Frog's Hideout “Frog's Hideout” With an appealing art style, mellow gameplay, and a barebones story that leaves a bit to be desired, this game might be perfect for you if you like the following types of games: Cat CollectionIt's similar to , but it has some simple activities and doesn't cost any ads or extra money.
in Frog's Hideout “Frog's Hideout”Chloe joins her childhood best friend Alex in building a shelter for the frogs, and on paper, the list of activities you can take part in sounds appealing: create a wetland, gather materials, do crafts, photograph and keep frogs, breed them, decorate for the frogs, complete simple quests, and more.
In fact, each step is very simple. To create a wetland, choose the type of pond, make sure there are the same number of ponds and three types of plants, and then click on the bugs that appear. If you feed each frog four specific bugs, the frogs will be tamed. This can be done easily with one click. Once you have accumulated farming materials, press the button. In crafting, you use those materials to create one of 12 presets and sell them in a repeat mini-game. Then use it to buy furniture. The cute frogs will pose in different ways on the furniture, so you can get a variety of photos and fill up your frog picture book. If you can't find any of the 500 frogs, you can use in-game money to challenge them to breed in a somewhat hostile tic-tac-toe game.
I was happy with it for about 5 hours. Really charming and relaxing. Then the game throws you into a new area with the camera in the wrong place. Neither of the buildings you see at first serve any purpose. You have to cross a river (which at first seemed like a natural barrier so I didn't look across it) to buy what you need to start. This was… just ok. It falls into the same pattern again, with 2 new bugs and eventually a new frog.
It was a quest that I couldn't complete no matter what I did, with no real explanation, until I ran into a problem about 7 hours in. The quest asked me to “catch 3 billabongs.” [second zone] “Pictures of frogs rated 2 stars. Please help me find the criteria for the best rating.” I noticed that my photos were suddenly 1 star, so I started experimenting. I tried putting more furniture in each photo, putting two frogs in one shot, making sure there were light fixtures in the photo, but it didn't work. So I clicked on all the NPCs to find the criteria. It didn't help.
Just as I was starting to get annoyed, an NPC approached me asking for a three-star picture with a sign explaining how to get it: two specific pieces of furniture and a specific type of frog, which was doable and I quickly got the three-star picture.
I got the floor and walls and tried to add them in case I needed them for a 2 star photo. It didn't. I tried putting the zone pieces together, taking day and night photos, switching it off and on again. No reason not to do anything. I tried leaving it on all night in hopes that a clearer head would solve it, but nothing worked.
I've spent about three hours on this little quest, and at this point frustration is overwhelming my calm. I'm doing something wrong, but neither the help menu nor the quest journal can show me the way forward. Too bad.
This isn't the first time I've run into an issue with not having enough or accessible information – some of the ponds in the swamp can be combined in specific ways to increase your score, but the game only shows the screen once, so I could only remember one combination – but it didn't seem to affect me.
I would have liked to play the game to the end to give a full rundown, but the game decided that this wasn't possible, so ultimately based on my experience, this game is about 3 out of 5 for me. It's cute, above average, much simpler than the farming sims that were advertised, and if you need some quiet time taking pictures of frogs, this game is perfect.
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge will be available on Switch, PC, and Xbox on June 8th for $19.99.
Reviewed on Switch. A review code was provided by the publisher.
