Frogatto & Friends
Platform: iOS, Mac, Windows, Linux
The platform adventure will never die. And that's a good thing! Frogatto & Friends injects a little more life into the classic genre, placing great-looking pixel art and a satisfying action/exploration game in front of your eyes for the low low price of free!
Good morning, everyone! Oh, wait, it's the afternoon. Looks like Frogatto slept late again. Breakfast (er, lunch) isn't ready yet, so Frogatto decides to head into town to see if he can find a job. Things go wonderfully awry from there as you embark upon quest after quest, all in the name of earning a bit of cash.
As with most platform games, you can walk, dash, swim, jump, and stomp throughout the delightfully-drawn 2D world. Enemies are usually harmless unless they're carrying something dangerous, so don't be afraid to bump into them (or stand on their head). Frogatto's main trick is his ability to nab enemies with his tongue and spit them out as projectiles. Your reach is laughably short at the beginning of the game, but collecting coins throughout the stages will allow you to buy upgrades at the store. You can also purchase other upgrades such as power-ups to grant temporary invincibility, extra life hearts, a longer spit reach, and more.
Frogatto's world is vast and filled with neat surprises, and oftentimes you'll have to find (or open up) new paths to get to where you want to go. Frogatto can carry an item in his belly, so lugging keys from one place to another often becomes a necessary task. You can't wall jump or swim while your belly is full, though, so your traveling plans will probably change while you're chubby.
Analysis: Aah, old-school platforming. Few game genres seem as comforting as a good old run through a 2D world. Frogatto & Friends incorporates a lot of elements to flesh out its environments, including an open, Metroidvania-style level design, parallax backgrounds, and upgrades to find in the wild and purchase in the store. You feel a little more drawn into the world as you play, an important part of the experience that keeps you engrossed in the game.
Frogatto & Friends was designed for the casual player from beginning to end. You aren't penalized for dying, and oftentimes you respawn at the exact same area. The challenge level isn't too high, either, allowing you to sit and play without wanting to throw your keyboard/joypad across the room. The length is also about right, ranging from 4-6 hours depending on how thorough you are with exploration.
One thing worth mentioning: wall jumping is unreliable, as if our amphibious protagonist will only stick to walls when he's in the mood. When a wall jump should work, it sometimes doesn't, leaving the player scratching their head in confusion. This never turns into a game-breaking issue, though, and with a little practice you can wall jump with a fair amount of reliability.
Frogatto & Friends is a beautiful platform adventure that calls forth nostalgia with a healthy smattering of modern gaming sensibilities. The project code is open source, meaning you can contribute to the development if you so desire, and the team has plans to add a lot more to the game as time goes by.
Also be sure to grab the iPhone version of Frogatto & Friends if you want to take the game on the go.
Windows:
Download the free full version
Mac OS X:
Download the free full version
Linux:
Download the free full version
looks nice. i just hope there isn't any surprise nightmare fuel... is there?
downloading right now, hope it's good :D
I think the thing about wall-jumping is that it only works if you jump towards the wall. If you're standing right next to it and jump, nothing will happen, but if you start from a short distance away and jump towards it, you'll "stick."
Neddo: That's not always the case, though. You're right that Frogatto's jump is different depending on if you're standing or moving when you hit the button, but even while moving he doesn't always grab walls. I still haven't managed to get it down right. Doesn't ruin the game, though. :-D
Having some trouble locating all the requisite libraries for the Linux version...
Feh. Thought I'd installed all the libraries it had asked for but no dice :(
Playing on windows 7, it crashes on me from time to time. Once randomly when attacking an ant, and another while standing on that blue thing outside Mortimer's. Additionally, if I try to resize the window at all, the screen goes black and doesn't return.
JohnB: The thing about the wall jump is you have to hit the wall before you reach the peak of your jump and you have to be moving towards the wall. You can't grab on to a wall while falling.
how do i get someone in crevice village out of the cage and continue with the game?
It's pretty much unplayable on my netbook because of the resizing issue mentioned by Mik. The screen is too small for me to see any dialogue at all, and when I resize it, it turns black.
Ahh, I love it. Finally a great-looking Linux platform game. A nice thing to start my day (I woke up late...heh, summer) with. Downloading now!
Oh, and also: I'm a constant lurker who browses the archives all the time. Just wanna say I love the site!
The game seems to be bugged for me. The dialog boxes and the pause menu buttons don't have any text in them, just a blank box. Anyone know what's causing this?
Well, goshdarnit. It looks great, but I don't know if I have the upgrades needed or even how to check. The make file is there but I can't start it. Still, kudos to you for finding a Linux downloadable game, regardless of whether you can use it or not. (VirtualBox crashes games constantly, so I really can't play downloadable games often. It's good for instantly watching Netflix, though.)
Also: LTL (long-time lurker) reporting for duty!
The instructions clearly state that the wall jump will only work if you hit the wall at or near the top (apex) of your jump. If you are against the wall at the start, you are going to be out of luck.
While that is somewhat screwy, even beyond that, the controls... heck the gameplay in general could use work. The wall jump interferes with normal platforming. Landing on an enemy requires pinpoint precision, as apparently, they are round, and an indirect hit will simply roll you off into the line of fire (this gets irritating with the ridable enemies that will turn around if you touch their sides). Killing enemies is for the most part, not worth the effort. There is a slide maneuver that doesn't seem to do much of anything. The double tap to run is unnecessarily irritating considering there is a whole keyboard worth of unused keys.
Then there is the exploration. That boils down to, travel right, find hidden coins and use fast travel back to the shop for upgrades. The upgrades (and by extension the coins that the 'exploration' hinges around) are entirely optional, and also rather uninspiring. More life, longer tongue, harder spit, and unlock various power-ups. Energy blast, invincibility and bullet time.
This having been said, the game is very pretty, and free. ...but then again so is Umbrella Adventure. I know which I'd rather play.
Wow! An actual Mac download! 3 shrooms right off the bat for that, plus it is actually a fun storyline with great controls ... 5 shrooms all the way!!
I'm surprised how much the main character is like a Yoshi (From super Mario, if you haven't heard of super Mario then look it up!)
Hm. Fun so far, but then I tried to play it with my gamepad. It doesn't interpret the gamepad correctly. I can run ControllerMate in between to send the right button presses, but I don't know how to stop it from also parsing the raw controller input.
Is there any way to disable gamepad support in Frogatto?
More information on my problem:
Mac OS X 10.6, Xbox 360 controller.
The problem seems to be that Frogatto is using all three axis pairs for movement, including the triggers -- but it doesn't treat the neutral position of the triggers as neutral, it treats it as northwest, so that Frogatto's always walking left.
(Also, it uses the D-pad instead of the A/B buttons.)
It's really cute, but it's missing that last 10% that really makes me want to play it
- the underwater tiles could use a little work, they look glitched
- the gameplay controls as mentioned aren't very tight, it's very annoying to try and navigate
- as mentioned there's little incentive to explore aside from these arbitrary coins...the landscapes all looks the same and the maps are rather pointlessly large
I quit when i got to the town and realized i just didn't really care to look through however many similar houses that were however many similar rooms huge for however many keys and prisoners...
So yeah, a cute game, but could just use some tightening up here or there.
Any way to turn sound off?
--no-sound turns off all sound and music.
Command line options are here:
http://code.google.com/p/frogatto/wiki/Command_Line_Options
yeah, I'm with the other people who can't get it to run under Linux...
@Erza how the hell is a xbox 360 controller work with a mac?!
The wall jump makes my hand hurts and quit. And I hate the musics, I unfortunately knmow the command line trick after I have enough of the game.
Art wise, it is great. Love the variety of enemies too.
Using an XBox 360 controller on Windows Vista, if I use "B" to scroll through the text, it scrolls so quickly that I catch maybe one or two lines of dialogue out of ten. Using the space bar makes the text scroll pretty sensibly. It seems like a minor programming error.
The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, and I love the pixel art. We'll see how the game fares after I've had the chance to play a few more levels.
I really want to play this game but when I try to play it on windows 7, it comes out all glitchy with a bunch of random sprites everywhere which makes it unplayable. :(
Anyone know how to reset my preferences in the Mac version?
It seems to have memorized the S key for Dvorak (the layout that I normally use, but isn't helpful in this game) and there's no way to change it. I tried deleting ~/Library/Application\ Support/Frogatto, but that didn't help. The source code implies that I should look in/trash ~/.frogatto, but that doesn't exist. I switched over to another user account and switched to QWERTY before launching Frogatto for the first time and that worked, so it's clearly a stored setting somewhere, but I don't know where (and I don't want to play on that account).
For those of you who can't get it to run on linux, there are 32-bit and 64-bit compiled .deb packages available here from Ubuntu Games. They obviously run fine on Ubuntu; I cannot speak for other distros.
how do you buy stuff?
Just crashed on me on my Win XP machine when I was viewing the world map for the first time.
DuneRunner: Just hop on the tables where the items are and press the up arrow.
I like this game. I'm only halfway through it. It's not perfect for sure, but there are some things I have learned that make it easier:
A: Wall jumping, once you realize you have to land on the wall before you start to come down from the jump, it becomes OK... not the best wall jump, but usable.
B: Killing enemies. I disagree with cevgar that killing them is "not worth the effort" I think grabbing one enemy in your mouth and killing other enemies with it is one of the best parts of the game! Plus when you do this, you get stuff, like life, power ups, etc. Rarely do you kill an enemy by jumping on it, unless it's a boss. You can shoot up, too, which is especially fun when you buy the energy shooter thingy. It only works when you get a bouncy blue ball from killing something though.
As for where you buy stuff
it's just one of the levels. It takes a little while to get there.
also for quick travel
there are little teleporter thingys.
I beat the game! I liked the ending where they
talked about their problems over a nice cup of tea. The Elder DID kind of seem like a jerk.
And what's with the desert and city areas on the map? Are they there just for decoration or are they secret areas?
I'm experiencing a major bug that is REALLY annoying. If you recall, near the begining of the game, Frogatto encounters and comments on a flying plant. Unfortunately, I died as soon as the line of dialogue came up. From then on, the comment on the flying plant would continue to show at the bottom of the screen, on an endless loop, and would not go away no matter what. I tried talking to people, saving the game, but nothing helped. I restarted, and it stopped, but I don't want to have to keep redoing the first few minutes of the game if the bug persists.
I think wall jumping only works at a certain distance and angle; it doesn't work if you are too close to the wall.
My question is:
in the one house you have to unlock, you go down and jump on the blocks that fall. How do you get past that?!?!
Also, about buying things, how do you purchase them? All I can do is shoot the tongue out at them but nothing happens.
you jump on the falling blocks in a specific pattern. It took me quite a couple of tries to get it right!
In Crevace village in the elders house - is jumping on the boss the only way of killing it?
[Spoilers fixed. Please preview your comment before posting to be sure you have implemented your spoiler tags correctly. Thank you! -Jay]
@rheu it took me a few minutes and like 10 deaths to figure it out.
Remember that there is something else you can jump on instead of blocks and that the way the blocks are placed suggests the order to move.
About buying stuff, its the up key on the windows version, same button as talking and going through doors.
Tips:
1) there are fake walls
2) there are secret areas, usually with coins
3) there are many coins hidden in trees and bushes
4) you can dash, which is the only way to get to some of these areas (dash jump)
5) wall jump is tricky and will take multiple tries
6) enemies can be jumped on, engulfed, hit by thrown objects, or thrown into water/spikes
7) enjoy it. When I walked into Frogatto's backyard and saw the ocean waves in the background and took a swim in the pools underneath the bridges, I realized this was a beautiful game.
8) that said, i do think there can be improvements. Not enough changes throughout the game and I find myself looking forward to boss fights and thinking the in-between stuff is too long. The things you buy with hard earned coins do not seem that satisfying. There is little reason to return to areas.
Jay: The download link has changed. Probably worth just pointing at http://www.frogatto.com/download so that it doesn't need fixing every time they release a new version.
[Updated. Thanks. -Jay]
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