One level in particular has WILD slowdowns on Switch. Not just the game running at like 10fps, but the gameplay being slower too. Most of the time the game runs fine, but I did notice spots of very slightly lower framerate and a couple parts where it would skip for just a bit. I assume all these minor snags will be taken care of in the upcoming patch, but I do have to judge the game in the condition I have played it. Less of a glitch, but one level actually had one more coin than the total count (513 coins total in the level according to the goals, I got 514) but because I had more than the total, it didn’t give me the reward for getting all the coins (the code checks if you have the exact number, so getting more is counted as a fail).

Not quite at the level of glitches, but there’s some functionality that is a bit… unpolished. Like, while the screen is loading from exiting a level, you can still play in the level (even though the screen is dark) which is weird. Same thing with menus, especially the title screen, you can move around and try to select thing while the logos are showing before the main menu (you won’t select anything, but the sounds still happen). Pressing A to get out of the pause menu causes you to shoot the frogun as the pause menu goes away, which is obviously bullshit and can lead to undeserved deaths. Also, there’s some parts of the game with floating or retracting platforms that have a certain pattern or rhythm, but those sometimes end up being inconsistent. They’re not correctly synced a lot of the time, so floating platforms will sometimes instantly desync from other floating platforms, or say, some retracting platforms are different lengths but have the same timing after retracting for when they come out again… well, they take more time to retract, so right away they’re desynced and can actually become unusable. Especially when you’re making a game where speed is a condition for some level goals, maybe have some consistency and better-timed moving platforms, you know.

One thing that I’m not sure is a glitch is that I’d occasionally notice Renata just darting in a random direction (usually towards the screen, so “down”) from time to time with seemingly no input from me. I wonder if it’s just a weird random occurrence, or if it’s a case of the controls being really loose and reacting to the mildest inputs, like the joystick going back into position after flicking it or something and sensing the opposite direction for just a bit? I don’t know.

So while I did spend some time talking about glitches and issues, I will say that they didn’t really end up bothering me. Maybe a bit more testing could’ve ironed some of these out pre-launch, but none of them are… massive. This isn’t at the same level as, say, Spidersaurs literally not loading the final level of the game. And no, I’m not putting me mistakenly deleting my save file on the devs’ back. Maybe there was something not relating to the game preventing my controller from inputting correctly and my mashing was obviously not the solution.

Overall

This was a fun game. Way more fun than I was expecting. There’s some itches here and there, such as actually aiming the frogun while in midair being really rough, but beyond that, it’s fun. I noted all the glitches and issues I encountered, but I’d say they didn’t really make me like the game less, and when I tweeted about the issues I was getting, I got quick responses from the devs saying they were looking into it, so the devs are cool so far (I’ve seen that dev team in the past too and they seemed like cool people then as well).

I like the completion aspect of it, as I find it less annoying than similar games like Crash 4. I like the core gameplay, the frogun is fun to use and the minor puzzle solving to find everything is fun. The difficulty I find pretty high, though I find that it’s largely because of how hard aiming the frogun for grapple chains is (there’s one obsidian skull that took me ~50 deaths to finally both get and then finish the level with, it was one that had these chain grapples).

I’d give this one a recommendation. It’s not very expensive and it’s a good time.