Little Frog Postmortem and Reflection

Hey all!

So I had taken the time to write a postmortem several months back, after the release of Little Frog Game.  I'm not sure why I never posted it, might have been feeling a bit nervous or something.  After looking it over, I think I'd like to get this out there anyways.  I do have a small update planned for the game (mostly to enable a web build for the upcoming Frog Con!), but for now here are some few-month-old thoughts I had about the process of making my little game!

Little Frog Game - True To Its Name?

So I finally released my little game.  I think the name itself says a lot, its definitely a game about a frog, and its definitely.. little.  I think if you were to "speedrun any%" you could be done in less than 5 minutes, hah.  Still, I think the fact that I saw it through to completion leaves me satisfied with how things turned out, though I can't pretend the game is perfect.

I've thought a bunch about things as I developed this, but tried to keep the scope VERY small.  I'm a composer by trade, game dev has been more of a hobby that I've chipped away at while trying to pursue music professionally, on top of my normal day job.  Still, I think the process of building a game from scratch has really opened my eyes and its something I may want to pursue more seriously in the future.

For now, I'm gonna reflect on a few things I learned, a few of my blunders, and some stuff I didn't really think of initially but wish I'd considered (and hopefully can apply all of this moving forward!)

The Initial Concept

So, I really didn't have any plans at all from the outset.

I had opened a new Godot project, imported an old tilemap I'd made, and had a little frog sprite from a free pack I'd gotten a while back that had 2 animation frames.  I implemented some basic collisions and platformer movement logic, and then thought "well, a frog game would be pretty fun to make", so I pulled up Aseprite and took some time to make my own original frog sprite.  I originally settled on 4 frames, 3 for a run cycle and then a single jump frame, which looked alright.  But a dev friend of mine mentioned an upward and downward sprite that the frog enemies in Shovel Knight had, and thought that would be a good thing to consider.  So I added a final frame for the "fall" of the jump, keeping the initial frame I had for the "rise".  I think it turned out alright!

So I had a little frog who could run around, but my wife made a comment that ended up being the basis of the core mechanic.  She mentioned how frogs need to stay hydrated, which gave me the idea to have the hydration meter as the core "timer" mechanic, replacing the simple timer running up/down that you'll typically see in old platformers like Sonic or Mario.

The hydration meter felt like a nice way to give a bit of urgency and challenge to the game but also allowed for it to remain fairly simple and approachable.  You can, theoretically, hang out in levels indefinitely so you're never really going to "run out of time", so long as you can make it between pools of water in the individual levels.

The meter went through a few iterations in terms of its length and how quickly it depletes / fills up, but I think I landed on a fair pace which helped dictate how to design the levels and where to place pools.

One thing I was a bit torn on was the darker water at the bottom of levels.  Originally it was just typical pitfalls, but then I wrote some music that felt like it had a "beach" vibe, so I made a beach level, haha... I justified it in my mind and the games description by it being saltwater, and frogs can only survive in freshwater, but its not immediately apparent in game.  And with water being the core mechanic, I worried that it could be confusing.  The solution I came up with was to A) add a tutorial level (which was actually pretty fun to make overall anyways!) and B) introduce it in-game at the bottom of pits in the first stage where it seemed clear that the player should avoid it.  I think this worked out okay, so that by the time the beach level rolls around its obvious enough that the dark water should be avoided, but I am not sure its 100% convincing.  Still, the beach-style music for the second stage is one of my favourites that I made for the soundtrack so I just REALLY wanted to do a beach level. Perhaps a lesson in deciding what is best for the game and not being too attached to ideas.

Deciding on Scope

So I can't say I did a traditional game design doc for Little Frog Game, but I did try to start one!  At the very least I did have some bullet points worked out about what exactly I wanted to include, and a few "wishlist" items that I would do if I could A) figure it out and B) had enough time.  I was chipping away at this in some spare time between various music projects I'd been working on, and working full-time, along with other life commitments, so I wanted to finish something in a reasonable timeframe.

I ended up making most of my ideas work, but a few of the ideas I scrapped or didn't get around to were:

• Additional hydration pickup (was thinking possible dripping water inside of caves, or other kind of one-time water pickups that would add a small amount to the water meter)
• Spike traps and a few more level hazards - I think there are enough as is but spike traps are a staple of 2D platformers
• Worlds / stages - I originally was planning multiple stages per "world" but scaled back, level design is something I'm pretty new to so I simply settled on 3 different looking stages and tried to make them somewhat large with a few paths to explore.
• Bosses - I was thinking of maybe ending the game with some kind of boss, but ultimately I think enemies / combat were something I kept really simple (perhaps too simple), so I wasn't sure a boss would work out and might have taken way too long to figure out.
• Health meter - this kinda ties into the boss idea above, I was thinking of giving froggy multiple hit points but decided on 1-hit KO. This would have felt pretty unfair against a boss I think.

Most of these ideas I'm considering for a possible sequel, but I'll need to do some better planning first.

Bugs and Other Considerations

I don't believe the game itself shipped with any super game-breaking bugs, but there was an issue someone pointed out to me with the automated parallax I had for the menus / clouds / etc.  Apparently I had mistakenly used Godot's "process()" function instead of the "physics_process()" in order to auto-scroll the background, which rendered at a very different speeds / framerates on some devices.  I tried it on multiple PCs at home which all ran as intended, but I definitely should have expanded my testing to some friends / others to get a better sense of some things.  Still, it turned out to be a pretty simple fix thankfully, and I released an updated build shortly after release (along with some additional control mappings based on feedback).

I definitely want to figure out fully remappable keys in Godot for next time, its a pretty important accessibility feature and a pretty standard thing in modern games, so lesson learned there.  I'd also like to figure out save data and incorporate that in some way.  It didn't feel necessary in Little Frog Game with it being a quick and simple game, but for something longer I'd like to possible have multiple save files (similar to some classic platformers from the 90s).

What's Next?

I have an idea for a direct sequel to Little Frog Game, that would be more of a "complete" experience I think.  Currently its in a pretty early prototype stage, with some basic movement / tiles / art / etc, but I'll be focusing on getting the mechanics sorted out first and foremost before moving on to any kind of concrete level design (a mistake I made in this one!).

I've been quite busy with work and some ongoing game music work that has come in, which has been really great for me but it has left very little game dev time.  Still, I'm not finished with game dev yet and I think its something I'll continue to pursue in the months / years to come.  Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to try out my game and support me thus far!

Take care, and all the best.

- Jordan