Narratively simple and mechanically even simpler, there isn't much for Frog Detective (or Frog Tec if you're a Batman fan) to justify it’s forty five minute length beyond its charm. Fortunately, its charm is irresistible; it's lounge jazz soundtrack, clever camera work, and cleanly minimalist 3D art style all supporting the beating heart of Frog Tec, its gently awkward humor. Characters descend into lengthy detours over semantics, bring up their special interests unprompted, and blurt our their insecurities, and it's all presented with sharp wit to make it hilarious.

The gameplay consists entirely of talking to a character and fulfilling their needs or wants, usually by talking to another character or picking up an object lying around not far from them, to solve a mystery that could have been solved if any other character has bothered to do so. As such, Frog Tec conceptualizes detective work as communication, and the interesting thing about that is that our titular Detective isn't that great at communicating either! It's his willingness to push through the awkwardness that distinguishes him, and brings a purpose to the hijinks, as enjoyable as they are on their sake.

-''I'm a bit nervous''

-''Me too!''

They say as their killer smiles aren't even fazed. That's the kind of attitude I aspire to have when setting off dangerous explosives.

Frog Detective 1 is the perfect example of that breed of videogames I like to refer as ''candy games''; shorter and more laid-back experiences more focused on the adventure of meeting people, doing silly stuff and the interactions that come from it. Or in other, simpler words, lil' goofy treats.

This right here is that entire base idea made into a game. It’s basically just a stroll across this not-so-spooky islands and the interacting with the scientists to solve the most daunting case to ever be, and it’s cute! There are some pretty charming interactions here and there, some funnier than others for sure — Larry and Martin had the best moments by far—, tho overall they felt a bit repetitive at times and at worst some bits felt a bit awkward in a non-intentional way. The style of comedy it goes for isn’t anything new but at its best it really knows how to pull some novel or really funny bits, I just wish some others landed better.

And that’s about it, honestly!!! Aside from dialogue, the other thing you can do is to explore the island and use your magnifying glass for the fun of it, and as much as I love using a fish-eye lens in some of these Muppet looking motherfuckers, it also gets old fast. It’s an idea for more possible visual gags that aren’t explored further, which is how I feel about many other moments in this short mystery. The mouse doesn’t even get to break-dance at the end! What a ripoff!

It's hard for me to get even a bit grumpy about it, and if I started saying that I wished it was more ‘in-depth’ would be straight up silly. It’s a tale about a frog detective, plain and simple, and the enjoyment you’ll get out of it will entirely depend on how much you get charmed by it.

It doesn’t last long, it isn’t much, but it is sweet… just like a piece of candy!

A close friend of mine recently invited me onto a Twitch stream with her, and she said this would be a great game for the two of us to play together~. I'd never heard of the game before, but she turned out to be super right! She controlled the game, but it's so straightforward that, like with the VNs I've played with my wife at the helm, it's barely different from me controlling it myself, so I'm calling it beaten for me as well <w>. It took us a little over an hour to play through the English version of the game while reading out all the voices together on stream~.

Frog Detective is a series of short first-person adventure games. You walk around an environment talking to people and grabbing items, and it's honestly something much closer to a visual novel than it is something like Portal or even The Stanley Parable. In this one, our detective is solving the mystery of a haunted island (as you could probably already tell from the game's title x3). It's pretty fun! The narrative is a short, silly story, and the gameplay is light enough that just about anyone could do it. It's a very simple-looking game and there isn't much music, but it's such a bite-sized piece of fun that the aesthetic becomes much more of a feature than a bug (so to speak).

Verdict: Recommended. If you want something cute and fun to play either by yourself or with someone else, this is a really good option to do it with~. Especially if you can find it for cheap, this would be a great option to gift to a little kid to help them get into video games if they're only just starting out being able to read and/or work out first-person control systems. Not the funniest or most exciting thing in the world, for sure, but a fun time that more than justified the price of entry.