* PLAY IT HERE: http://froggy.alienmelon.com
* DOWNLOAD SOURCEFILES HERE (includes website, music, etc…): http://nathalielawhead.com/sourcefiles/FROGGY/
I just launched FROGGY last night, and I’m thrilled (and relieved) at how positively it’s been received (on Twitter). It has even been posted on Warp Door!
Update: Rock Paper Shotgun so wrote a post about it! I am not hallucinating or dreaming. This is amazing, and now makes me want to make another game. :)
Froggy is a fizzing little curio that’s more Superhot than Frogger, a weird and wonderful free game with charm gushing out its cloaca. Come see. -Link
Thank you everyone for playing, retweeting, and sending it around! It means a lot.
Like any of my games it hadn’t been playtested, so it’s been quite a shot in the dark.
The premise of the game is similar to Frogger but only insofar that you dodge traffic. The color scheme is a little homage to it. The cars and frog are the same colors.
The idea is that you are a frog surviving on a super-mega-post-apocaliptic-highway, where there are no traffic laws, that civilization constructed to “keep itself going”. You dodge traffic to eat butterflies. You must get to the butterflies first because, if a car hits one, it kills it. You cannot get run over, or caught in an explosion, else you die. “Time stops” if you stop moving (because your frog has a sixth sense foody superpower), giving you a chance to “plot your moves carefully”.
Creating the artwork was much fun. The most amount of time went into it, because (again) there’s lots of frame by frame animations there (in the classic animated .gif sense). I used toy cars for the car animations, and cars in the game. It gave me a professional excuse to professionally go to a toy store and buy toys (with utmost professionality) and professionally play with them. It’s ok. It was all very safe and professional.
The sounds in the game are 100% synthesized, even the frog “talking”, (meaning no real life samples, recordings, or foley). Which I think makes it sound really cool and a bit “odd”. Originally I wanted it to be 100% computer generated. By that I mean, I would code the soundtrack and have it all generated procedurally. I even had some prototypes done & ready, but then I got carried away with chiptunes and it eventually grew into this. I like it more this way because there’s a degree of over-the-top to it.
I also wanted the game to have this old-school glitch feel to it, and I spent some time experimenting with different effects. I settled for something that looks like an old CRT monitor that needs degaussing. It was fun messing around with the DisplacementMapFilter. I only had experience with Perlin noise, but never took the time to try this sort of effect out.
On another note… I’ll be going through the process of becoming a PlayStation developer. I already finished up the legal aspects of starting a business, so now I just need to go through Sony’s process. My goal is to get Tetrageddon Games on the PlayStation, as the 3D arcade that I’ve been planning, and in extra enhanced glory. Like a whole new experience. For that I also need to, and want to, use Unity. I can’t wait to get into it. I’m sure I’ll enjoy making campy meaningless-over-the-top shooters. I have so many ideas…
So this will be it for a while.
Hmm… Seems like such a great time to release this game. The day after my 31st birthday, and in the same month that I registered my business. It’s all going so fast! :D
Update: I was on Who’s Developing Now!? With Legendary Neurotoxin talking about Tetrageddon Games. It was recorded and posted. For those interested you can see it here.
Update Update:
FROGGY has been making its rounds on a couple forums and its been written about on Creepy Gaming, here. That’s sweet! It’s cute to see what people say.
Also, to clarify, this is not my first game. I have more games on Tetrageddon Games. That’s my game project.
