Back and forth (and again)
When you enter Time on Frog Island expect something along the lines of A short walkknow that it actually shares a lot more DNA with The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening than that indie babe. You take on the role of a pipe-biting sea captain who is shipwrecked after a particularly violent storm. With his ship in ruins, the captain will have to rebuild his ship with the help of the island’s inhabitants. But they are not here to do anything for free. If you want their help, you have to give them something in return.
Time on Frog Island (PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch) [reviewed]Xbox One)
Developer: Half Over Yellow
Publisher: Merge Games
Released: July 11, 2022
MSRP: $24.99
That’s how you’re going to spend your time on Frog Island: fulfilling requests by completing a variety of short trade sequences with some light puzzle solving in between. Most of the uniquely designed residents you meet are looking for something that only you can provide. There’s a farmer in a losing battle with crows, a meditating frog who can’t find Zen while that bell is always ringing, and a few others who each deal with one or two problems of their own. In a largely dialogue-free experience, the frogs will communicate their needs through a series of icons and images that you must decipher. Some are simple, others you probably won’t understand until you’ve explored more of the island.
Admittedly, I’ve had a lot of trial and error trying to figure out what to do to kill these frogs and get off this island. When I was asked for a coin or something resembling a pearl, I didn’t know how to help them. There was nothing in my journey thus far that had pointed those items out to me. Other times I stumbled upon a piece of a trading puzzle too early. There is a brewery on this island where you can experiment with ingredients suggested by the bartender. But when I collected those ingredients and tossed them into the machine, it did nothing to advance my journey. I would have to come back after completing some other trades before those concoctions became of any use to me.
Did something in the game tell me that was the case? Not really. You get very little help here, so little in fact that I thought the game might be glitching as my initial testing at the brewery coincided with one or two real bugs in the game. Turns out I just had to divert my attention elsewhere until the trade line took me back there. Once I realized that was the case, that point A to point B wasn’t as straightforward as it seems, I really started to appreciate the open nature of this game and the player options. availabilty.
Usually trading activity games are pretty rigid in how you go about things. But here occasionally there is more than one object you can use to complete a task. One of the first requests you’ll make is to help a farmer replace his scarecrow heads. These heads are scattered around the island waiting to be found or traded. You could take that long, winding path to completion, scouring the entire island to find the “right” items needed to solve the farmer’s problem. Or you can just look for whatever is in your immediate area that will get the job done just as well. Honestly, I didn’t even realize those scarecrow heads were a thing when I completed the puzzle. I immediately gave in to my curiosity and was rewarded for it.
This sailor needs to learn to use both hands
After that, I took the quick and easy route more than once. Did it feel like I was cheating the game a bit? Sure, but as I played through the trading series as I imagine it’s meant to be played, I found myself getting a little excited from Time on Frog Islandstructure and the abundance of backtracking. The captain does not carry any pockets, so any item you find must be carried. Since he can only carry one item at a time, I had to figure out a way to best remember where every item I found could be easily retrieved. I used my first campfire as a base camp of sorts – since that’s where you respawn when you jump off the map or wade into the ocean – which made it easy to keep track of those items, but also resulted in a lot of back and forth when some items would’ reappear at night in their original location.
Couple that with the lack of a request guide for the islanders, unnecessary waiting times, and some finicky interactive objects, and it can be easy to get frustrated with the whole experience. When I tried to get everything done at once, that’s exactly how I felt with the game. But when I took a breath and spread my time with it over a few days, I found it a lot friendlier. Sure, there are some design choices that I wish Half Past Yellow could have given a second look at and the core gameplay could have had a little more depth than what’s seen here, but then I stopped trying to live up to the review embargo on this game , I started to enjoy myself.
Time on Frog Island probably won’t set the indie scene on fire, but it’s quite a worthwhile outing with charming characters, a beautifully rendered world, and a level of freedom designed to reward the curious among us. Keep in mind that despite its accessible appearance, the minimalist design can result in a lot of wasted time spent scouring this island trying to figure out what the heck to do.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
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