Frogun

An amazing game with an amazing art style and experience. It is fun and enjoyable. Definitely a must-play for Super Mario enthusiasts.

A good balance of fun and challenging! everything about this game is incredibly charming. It's a little bit janky, but in a fun/nostalgic way!

A charming throwback to the 32-bit era! Using a frog tongue as a grappling hook is very satisfying. The level design allows for several shortcuts and speedrun possibilities. The characters are cute and the soundtrack is really nice!

Controller does not work with this game on Windows 11. Spend your money on something else!

Frogun, created by Molegato and published by Top Hat Studios, Inc., is a platformer that fully embraces the spirit of the late 1990s without trying to smooth out all of the quirks that defined that era. It places you in the role of Renata, a young adventurer navigating a series of ruins and dangerous environments in search of her missing parents, but the story itself is more of a framework than the main attraction. What truly drives the experience is its commitment to recreating the feel of early 3D platformers, from its visual style to its movement mechanics, capturing both the charm and the occasional awkwardness that longtime fans of the genre will immediately recognize. The defining feature of Frogun is its central mechanic, a frog-shaped grappling device that functions as your primary tool for traversal, combat, and interaction. This single piece of equipment gives the game its identity, allowing players to latch onto distant objects, pull themselves across gaps, grab collectibles, and deal with enemies in creative ways. The simplicity of having one core mechanic works in the game’s favor, as it encourages players to master its nuances rather than juggle a wide range of abilities. Over time, using the frogun becomes more fluid and expressive, especially as players learn how to chain movements and maintain momentum through more complex sections. Level design reinforces this focus by offering compact but layered stages filled with secrets, collectibles, and optional challenges. Rather than sprawling environments, each level feels tightly constructed, encouraging careful exploration and repeated attempts to uncover everything it has to offer. Completionists will find plenty of incentive to revisit stages, as collecting all items and meeting specific conditions adds an extra layer of challenge. This structure gives the game a satisfying loop, where progress is measured not just by reaching the end of a level but by how thoroughly it has been explored. Visually, Frogun leans heavily into a retro-inspired aesthetic, using low-polygon models and bright, saturated colors to evoke the look of early 3D console games. However, it does not feel like a simple imitation. The presentation is polished in its own way, with a clear artistic direction that makes environments distinct and characters expressive. From jungle ruins to icy landscapes and volcanic zones, the variety of settings helps maintain a sense of progression, even if some themes repeat more than others. The overall style strikes a balance between nostalgia and readability, ensuring that gameplay remains clear despite the intentionally dated visual approach. That commitment to retro design, however, also brings with it some of the limitations associated with it. Movement can feel stiff at times, particularly during sections that require precise jumps or quick adjustments in mid-air. The frogun mechanic, while versatile, does not always respond as smoothly as players might expect, leading to occasional frustration when timing is critical. Camera behavior can also be inconsistent, sometimes making it harder to judge distances or align actions correctly. These issues do not define the experience, but they become more noticeable in later stages where the difficulty increases. The pacing of Frogun reflects its design philosophy, favoring a steady and methodical approach over constant action. Players are encouraged to take their time, observe their surroundings, and approach challenges carefully. This can be rewarding for those who enjoy a more deliberate style of play, but it may feel slower than expected for players accustomed to modern platformers that emphasize speed and fluidity. Difficulty progression is not always perfectly balanced, with certain segments introducing sharper challenges that can disrupt the otherwise relaxed rhythm. Ultimately, Frogun succeeds because it remains consistent in what it sets out to do. It does not try to modernize every aspect of its design, instead choosing to preserve the feel of its inspirations while adding its own unique twist through the frogun mechanic. This makes it a very specific kind of experience, one that will resonate strongly with players who appreciate retro platformers and are willing to accept their quirks. In the end, Frogun is a charming and thoughtfully designed homage that captures the essence of classic 3D platforming while offering enough originality to stand on its own. It may not appeal to everyone, particularly those looking for modern refinement, but for the right audience, it provides a satisfying and memorable adventure. Rating: 7/10

Frogun is a collectathon platforming speedrunning game, ala Captain Toad meets Mighty Switch Force, and while much of your playtime will be solid fun, some massive oversights stop this from being a full throated recommend, and instead make it more of a tepid whispered recommend instead. If you like collectathon platformers, and cutesy games, I say give this a try, but read on for a full review and my list a caveats to this recommendation: [hr][/hr] [h1]Plot:[/h1] Your parents are missing, and you’re going to save them… that’s it… Yeah, there’s character development in the notes you collect in each level, revealing backstories of certain characters and so forth, but it doesn't add much, and honestly the game doesn’t need more. Sometimes simple is best. [h1]Presentation:[/h1] Probably the strongest aspect of the game. Both the Art and Music pull a lot of weight in this game, and the presentation is likely the reason you’re even looking at this game in the first place. The low poly models and pixelated textures are extremely charming, as are the simple character designs, being both nostalgic and charmingly distinctive. Even smaller details of the presentation, such as the UI for the level select are charming, with the player character running back and forth on a map. The music too often stands out, though there are some duds, I’d say 80% of the music is really quite great. The game keeps up the tradition of ice level music being absolute bops. If you get the game, consider getting the OST too. [h3]Criticisms:[/h3] Though the presentation isn’t entirely perfect. During in-game cutscenes, there’s pixel portraits for the talking characters, and they honestly just aren’t all that appealing. I actually think normal illustrations would have been more suited… or I would have, if I hadn’t seen the opening and ending animated cutscenes, which frankly feel very amateurish, and aren’t the best introduction or end-cap to the game (though this is very nit-picky, since this is an indie game). Finally, a lot of the gallery art is also fairly lacklustre, much of it being fan art, which wouldn’t normally be a problem but… well we’ll get to that… [h1]Gameplay:[/h1] As stated, this is a collectathon platformer, and a fairly standard one at that. You will jump from platform to platform and collect things… However, there is a little more to the gameplay. It’d be accurate to compare this game to something like Captain Toad, as the game often plays with the camera to hide secrets out of view of the player. This leads to the player carefully scanning around them with the camera, checking underneath and around each platform to ensure they haven’t missed anything, making the camera as much as a mechanic as the player’s movement, or at least the camera feels more involved than it usually does in games regardless. The big stand out for the game is the titular Frogun, which you can fire at enemies and walls to send you quickly careening towards them, which is particularly useful because of the also aforementioned speedrunning elements heavily emphasised in the game, allowing you to bypass large sections to make your time as speedy as possible, which is needed to meet the requirements for the time trial medal and the Expert time trial medal for each level. [h3]Criticisms:[/h3] Here is where I really start coming down on the game. The most important thing for a platforming game is that the movement feels good; the platforming itself should feel good… and Frogun’s just fails to live up to that. The player movement speed is tediously slow, and their jump obnoxiously short as well. Even the most basic jumps, from beginning to the end of my playthrough, still felt uncertain, despite the fact that they placed an indicator beneath the player to let them know where they’re landing. Add to this the camera, which somehow often gets caught in the terrain and obscures everything, or zooms in too close and hides everything, or needs to be positioned juuussst so that you can platform correctly, and it just makes for a frustrating experience… well at least we get a cute frog shaped gun right?… well… [b]The Frogun sucks![/b] The final kick to the coin-bag is just how annoyingly inconsistent the titular frogun is. During normal gameplay where you’re just collecting items, the frogun’s inconsistencies aren’t too noticeable, but when trying to speedrun the level [i](y’know, the thing the game actively encourages you to do?)[/i], it becomes horrificly clear how frustratingly inconsistent it is. Routes through the level that you know you can do. will consistently fail as the Frogun just refuses to attach, despite the indicator showing it should. You will die dozens of times over trying to shave off ten seconds of your time. BLAH! Luckily the checkpoints are fairly forgiving, even resetting your time back to when you hit the checkpoint, so as frustrating as the frogun is, there is some leniency there when tackling the speedruns. Finally, the boss mechanics are fairly dull. They each consist of you waiting around for them to finish their attacks so that you may trade one blow with them. It’s cookie cutter, bog standard, run of the mill stuff. Not terrible, nothing to write home about… but enough to write a review about I guess, haha. [h1]Achievements:[/h1] The achievements deserve their own little section here. The vast majority of them can be earned through just simply playing the game and beating the levels, and collecting everything. Simple. I am a little disappointed that there are no achievements for beating all the Expert Time Trials, because surely that should be a gamepley achievement, no? [h3]Criticisms:[/h3] However, my big BIIIIIG gripe comes from what will be your last two achievements, and likely last two experiences of the game. Buying all the cosmetic hat items, and buying all the gallery art. After playing through all the levels and 100%-ing them all, I had most of the hats, but had basically none of the gallery art… this was at about my 19th hour of play. The end time you see for my gameplay is when I finished grinding coins to finally buy everything… So roughly four or five hours of grinding… in a single player platformer game… I don’t care who is disagreeing with me when I say this, because they are wrong; that is an absolutely egregious disregard of the player’s time. Now was I farming in the most efficient method possible? Probably not, but the more efficient levels were more annoying, and farming shouldn’t be a stressful thing anyway, nor should it be in a SINGLE PLAYER PLATFORMING GAME, JUST TO BUY AMATEURE FAN ART!! THAT’S MY REWARD FOR HOURS OF GRINDING?! SCRIBBLES!? COOL THANKS, FROGUN!! [hr][/hr] [h1]Final Thoughts:[/h1] So I hate the game, right? How could I give it a recommendation after my scathing critiques, right? Well, the thing is… I still enjoyed the majority of my time playing the game. Sure the movement and the frogun mechanics are unpolished, but I still 100%’d the game (or rather 150%’d it), and yeah the achievement grind is something to be admonished, but that won’t effect those who aren’t stubborn fools like me. If you simply want to play a straight forward platformer game, and enjoy speedrunning mechanics, there are worse options… there are also better options too, but you’ll still likely have fun with this game. Ultimately, the individual parts may be flawed, but the whole is still a rather fun and charming experience. If you’re taken by the visuals like I was, and are happy to play a flawed janky game, give this game a try. To put it more simply; I may be complaining, but I’m still looking forward to playing the sequel.

TL;DR: Fun, retro inspired platformer. Could use a better sense of momentum and pacing, as well as gun aiming. Controls are a bit archaic with move fluidity.

It is incredibly frustrating due to the camera and some design choices, but it is an overall well made game.

If Steam had a middle option between Recommended and Not Recommended, I’d probably put Frogun there. I wish I’d enjoyed it more than I did, but past the good there’s a fair amount to dislike or cause frustration. On a first glance, Frogun looks like it’s going to be a fun platformer reminiscent of old N64 and PSX games, with some cool retro filters to try out from the get-go. The low poly look is pretty cool and works well for the block-based gameplay. There are some fun designs in terms of enemy looks and environment. I wasn’t overly fond of the pixel art portraits, I think just a render could have worked better, but that’s a nitpick. The big problem, for me at least, is that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the distance between objects and platforms. This is especially annoying in the brutal levels later in the game. The colours are bright and poppy, although there were a couple of darker levels in the second half of the game that made platforming harsher than perhaps it should have been, sometimes I felt like I had to make too many leaps of faith. The camera is completely controlled by the player. This works well, until it doesn’t. For the positives, the developer can hide secrets more easily and the player doesn’t have to fight an auto-camera. The negatives become apparent when the player needs to do tricky platforming sections in multiple axes, or the multiple grapple sections. This is often frustrating as you don’t particularly have much room for error, and any pitfalls will send you back to the last checkpoint. In terms of performance, everything ran well. The exception is on Steam Deck which weirdly has frame drops now and then. This could be a quirk of Proton, I’m not quite sure. There are some typos here and there, but nothing too terrible. Gameplay wise, Renata can move, jump and use the titular Frogun, her sentient froggy grapple gun. Overall, the grapple is used well, although comes with its annoyances. The grapple can be used to grapple to walls as well as enemies and objects. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell how the grapple will effect enemies, making it a bit of a guessing game as to whether it brings you toward the enemy or the enemy towards you. I think it could have been cool to have a separate ‘attack’ along with the grapple, as hit detection can feel a bit iffy when it comes to enemies. Sometimes you’ll jump on an enemy and get hurt, other times you won’t. The goal of each level is to reach the end, collecting optional gems and collectibles along the way, including some little expository notes. The gems can be used in shops to buy hats as well as concept art, which is a nice touch and reward for those willing to go out of their way to collect things. There are plenty of enemies, pitfalls and traps in each level, with checkpoints spread throughout. I wasn’t a fan of restarting to the checkpoint when falling down pits, just reduce Renata’s health or something. Sometimes checkpoints feel too far spread, often making you repeat pretty tricky sections if you fail one part. The worst offenders for this are the race levels, which leave very little room for error and just become a chore. In the end I decided to just use a mechanic exploit for the final one, as the brutal difficulty was beyond annoying. I think some of the final levels just border on unfair and were pushing my patience. The bosses are a mixed bag. I liked some of the ideas, but some of their mechanics, such as those of the final boss, feel ill suited to Renata’s slow movement. It can be hard to react at times. As well as this, the sound of them taking damage isn’t very impactful and I was left wondering whether I was doing any damage – I think a damage indicator or health bar would have worked well there. The manual camera can also be a problem here, especially as some of the bosses like speeding across their arenas, making them difficult to track. Only having 5 HP makes the longer ones too harsh for my liking, with no way of recovering life either. The music and sound are a bit mixed. There’s some nice music, although it can get grating on the more annoying or longer levels. The coin sound is really loud and sharp, but luckily it has its own volume slider. In the final levels there is a timing-based platforming mechanic, I think the sound should be more prominent to help the player. Overall, there is some fun to be had, mostly in the first half, but for me the frustrations took away from the experience. It’s impressive from a small team nonetheless.

This is a tough game to review, because the core of the game is fun, but it just feels slightly too janky and a tad too long. I really enjoyed the core of this game, and the addition of speedrun challenges are probably the best part. The game will not stop you from ripping levels wide open with the jank, but it will also halt a lot of your momentum with that same jank. The targeting system is a sore spot for a lot of the others reviews but that's because it is just that rough. By the time I finished this game I was just kinda sick of it, but I still make this review positive because there is a good time in here. The game is cheap, it's fun when it isn't painful, and I do recommend it. Just maybe beat the game before going for completion and you'll feel these issues less than I did.