Content Warnings
The game contains bugs (flies, mosquitos, beetles, wasps and butterflies) drawn in pixel art. There is no spiders though!Project Introduction
In Froguelike you play as a frog that is eating as many bugs as possible, you play through a story that consists of five chapters (a "run"), as you eat bugs you will level up and get to choose upgrades and new items and tongues to make your frog stronger.While playing you will complete quests that give you rewards, such as new frogs to play as, new tongues and items to choose from while in a run, new items available in the shop, permanent stat boosts for the frogs and new chapters. Some examples of quests are: reaching a certain level playing as a specific frog, making it further in a run (reaching chapter 3 for example), clearing a run, playing through a storyline, upgrading a specific tongue to the max level, finding small frog friends while playing as a specific frog.
You can choose between multiple different frogs to play as, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. After choosing a frog the next step is to choose the starting chapter, some chapters are part of a storyline. Chapters differentiate from each other when it comes to which bugs will be in the chapter, what power-ups can be found, what items and/or friend frogs can be found to pick up and how many obstacles (in form of ponds and rock) are present.
In between runs you can use the froins (the in game currency) you have collected to buy upgrades in the shop.
The game is in early access and so far we have updated the game every week since releasing it on Steam. In our weekly updates we are fixing bugs, working on balancing and adding small chunks of new content.
For future bigger updates one thing we are working on expanding the system for tongues and items, we want to create a branching system for the upgrades that (depending on what tongues and items you choose) will give more options for what direction to take for different tongues and items when you level up.
We are also working on a new system and new art for the environment generation. With that we hope to give more variations to the environment and to make make the background less busy. We also plan to add more different types of environments.
More frogs, more tongues and items, more bugs, more chapters and storylines, more music and sound and an endless mode are also things we are planning to add to the game before it goes into full release.
About Developer
We are Johanna and Rémi, we met three and a half years ago when we both moved to Spelkollektivet in Sweden. After a game jam we decided to continue to work on that game and since then we have been developing Froguelike together.Johanna says:
"After 6 years of freelancing as a sound technician for Swedish reality TV shows I was longing to learn something new where I could be more creative and to fill the time between projects with something meaningful. I decided to finally learn programming with the goal to make my own game and after looking into many options for how to learn I found Spelkollektivet and the new education program they were just about to start. I two weeks I wrapped up my current project early (and canceled an upcoming project), packed my stuff and moved from Stockholm to Väckelsång to become a game developer. After a year of studying I started to part time freelance again, but just enough to support myself while I make games as much of my time as possible.
As a game developer I want to be part of all the parts, for Froguelike I do graphics, sound, game design and programming. After about three and a half years I still feel very new in the industry and I'm constantly doing things for the first time and I'm learning a lot, both about how to make games but also about teamwork, marketing and being part of a community.
Most importantly I'm having so much fun and I feel very good about creating something that feels like it makes other people happy! I'm really enjoying to have Froguelike released in early access, getting feedback from players and seeing other people being excited about our game is amazing!"
Rémi says:
"I used to work as a software engineer in France and Switzerland. Then I decided to switch to studying game design and making video games. I worked as a level designer at Ubisoft Paris, then as a freelance game developer for a few years before moving to Spelkollektivet (Sweden) in 2020.
I took a part-time job as a teacher, first remotely for a French game design school, then at Spelkollektivet for the Indie Quest (our in-house education program) where I focus on teaching programming.
In the meantime, I stopped taking contracts as a freelancer and instead switched to making my own games!
It's been a long journey and I am still learning a lot about teamwork, scoping, community management, marketing and everything that make game development such a complex and fascinating world.
Froguelike is one of the two first games I released on Steam. We're still in Early Access but I already consider it as a "success" in the sense that we reached the point where we are actually selling the game, getting (positive) feedback and listening to our fans. There's still a long road ahead of us but we seem to be on the right track.
My hopes for the future is to finish Froguelike, turn it into something we can proudly show and share, and use everything I learned from it to make even better games."