One of these days I want a game that’s dependent on how quickly I slide my finger to have some sort of de-bug mode, where I can see exactly how much force the game thinks I’m exerting on each attempt.
Slyde the Frog is another game like this, and I can’t decide if it’s horrendously inconsistent with how it judges the finger swipes or if I’m just not very good at it. Either way, I’ve been coming back to play frequently, so it must be doing something right.
The gist of the gameplay finds you playing as a frog with an urge to leap. You’ll jump your frog onto lily pads occupied by mosquitoes and the occasional girlfriend frog. If you land on a lily pad, whether your frog has already chomped the mosquito that was sitting there or not, you’ll get to jump again. If you miss the lily pad and land in the water or overshoot your jump and smack a wall, you lose a frog. Five lost frogs and you start over.
For a concept so simple, there are plenty of variables to keep things interesting. In certain levels, the lily pads move; in others, the pads get retractable spikes now and again. And you can jump on power-ups like a rubber duck that sends you high into the air, or a bubble that you can pop when you’re over a safe lily pad.
But the touch controls in Slyde the Frog remain the most troublesome aspect of the game. It sometimes feels like there’s very little give between sliding your finger too lightly and sliding it way too furiously. Couple that with the reaction time between your swipe and your frog’s leap and you can have many frustrating moments playing Slyde the Frog.
Still, you’ll keep coming back. The premise is simple and fun, and the freemium nature of the game, where you’ll get 15 levels free, with the ability to purchase more any time you like, makes it likely you’ll sink a few bucks into the title when all is said and done. There are worse things than being swallowed by a jumping frog app, though. After all, you could be swallowed by the frog itself.
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