Frogatto & Friends

So first of all, I need to emphasize:

DON'T USE WORLD EDITOR WITHOUT BACKING UP YOUR GAME DATA!

It's buggy enough to wipe your progress by passing a checkpoint in editor, or using a handful of key combinations. More precisely, back up %appdata%\frogatto4.
There are some kinks to be fixed, like stuck boss fights, symbol matching puzzle sometimes being broken – but those are generally not too irritating and this behavior happens relatively rarely: it can be resolved by restarting the game or going back to previous world, for those issues respectively.
Another quirk is not being able to bind Frogatto's powers to different keys – it's hardcoded to work with Q and W. That means, when you bind the key for "up" to W, you are reciprocally moving (staring) upwards AND switching between powers.

I found this game by asking Copilot to offer me a game similar to SuperTux, as I enjoyed it previously (I do, in fact, give a shoutout to SuperTux). Nonetheless, I don't have past experiences with this game.

Otherwise, the game is fun and splendid, I shall say that it was well worth the $25 from my personal perspective, however I may hold a bias for the reason that frog is my favorite animal, and that I enjoy forgiving platformer games: by forgiving I mean games that take a different approach than Mario games, say Super Mario World restarts the game once multiple limited attempts are failed; here in Frogatto, you restart at last checkpoint no matter how many times you die. So far, I'll boldly announce that it was a better purchase than Minecraft, Terraria or Stardew Valley, even though this game is finite – now this is, of course, subjective, but I'm pleasantly surprised that such obscure game outperformed "universally liked titles by the mainstream audience", at very least for me. I finished the game over the course of one month, playing the game like 30 minutes each day within cycle of rage quitting some levels and continuing them later.

The story is a solid okay, I kind of wished it was more nuanced. Having finished the game, it really reminded me of the moment when France's Macron went to Moscow, met with Putin, and cheerfully believed that Putin won't invade Ukraine – the rule of thumb is, you don't just trust your enemy or enemy's spokespeople. I'm not a fan of Frogatto deciding that "Milgram's got a point" at the end, however the ending is a good opportunity for an intriguing sequel where it turns out that Frogatto was wrong about negotiations.

Milgram is the second-easiest boss in game to fight – I'm not sure if that's good or bad, frankly speaking. Previous bosses were maybe 4+ times harder than Milgram... now perhaps the effort pays off for you to have an easier final boss, rethorically speaking?

Some rougher edges aside, I'll still reiterate that it's somewhat worth playing.

Also, I have "0.5 hours" on this game, as I don't keep Steam running all the time – I just install my games, and set it to not launch at log on.

how is this game about a little fat frog not more popular

I love this game so much. The art is lovely, visual, audio, storytelling, .... & supports each part of itself like a virtuous cycle.
There's tons of secrets, not just regular treasures but neat little things like trying to interact w/bookshelves that add great character to the game. I have fond memories of playing this game when I was a child w/my dad & brother, now it's gotten plenty of updates since then and I can only say it was definitively NOT [just] nostalgia that brought me back to play it anew.
I highly recommend it to everyone having even slight interest in the game!! Ɛ>

Really great game, I remember playing this for the first time many years ago. Still holds up. the platforming with the background can sometimes be a little confusing. but thats really it for cons for me. Great graphics, decent soundtrack, really fun gameplay. Love this game