Remaking Frogger

About the Source Material

Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami. In North America, it was released by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one by crossing a busy road and navigating a river full of hazards.

Frogger was positively received as one of the greatest video games ever made and followed by several clones, just like this one. By 2005, Frogger, in its various home video game incarnations, had sold 20 million copies worldwide. The game found its way into popular culture, including television and music.

About this version

In this version, called Frog Hop, the collectible frogs are replaced with signposts. The audio from this game is inspired by retro games and uses only triangle waves to recreate any melodic sound or sound effects. As a throwback to the game Frogger: He’s Back, originally released for PC and Playstation, by Hasbro Interactive, there are also several sound cues derived from the audio in that game.

Visuals

All of the art was handmade 16x16 pixel art created in the one and only, Microsoft Paint. Yes, even handsome (really, it’s just cohesive) game art can be made in Paint.

Audio

For Frog Hop, I used audio from the PS1 version as a style reference. Including using the actual melody of that game’s “game over” sound for mine.

The loop for the BGM in this version has an original melody paired with the classic melody from the 1981 Frogger, but in the referenced style from the PS1 era.

All of the sounds are made with a basic triangle wave (I just found it to be less ear destructive than a straight square wave) except the crushed drum samples, and those were added as a simple throwback to the loading screen from the PS1 era.

Finally, the “You Win” music is fully original with all of that taken into consideration. Hope you enjoy!

Under the Hood

Frog Hop uses grid-based movement combined with a separate detection system to make sure the frog realigns with the grid after tweening either through animation, or while riding anything in the water, which does not always stay aligned with the grid.

There’s a simple collection mechanic in place for the bugs, and an extra life feature for each time you reach an additional 15k points.

Everything was constructed using the Stencyl game development engine. In addition to the base system, I also deployed images to maintain framerate and crisp images at various scales for the non-pixel art images.