When I first saw Time on Frog Island during the Guerrilla Collective 3.0 livestream event, I immediately thought, “This looks like someone took a roadie from Gorillaz and dropped them in the world of Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles.”
It turns out, I wasn’t too far off the mark — although Time on Frog Island is developed by Half Past Yellow and not Prideful Sloth (who made Yonder), both games are published by Merge, so there is some overlap even if only in the remotest sense. (Admittedly, Merge is pretty prolific, having published a ton of games like Aragami, Foreclosed, and the upcoming Teenage Mutant Turtles: Shredders Revenge).
This has been an incredibly roundabout and circuitous way of saying that I am very much looking forward to checking out Time on Frog Island. It looks like an absolute delight.
This especially surprising considering I hadn’t even known of the game’s existence until like an hour before writing this. That adorable sea captain and their little pipe — seeing them hug that house plant — just melted my otherwise frostbitten and dark-as-coal heart.
Here’s a list of features pulled from the game’s Steam page so you can get a taste of what to expect:
- About Time on Frog Island. Shipwrecked on a strange island. A terrible storm ravages the seas around you, casting your mighty vessel into the perilous rocks of a nearby island. You awake to find your ship in pieces, shipwrecked on a strange island filled with… frogs
- Explore at your own pace! Make your own path in this island sandbox, you never know what will be around the next corner!
- Trade to fix your boat. Ask around for the items you need, but bear in mind that you might need to do a frog a favour to get what you want…
- Experiment with everything! Discover different ways to complete those crucial trades. Run faster, jump higher, fall slower, anything is possible if you’re holding the right item.
I’m not entirely sure what the importance of the letters the character is racing around to collect in the gameplay trailer, other than to perhaps form some sort of S.O.S.-styled message on the shores of this island, but I guess that will become much clearer once Time on Frog Island releases on July 12, 2022, for every platform known to person — and frog.
You can check out the trailer for Time on Frog Island below, and get geared up for its release next month, with a free prologue available on Steam for an immediate fix while you wait.
