The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game (PC)
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game, also known by Frog Detective 1: The Haunted Island after a later renaming, is a short game that will probably take you about an hour to complete, but the game almost frames that as a perk. A quick story that’s mostly meant to be a pleasant experience that aims to just make you grin, it certainly draws more from the silly “Frog Detective” side of its name rather than trying to actually be spooky in any capacity. It’s a quick comedy game and almost exclusively that, barely even trying to give you much to do beyond reading what the animal people of the cartoon world you’re entering have to say.
You’ll be taking on the role of the titular frog detective, the second best investigator in a world of humanoid animals. Strange ghostly wails have disturbed the owner of a tiny tropical island, a sloth and self-styled king known as Martin. While ghost scientists were called in to find the source of the sounds, they’ve turned up very little, and so the amphibian investigator heads off to the island to begin using traditional investigative means to help Martin rest at ease. The island itself is incredibly small and doesn’t really have much to do besides talk to the people who happen to be there when you arrive, and while you might be tempted to call this a detective game, it’s not really about putting together clues to unravel the case. Instead you’re mostly just speaking to the other anthropomorphic animals and trading their goods around to get what you require. This puts it more in line with an adventure game then, but you also very rarely are figuring out what to do. A character will express their interest in an item, you speak to a character who has that item, and they’ll likely have some sort of prerequisite before they’ll hand it over, it more about finding the starting point of this trade chain and then executing it all one trade after another, although the island’s incredibly small size at least keeps this from taking too much time and the player will have little opportunity to lose track of what needs doing.
As implied before, there isn’t too much to do in The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game, optional or otherwise. You are given a magnifying glass you can use to look at some strange and cute creatures that decorate the island, but the game doesn’t really provide anything that would distract from its true focus on the comedic writing. The world of Frog Detective is an overall pleasant one where people are sometimes a little nervous and brusque but most people want to be pretty accommodating and inoffensive. If a character does stray into being a little rude when speaking, the other character might note their discomfort, the offending party will apologize, and they will then be thanked for apologizing. This doesn’t mean the characters lack eccentricities though, one of the first characters you can speak to being Koala who believes standing in the ocean will keep them safe from ghosts and it is their heartfelt desire to latch onto a boat with a magnet to essentially do some budget water-skiing.
Seeing how the different characters act and what is slightly unusual about them ends up being the key appeal of this quick experience. Characters speak with a casual air and aren’t afraid to poke at some strange element of their world, like how one of the scientists is a sheep and yet people around them wear clothing made of wool. Again this game’s limited scope means there are very few characters in total, the number barely hitting above 10 and that’s including characters like the frog detective you’re playing as, so the room for these silly conversations is rather small and you often only need to talk to them once to know what their deal is and then again once you have whatever item or info they desire.
Because of the overall genial nature of everyone you meet and their limited purpose, it almost feels like you’d need to pick apart how effective each character concept is and then weigh them to determine how enjoyable the overall experience is. The overall tone does keep things lighthearted though and it almost feels like an episode of a children’s show or a quick story book, the humor often more mildly amusing than something that will get you laughing out loud but it makes the short plot a bit more interesting than the substance of its slightly predictable course. The writing style isn’t trying to make you bust a gut, but there is still some mild fascination that arises once you realize what the characters are like and how your frog detective speaks with them, the frog sometimes having to be the one to steer talks back on course but providing a few delightfully weird moments of their own.
The cute and comfy world of The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game does feel like it could have benefited from some additional touches like voice acting considering how important the quirky characters are to providing the game any substance, but the game certainly doesn’t outstay it’s welcome by avoiding any greater complication. It’s not compelling to ferry a few items around the island but it’s also barely a task, so it’s more about hoping the character you’re delivering something to has something interesting to say after you have the new subject to speak on. No one here is quite over the top enough to really cement themselves in your memory though but at the same time the activities don’t obstruct you much from quickly completing the adventure, meaning it at least feels acceptably brisk and minimalistic rather than empty or dull.
THE VERDICT: A quick smile of a game, The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game doesn’t really provide big laughs despite being a comedic adventure, but it is an overall adorable experience with enough quirks that you do want to see what the next character has to say. The item deliveries are so basic they’re barely gameplay and there’s not much detective work going on, but it’s clear this deliberately short investigation is more about uncovering the eccentricities of a small cast than it is unraveling a mystery. It doesn’t have much of a large draw beyond a pleasant atmosphere and a few moments that might make you at least consider giggling, but if you find yourself playing it, you’ll at least find it pleasant and sweet.
And so, I give The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game for PC…
An OKAY rating. Everything’s a tiny bit goofy but not overly so in The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game, and that approach to writing and the oddball character concepts means it fills what little time you spend playing it with something charming but not exactly substantial. The little idiosyncrasies in the ways characters behave and which subjects they talk about give the game more a personality than a plot and that simple narrative feels like it could have come straight from an episode of a children’s show. Since the humor does come from the casual yet unusual conversations it at least has a broader appeal than something written solely for a younger audience though. Still, it’s a bit hard to point at much beyond its gentle wholesomeness as a reason to check it out, although it is the first in a series and now comes in a collection with its sequels. As a ground floor introduction to the style of game the Frog Detective series offers it is sound if not the strongest argument for continuing with it, but it also doesn’t exactly dissuade you either due to how swiftly you can finish it and how the attention remains on trying to find the next novel bit of dialogue to read.
A tiny bit more thought put into how the items need to be traded or found could have made it more substantial, too many characters directly asking for what they require, but interactivity doesn’t feel like the intent of this adventure so beyond a rather blunt request for more dialogue and jokes, it’s hard to propose improvements that wouldn’t start to shift it into a full-bodied detective game rather than a silly story you can clear in an hour. The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game delivers on what it promises, even if that’s just a tiny and amusing twist on a low stakes detective story.