#frog fractions

(UPDATE: Per @hbmmaster, explicit confirmation that the frog near the end of Frog Fractions 3 is Hop gives him a Ryu Number.)

Unsurprisingly, Frog Fractions gets weird enough that I'm not super confident in this evaluation, but here's what I've gathered.

The first Frog Fractions is essentially a dead end. Frog Fractions 3 has A Frog and Commander Shepard, but to the best of my knowledge it's never explicitly confirmed anywhere that said frog is Hop, so that's also (possibly) a dead end.

I mean, there is the Frogs LCD minigame, but, I mean, it's something you literally find in a character's drawer within another minigame, so,

ehhhhhhh.

Hop's Iconic Cap apparently allows you to collect Peter Molyneux's bones (which, sure, I guess), but that's also probably a dead end since the only other Molyneux appearance would be the XBLA remake of Perfect Dark, but given that named characters will have faces of real people, I'm a bit hesitant to count this as Peter Molyneux himself as opposed to someone who just happens to look like Molyneux.

While browsing the Itch.io page of Twinbeard Studios, the creator of Frog Fractions, I decided to try out some of his other Pico-8 games; this time, a trio of platformers.

The first, Hop’s Big Adventure, is a Frog Fractions spinoff of a sort where you play as Hop the frog in a Santa hat picking up last-minute Christmas gifts from an abstract cavelike space. In what is stated to be a callback to my beloved childhood favourite, the Mac classic Glider, Hop rides in a paper aeroplane which is at the whims of air currents in the cavern. You explore by merely floating either left or right, with a button to slow your movement to better avoid the walls.

Exploring and nabbing presents becomes a light puzzle as you find a suitable air current, since your vertical motion is strictly either up or down depending on the last one you passed through (this, and the graphical style, are inspired by VVVVVV). A handy map shows you presents you’ve seen and lets you warp between checkpoints, the goal being simply to find 20 gifts and return to the starting point. Adjusting the glider movement to navigate the cavern makes for a pleasant little challenge.

Basil’s Adventure has you as a carefree dog whose only goals in life are to knock off dandelion seeds and meet butterfly friends… and get back to her cosy home, of course. A more naturalistic setting gives way to some kind of metallic underground base with floating water blobs to swim through, but you’re soon above ground again with your house not far away, and a waiting ranking of time taken and how many dandelions and butterflies you interacted with. It’s a moody little experience although without threat, and gathering a following of various coloured butterflies keeps it from being too lonely.