Note: This review for Frogvival will appear very similar to my review for "Croaktopia". This is because the developer just copy + pasted + reskinned [i]the exact same game[/i] onto Steam. Why sell rubbish once when you can sell it twice?
Frogvival is an unusual (and completely failed) attempt to make a frog themed 2D retro pixel survival crafting game. This survival adventure game set in a forest under siege by a corrupt construction company. You play as one of four frogs, tasked with farming, cooking, crafting weapons, and defending your village. None of this is implemented remotely well.
The elements are there, sure, in very, very basic states, with poor animations, terrible menus, and of course, hideous, sloppy, lazy pixelcrap "art" instead of proper visuals. It was a complete and utter failure... I've seen more successful RPG Maker asset flips that were slapped out in the space of 3 hours by high school kids (I don't recommend those, either, just pointing out the enormity of failure here, explaining why others ignored this and you should too).
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
While you can change the resolution, it doesn't support the full range of basic resolutions (3840x2160p for example is absent) and there's no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 120,000+ games on Steam?
Frogvival has the laughable price of $13 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $13 asking price for this game could get you games like "Phantasmophobia", "Halo: The Master Chief Collection" or "Hunt: Showdown". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
