Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition (PC)
If you were browsing the internet for flash games back in 2012 and came across a game called Frog Fractions, you’d probably dismiss it as some educational game that put facts over fun. However, were you to give it a chance still and stick with it for a bit, the facade would begin to fall away, as not only does it not really make any attempt to teach the player, Frog Fractions begins to spin off into wild and unexpected directions that are far more amusing than a math lesson. With its release on Steam with the tongue-in-cheek title of Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition some of the surprise of learning about the unusual ideas it embraces could be lost, but in making it free it still might be able to catch the attention of people looking for a quick bit of play at no cost. Whether or not the deception leads to the hilarious discoveries afterwards will depend on how a player found the game and if you want to remain completely free of any influence now would be the time to jump off and give it a shot yourself, but here there will be an effort to ensure some of its interesting secrets remain hidden while still evaluating its overall quality. Similarly, if you do pick up the Steam version, the Hop’s Iconic Cap downloadable content is presented as just a cosmetic change but actually provides a whole new experience that might actually be better than the original adventure, so it will be covered near the end with a similar degree of carefulness.
In Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition, you begin play as a frog named Hop who sits on a lily pad beneath some dangling fruit. Bugs will fly in from above and attempt to eat the fruit that you are trying to collect as it falls, the player aiming Hop’s extending tongue to snatch the bugs out of the air and eat them before they do so. When a bug is eaten, a meaningless fraction will appear in the air where you grabbed them, the fraction technically added to your score but that too will become essentially purposeless as you advance in the game. There is little difficulty in this opening challenge so your eyes may wander to things like the Indignity meter, this increasing each time the bugs successfully consume a fruit. Zorkmids are certainly the oddest thing to pop right out at the player, the simple metric in the top right unexplained but soon becoming slightly more clear as the round ends and an upgrade screen appears.
The upgrade screen is the first time the game truly tips its hand that there is more going on in the experience than eating flies who spit out fractions on death. Some upgrades are reasonable for the gameplay type, things like an automatic lock-on and a static cling that sucks in nearby bugs allowing you to handle things as later rounds do increase the number of bugs and even give them a way to fight back so the basic play is not completely without difficulty. Hover over some other upgrades though and you’ll read about warp drives and presidential swimming pools, and as you start to get relevant upgrades to play you can start saving up to see what strangeness lies in these unusual picks. To really begin making progress though the player will soon need to think outside of the box and test the limits of this game’s concept, and once they do, Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition reveals its true face: a humorous adventure that tackles multiple genres and embraces absurdity and non-sequiturs in its efforts to delight you.
Things very quickly leave that humble pond where play began and the exact shape of the adventure becomes hard to predict while still at least having tiny connections to the frog and the bugs he ate. Hop remains a constant throughout as the player starts to embrace new forms of play, although the efficacy of these can vary. A few gameplay types are definitely there just to hurl a bunch of silly jokes at you and their ridiculous writing helps match the player’s growing amusement at the strange directions the game is heading. There is at least a strained sort of logic connecting things together, so while Hop flying around asteroids or being put on trial while visiting Bug Mars sounds random on its surface, the wackiness does usually attempt to keep some consistent elements while also making sure it never really teaches you math in any capacity. In fact, some areas present information that is deliberately false or interchangeable, the journey always about pushing forward to see where the next idea will take you and being amused by the game’s commitment to reshaping its game about a frog eating bugs into something new and ridiculous.
A decent balance of interactivity is achieved on top of the writing’s silliness making for a funny little adventure, but there are a few moments where the gameplay does arrest the pace a little. Frog Fractions is at its finest when it is moving fairly quickly from concept to concept, lingering mostly in moments that provide new opportunities to present some humorous dialogue or get you poking at the bounds of the current gameplay concept. However, the maze and subsequent text-focused section are both rather ponderous and do very little in the time they’ll take to complete. Frog Fractions does slow down to decent effect elsewhere as it still presents new ideas to pique your interest during them, but these two segments do get a bit more wrapped up in their mechanical execution than playing into the broader sense of absurd discovery that makes the game so fascinating elsewhere. Mostly the gameplay exists to facilitate finding the new unusual twists that make a playthrough so interesting, but these weaker moments don’t really diminish a mostly brisk experience that takes about an hour to complete and generally knows how to keep the player invested in seeing what lies ahead once they find the way to move on to the next genre featured.
Comedic discovery is the best way to sum up the experience of playing Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition, and that sense grows even stronger should the player also purchase the Hop’s Iconic Cap downloadable content. While you can, in fact, play the original adventure while wearing a hat thanks to this DLC, the truly exciting element of this expansion is a whole new story that manages to carry on the Frog Fractions spirit while also being a more cohesive experience, an actual plot being told with characters who have definable personalities beyond general cheekiness. Genre mixing is still on the table as the new campaign explores brand new ideas on top of trying to construct an actual narrative, and that narrative is still able to string together absurdities and weird concepts but in a way that marries them together well enough that one can get a bit invested in how it unfolds. It’s certainly no gripping drama, but Hop having a disinterested daughter and a heckling fan along for the ride makes for more character based humor. The gameplay featured when the game shifts its design around is also more entertaining, some moments still more about being amused that such a concept was pursued at all or made interesting by how its execution fits into things, but some like the digging section could have made for an enjoyable game all on its own. The management of resources and gradual push into new ground makes for a satisfying sense of progress during this portion that gets more focus than the rest, but the absurdism is still on show thanks to the things you discover and dialogue during these moments so that it doesn’t stray far from the game’s commitment to surprising the player.
A game about digging down is already about a sense of discovery so it is perhaps not too surprising it’s a solid fit, and the Hop’s Iconic Cap DLC also comes with ideas that are creative beyond just the idea of bundling them together in one package. A segment where you need to dodge energy bullets in the air won’t lead to failure if you’re hit, but instead a spoiler for another piece of media appears on screen if you are hit, the game thankfully structuring these so that it isn’t truly revealing any important twists unless you deliberately get hit by them many times. The fact the game even goes on to explain this in the context of the weird story on show rather than it being a random idea for randomness’s sake shows how much thought went into this extra part of the experience. Playing through the original Frog Fractions is key to understanding this second story still and many of the jokes made there have fun payoffs in this follow-up plot, but the DLC does seem to be the superior experience while both still manage to be enjoyable and fascinating short adventures when viewed separately.
THE VERDICT: A string of silly surprises await anyone who puts more time into Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition than just the early rounds of bug eating. A mix of genres and an embrace of the ridiculous makes the discovery of which new idea lies ahead an enjoyable journey even if it lingers on a few a bit too long. A strong energy of absurdism carries it onward still though, but the Hop’s Iconic Cap DLC is probably the show stealer as it more masterfully combines all of the comedic elements and gameplay shifts into something that is entertaining both with its writing and its actual mechanical substance. The original adventure is no slouch in keeping the player interested, but the combined adventure is definitely the higher recommendation in this game about comedic discovery.
And so, I give Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition for PC…
A GOOD rating. The original journey through Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition is a good one as is playing the new follow-up story with its greater creativity and stronger commitment to making the gameplay fun instead of amusing that it is present at all, but besides the weakness of sections like the maze, the free portion of Frog Fractions still can excite a player with the unexpected directions it takes. This review was actually the second visit I had with the original Frog Fractions game and I’ve seen others play it as well, but there were still secrets to be found and not every joke was easily recalled as I played, meaning that even after I knew to expect the absurdism on show it could still survive even having some of its mysteries already understood. In fact, many of its segments try to pack in more than just one unusual idea to focus on so that it isn’t all hinging on the efficacy of one joke, and that might be one reason the slowest of sections don’t feel like they fit in the greater package. To get too bothered by moments like the maze is like saying a trip to a theme park where you rode a bunch of thrill rides was harmed by playing a few simple midway games between them, the totality of the experience able to cover up the ideas that weren’t executed as well. Hop’s Iconic Cap really does bring together an experience with almost no duds, the unusual nature of certain moments bolstering even weak play while others have entertaining action to match up with how interested the player is in a story that has events that provide more than ways to connect two absurd sections.
Playing a new game is always going to involve some form of discovery as you learn the rules at play and how they factor into new situations, but Frog Fractions stands out because its seemingly mundane starting rules get thrown out as you find it willing to embrace whatever wacky ideas it wants to pursue next, be they something off the wall in terms of gameplay or simply a chance to barrage you with silly jokes. Hop’s Iconic Cap gives players who think the flash game was enough a reason to visit this rerelease as well and there are plenty of secrets outside of the main course of the plot as well to uncover by thinking even more outside of the box than a game that already resists being defined in any simple way. Frog Fractions’s innocuous front facing presentation is meant to make the discovery of its hidden depths even more exciting and ridiculous, but even if you know there’s something up beyond arbitrary fractions appearing on screen when you eat a bug, Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition still has the imagination needed to make experiencing it an enjoyable little journey of discovery.