I learned the hard way this week, that sometimes $2 games are simultaneously good, challenging, and punishing. Thanks Frogbound!
Frogbound, The Legend of Sir Hopper is a platform/adventure game where you play as Sir John Hopper. A frog. A wizard, also a frog, approaches you in a dream asking that you seek him out for help with an adventure. The help that he needs is recovering all of the relics spread throughout the pond, a prison, and a sewer. These relics have special powers that you can use on your adventure, but you have to make sure you bring them all back to the wizard. And also gold. All of the gold you can find.
Let’s HOP to it
Frogbound, The Legend of Sir Hopper is a good game. Like, really good, and not just for being $2. I suspect that the biggest reason it is as cheap as it is, is because it is not very long. But I also haven’t beaten it yet, so I could be dead wrong about that. The reason I haven’t beaten it? It’s hard.
The platforming and level traversal is easy enough. And the powerups, or relics, that you collect along the way make for diverse gameplay. The relics you find are a sword, a bow, or a scroll. The sword, obviously lets you attack with said sword, and also gives you an air dash after jumping. The bow, also obviously lets you attack with arrows, but you can also stick arrows into surfaces to climb hard to reach places. The scroll gives you the ability to perform a second jump in mid-air.
None of the relics are permanent. And you can only hold one at a time, which makes for an interesting challenge depending on the layout of the room you are in. I’ve found that the bow makes it easier to get around most places, but the double jump does come in handy. Unfortunately, the double jump has a very close range attack in that you have to jump very near an enemy to hit them. And often you yourself will get hit.
There are also occasionally puddles of water that if you land in, you lose your relics ability and have to go find it again. The worst placement of that I’ve seen so far, is where the first boss of the game is standing. Making it quite hard to get a lot of shots off, especially with everything else going on in that room. After a few attempts I was able to get past the boss, but it took some doing.
Some PONDering Thoughts
Typically with these games, I don’t know go back and play them very often. Unless I notice there has been an update. Speaking of which, last week’s game, Melt Them All, had an update that added controller support, so I will be checking that out again soon. Frogbound is such a good game that I very much want to keep going to reach the end. The gameplay is fun, and presents some nice challenges, but I have reached a point where I’m a bit lost.
Which brings me to the punishing aspects of Frogbound. If you die too many times, when you come back to life a popup appears saying that you feel weaker. This means you have lost one to your max health. And if you want it back, you have to buy it back from the shopkeeper in the Underpond. The Underpond is also where you can save your game. For 100 gold. Each time you save. Fortunately gold is pretty abundant, and if you are low you can always kill some enemies, leave the room, come back and kill them again. But it still adds another layer of challenge, especially if you’ve been saving for that celestial spyglass.
Frog Pun
This game is a buy. Plain and simple. I’ve already sunk almost 5 hours into it and I still have a ways to go. I think. The developers are also using this as a building block to do more games, and also add more playability to Frogbound, whatever that means. I’m excited to see what they come up with, but mostly I just want to get all of that gold.
