*Note: I received the game for free for my honest review. Thank you so much to Offbrand Games and Bonte-Avond for the Nintendo Switch game key.
Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is charming right from the start with a Bear named Bonnie in a frog onesie just vibing in their treehouse. Bonnie's friends show up with a cake to celebrate Bonnie's bearday and they brought gifts. The game is fully voice acted which is really lovely because everyone nails the tone of each character.
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| Celebrating Bonnie's bearday. |
One of the gifts Bonnie's friends have for them is a toad bag in order to play a tactical game called Frogtime and yes, you play it with cute frogs. There's a tutorial with Bonnie and friends on how to play Frogtime. Different frogs have various abilities that allow them to jump over your opponent's frogs or push a frog back a tile to start. There are also toads who can't jump, but they other skills that help you on your way to victory in a Frogtime match. There's a bit of a learning curve to Frogtime and it did take me a couple of tries during the tutorial before I got the hang of it.
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| It's Frogtime! |
It becomes clear pretty quickly as part of the story that the starter frogs are not strong enough to win some Frogtime battles. Luckily, there's a shop nearby that sells booster eggs so you can get better frogs and if you're lucky you can even get some legendary frogs. You can also get booster eggs for toads. The first area is Bonnie walking around and playing Frogtime with others which gets in a good bit of practice and becoming more familiar with the game. When Bonnie wins their self worth goes up which is an interesting way of level grinding. However, if they lose a match, their self worth goes down a little. The good news is you can try again if you lose a Frogtime match. I'm defininetly not the best at Frogtime and a couple of battles took me a few tries, but I was having fun with it and I liked that you could see what skills each frog has not just for your frogs, but for your opponent as well.
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| Buying booster eggs. |
The main part of the story is Bonnie and friends saving their friend Ann who got stuck in a trans-dimensional seashell by mistake and discovering there are other trans-dimensional shells. Bonnie leaves home with their friends in search of a way to help Ann and find these other shells while playing Frogtime along the way. This is a smart way to introduce new frogs at the shops in these other areas. I do wish we could hold more than eight frogs in the toad bag because if you have a full roster of frogs and buy a new one, you have to choose which frog to throw away. I would have liked a storage area in the toad bag so we could have a set of frogs kind of like different card decks. It's also completely random which frogs you get to pull out of your toad bag during Frogtime. I understand what they were trying to do with this, but I really feel it would have been stronger to allow a little more control over this for the players. I also got a bit frustrated with how often I would lose a Frogtime match because at times it felt like the RNG was often in favor of the computer. There were also quite a few matches that were story locked so if I lost, I couldn't continue the story and I would find myself slightly irritated by this. It made me wish there was an accessibility setting to make the game a little easier to avoid frustrations like this. I'm very stubborn and refused to give up and eventually did manage to win those matches trying different frogs and various strategies which made me feel quite vindicated. In spite of those few critiques, I really enjoyed Frogtime and all the whimsy that came with it.
To add to the cuteness and whimsical energy of the story, there is music throughout the entire game and all of it is lovely. There's a sweet gentle song about playing Frogtime with friends and a great upbeat dance song sung between a dapper French skeleton and their romantic ghost partner. The music and singing are wonderful and the voice acting throughout the game is great showing just how much passion and care went into creating this game and when you realize it's two musicians that created this, it makes it even more impressive.
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| Making music together. |
I enjoyed the story for Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime and appreciated the many puns, the brilliant humor, the bright colors, and cute art style. The music and songs are wonderfully done adding to the general ambience of the coziness of the game. While the few things I mentioned could be better, it did not detract from the great time I had hanging out with Bonnie and their friends while solving a bit of a mystery. I'm so glad I got a chance to experience it and got to see so many adorable frogs.
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| Yes, we had fun playing Frogtime with a kraken! |
*Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch and Steam
*Join the Mothergamer community on Twitch where we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer
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