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.
For the last 4 years, Richard’s been hard at work (albeit in his free time, which makes progress slow). Next version will feature many engine upgrades and bring more story, characters and bosses. You can follow game’s progress on Twitter and Facebook.
