Easter has come and gone now, and here in the RPS treehouse we lounge with bellies full of chocolate chatting about our favourite little surprises in games. Alice O has already asked you, dear reader, what's your favourite video game Easter egg? It appears some game developers have been pondering a similar question on Twitter, and revealing the best Easter eggs they've hidden in their games - from hiding games within games, to live coding an RPG to rewriting an RPG's script live to mess with streamers.
]]>As is, the Frog Fractions: Game Of The Decade Edition had secrets aplenty already. That's not just an amphibian with a gift for mathematics and that hat DLC is more than a fashion choice. It turned out that the Hop's Iconic Cap DLC was sort of another Frog Fractions sequel. Talk about bigger on the inside. Quite a cap. The game's developer says that as of today, Hop's Cap has gotten stuffed with even more secrets.
]]>It's a rotten day out, and amphibious as they may be, no frog should have to suffer a bare head in this weather. If you must play Frog Fractions: Game Of The Decade Edition, you owe it to poor Hop to pitch in for a swish beanie. See, Hop's Iconic Cap isn't just a sweet piece of froggy fashion - nestled in that hat is an entirely new, fourth(?) entry in the Frog Fractions extended universe.
]]>The 2012 browser game now has a Steam presence in Frog Fractions: Game Of The Decade Edition. It is, I suppose, an arcade game with an educational element - or perhaps more accurately a spoof of games with an educational element. You play as a wee frog who perches on a lilypad, defending your pond from waves of incoming flying insects by lashing out with your tongue.
The main gimmick is the scoring system, which eschews integers, and instead grants points in fractions, decimals, and indices - although it should be noted that you don't have to understand fractions to play the game, and it will not teach you to understand them either. And nothing else ever happens.
]]>Have you played Frog Fractions? While it may seem an unassuming amphibious edu-game, Twinbeard's maths 'em up may be one of the most important games of the last decade. Unfortunately, it's one that's increasingly a pain to actually play. Today, Twinbeard "Sandwich Imagineer" Jim Crawford announced that the game's Steam release is just around the corner, gobbling up its own fraction of Steam this August.
]]>As far as I'm aware, you don't actually need to know any maths to play Frog Fractions. Twinbeard's edutainment game spoof is very much not what it seems, and later this year you'll be able to play a standalone remastered version in a new Game of the Decade edition.
The game was released back in 2012 as a free browser game where you play as a frog eating bugs and protecting fruit. And that's it. Nothing else weird happens at all, and you should not open this article if you want to play Frog Fractions blind.
]]>The elusive Frog Fractions 2 snuck out while over the RPS Crimble holiday, hidden inside a colourful game about building a faerie village and locked away behind a sprawling ARG. Frog Fractions 2 could never be as surprising as the first game, given that y'know we now have heard of Frog Fractions, but it seems to have made a fair go of replacing surprise with epicness. Epicity? Epicicity? That thing. Once again, FF leaps wildly between genres on a wild adventure hidden within something innocuous. This time, your way in is to buy the sparkly-named Glittermitten Grove [official site].
]]>When I first heard about Frog Fractions 2's Kickstarter, I immediately wondered, "Can Twinbeard get more meta? Can they really?" The original game of amphibians and (not any) arithmetic went so deep down the rabbit hole that it emerged on the other side of the universe and also in another dimension, so I'll cop to having been slightly worried. But now Twinbeard has made a game about creating a Kickstarter while running a Kickstarter for a game that won't be called Frog Fractions 2 even though it will technically be Frog Fractions 2 and, well, I'm not very worried anymore. The game in question is called Kickstarter Simulator 2015. Its genre? FMV lightgun shooter. I'm not even joking.
]]>When Frog Fractions first dropped on unsuspecting doorsteps bundled as an innocuous edutainment game, we all thought we were safe. But we were wrong. So very, very wrong. It was too mad for feeble human minds to comprehend, and it brought about the fall of human civilization as we knew it. Or at least a number of amused, bemused, and c-mused Internet comments. Now creator Jim Crawford is kickstarting a sequel that you won't even know about when it first launches. People will have to figure out which game is Frog Fractions 2 before they can even play it. But today I'm joined by Crawford and lead artist Rachel Sala, and they're going to give me a *skloosive first glimpse* of the education-packed sequel.
We're kicking off at 11 AM PT/6 PM GMT (there was a US time change; yeah, no, we all think it's dumb too).
Update: We're done! You can watch the whole thing below.
]]>It is probably an exaggeration to say that Frog Fractions is the most important game of our time, which is why I'm not saying that. But goodness, it was certainly one of a kind - an Olympic-caliber swan dive into a maelstrom of churning madness. To say anything more would be to spoil it for those who haven't peeled past its faux-"edutainment" surface layer, but I can't recommend it enough. It's free, and you'll laugh for a solid hour, sometimes sincerely and other times in bewilderment at just how incredibly far creator Jim Crawford took a really dumb joke. Which brings us to Frog Fractions 2. He wants to take the joke even farther. Much, much farther, to a point that makes the original game look positively tame by comparison. Kickstarter farther. Kickstfarther. Brilliantly unhinged video below.
]]>I sure do love posting about Molyjam games that, er, skirted the quote-based rules of this year's jam. Oh well, though. An interesting game is an interesting game, even when it hasn't indirectly emerged from the constantly exposed braintubes of Peter Molyneux. The idea behind Skirt Quest is one I think everyone can identify with - no matter how infrequent your skirt-clad skips through the sunflower fields might be. The goal? To fit in at school. You do so by surreptitiously adjusting your skirt length to match that of other girls. Otherwise, they'll gossip - some louder than others - and before long you'll be reduced to a blubbering mess, leaking self-esteem into heaving crocodile tears. It's a simple game, but one that captures just how brutal the judgment of your peers can be, especially for kids.
]]>I'm desperately ill right now. Maybe that's why I find Frog Fractions - an edutainment game spoof that's far, far, far, far, far, far more than it seems - so hilarious. It's very difficult to discuss much of it without spoiling the bounty of... knowledge it aims to impart unto the universe, but I'll do my best. I'll keep things pure for front-pagers, though, and take it past the break - aka, the place where innocence is lost.
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