Pool Frog by notnasiul

Frogs love jumping, catching flies and playing pool with lily pads in their small ponds!
Want a high score? Nail those jumps, eat flies and make lily pads into each other. But don't stay too long in the water, those koi are hungry! Oh, and lily pads are fragile! If you stand on them for a while they will sink for good. You know, limiting your space :D
HOW TO PLAY: - Hold Z/X and use cursors to aim. - Release to jump! - You can move mid-air - You can swim to safety if you fall on water

Game was made with Pico8, which already limits everything! Memory space, amount of code, resolution, colors... :D But the frog also runs out of safe places to jump if waterlilies sink, so yeah, there's Limited Space!
| Link | https://playmedusa.itch.io/pool-frog |
| Link | https://playmedusa.itch.io/pool-frog |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/pool-frog |
Ratings
| Overall | 66th | 3.96⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 99th | 3.78⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 126th | 3.627⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 145th | 3.82⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 26th | 4.293⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 83th | 3.662⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 64th | 3.464⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 89th | 3.681⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
- The game loop felt quite good but there seemed to be a lot of fish slow to catch you and only one fly, so it was pretty risk free to fall into the water and there was no real safe area with the amount of fish.
- It took me quite a bit to figure out that eating flies is not automatic when I come into contact with them, it could also be cool to be able to eat flies mid jump, maybe with the tongue extending in the jump direction or getting stunned upon falling down after trying.
Really enjoyed the game. very polished for a game jam game. I wish that when you got to higher points in the game the difficulty spikes more but besides that the artstyle, music and feel of the game is near perfect.
I like how you don't instantly die when in the water. The player gets a chance to find a safe place.
The animation of the pixels (or is it particle effect?) is amazing, and I love the hilarious and fast-paced feel of the ruffles colliding or the white splash of the frog swimming in the water and all the ruffles crashing into each other!

Love the animations! The water effect is really great. Also the sound and music is cute. Well done!


Good job team ! :D
Ah yes, @kekyr, I'm a programmer, know not much about composing. Tried my best with menu and game over tunes, but so far that's it. I'm learning. Thanks for playing!
A bit hard at first, but too easy when you understand how it works
I hadn't seen the compo format, sorry :)
It took me few tries before fully understand all the gameplay tricks, but it really was fun to play, even if I didn't manage to get the kind of high scores I saw in previous comments (I only got 2405 at my last and best try)
The graphics are cute and neat, the gameplay is simple yet rich, and the game is juicy and full of details one gets only when looking with attention - as the koi design and moving pattern, or the funny face of the frog while jumping… So, well done and good job! (and instant follow because I don't want to miss your next entries)
Anyway, this was super cute and I enjoyed my time with it. The splash effect is really cool too! Great job!
Edit: I read through your postmortem, and it seems like you already know all the stuff I said.. whoops! In any case, this game turned out great, and I'm glad you have your own ideas to improve it. Cheers!
Well done! Take a candy! :candy:
The only downside I could think of is that it's actually hard to lose, I just eventually stopped playing at about 2500 points since it doesn't seem to get harder or have any other limiting factor to keep the game from just going on forever, presuming you don't mess up. This may actually be my favourite game so far, despite or maybe even because of the simplicity.
I really like the frog character, the animations are really cute and charming! the sound effects are pretty good, altho it would be nice if there was music too
The gameplay is nice, it took me a second to understand the controls it but after that the game, but once I did that the game was fun! The game is pretty easy but I actually like the relaxed pace in this one.
I liked it, good job!
This reminds me of another fun frog game on iPad I played at least ten years ago. It was about collecting frogs and making them jump around on lily pads. I just couldn't recall it's name...
@laserpanzerwal Thanks a lot your feedback! I'm planning a post-jam version to fix difficulty progression and maybe show the jump aim line all the time (although I like watching the scene without it!)
Thank you a lot for playing :)
- Awesome particles for limited medium
- Fly mechanic looks superfluous (only because frog)