Developed by the two man team of Fayju games, Amazing Frog is a sandbox physics game exclusive to the OUYA.
After starting up the game and getting past the slash screen, you are instantly placed in control of a bipedal frog in the middle of a town called Swindon. Filled with cannons, trampolines, and much more, your job as the Amazing Frog is to well, hurt yourself. Players get a “Jump Score” for falling and hitting objects, and the points keep piling on until you finally get back up.
Once you jump or fall down you enter a ragdoll mode, moving the left stick will allow you to control your frog to maneuver into even more objects and falls to help build up your Jump Score. This mechanic feels much like the Crash mode in the original Burnout games. The problem is, in Amazing Frog you can stay in this ragdoll mode and move your frog almost indefinitely if done correctly. This leads to a problem with scoring, since there isn’t really a restriction on how long you can maneuver your limp body. A player could keep adding to their current “Jump Score” almost indefinitely by simply refusing to hit the A button, which stands their frog back up, ending the score streak.
But the mechanics aren’t the only issue. Amazing Frog suffers from many visual and technical flaws. There are often large framerate drops when you slam into anything explosive. Plus game is ugly, really ugly. The game’s textures are a mixed bag. Ranging from the occasional well done cartoony texture to the horribly pixelated cringe-worthy textures plaguing the town. Amazing Frog‘s lack of a focused and well a executed art direction, plus a big logo at the top of the screen that you can’t get rid of, gives the game a very rough and amateur look.
But it’s not all bad, there are some positives to the game. Amazing Frog’s best feature is it’s drop-in split screen multiplayer. Allowing you and a friend to sit on the couch and maim your frog’s together and compete for the best Jump Score. And also fart on each other.
I found the town of Swindon to be surprisingly sizable and filled with fun item and locations to distract from quest to get the highest Jump Score, which will quickly get stale for most players. Launching yourself off rooftops and playing soccer with a friend can lead to a lot of laughs and fun.
The game is free and if you have an OUYA and a friend I’d recommend giving it a try. Hopefully future updates to the game will solve Amazing Frog‘s issues. But until then, I give it a 2 out of 5.
