#neorice

Frogatto by Lost Pixel

I usually save longer stories for Retronator Magazine articles, but Frogatto’s history is so interesting I have to share a teaser here.

If you thought Owlboy was taking a long time, Frogatto’s story goes back all the way to 2000 (holy shit, 17 years?!?), when 12-years old Guido ‘Neorice’ Bos drew one of his very first sprites.

You might remember Neorice as a prolific Dutch character and comic artist (of Hero Oh Hero fame) from my artist feature 3 years ago. He’s been slowly working on his skills and improving his character Frogatto along the way (with a slight Rayman diversion when he was 18).

In another part of the universe, David ‘Sirp’ White was working on Battle for Wesnoth. Guido was a fan of the game and ended up doing art for it. In turn, David noticed Guido’s mockups, in particular this tileset:

David wanted to make a platformer for a while and so in 2008 they started to build a game with Neorice’s Frogatto character.

I’ll cut the long story short at this point (and save the longer history trip for a less confined space). Neorice eventually went on to focus on his comics, with Battle for Wesnoth coder/artist Richard ‘Jetrel’ Kettering taking over most of the game development (with David still coding the engine). 

Richard took the art to a whole new level with Ryan ‘Rain’ Reilly doing the same with music (the soundtrack is a fantastic trip back to the 90s, give it a listen here). Thus, in 2010 Frogatto saw an iOS release to high acclaim. 

Development didn’t stop though. If you buy the version for Mac and Windows (get it here, a steal at $10), you’ll see how the game was around 2013. In essence, Frogatto is a very agile Yoshi with super smooth controls that are a joy to play with.

Ciel from the Webcomic Hero Oh Hero

Neoriceisgood's River and Lake fish.