Froggy Kong

CONTROLS ON GAME BOY COLOR:

Move left/right: directional pad

Jump: A

Drop a water balloon: B

CONTROLS ON KEYBOARD IN BROWSER:

Move left/right: arrow keys

Jump: Z or J or Alt

Drop a water balloon: X or K or Ctrl

Jump between falling platforms to stay above the laser, and soak the bomb with water balloons to stop it exploding!

--

A horrible frog monster is terrorising the city, leaping from rooftops and dropping water balloons!

Luckily, the police have set up a huge laser barrier, and they're going to blow the monster up with a big bomb!

There's just one problem.

You are the monster.

Jump between falling platforms using directional buttons and the A button (Z/J/Alt on keyboard) and drop water balloons with the B button (X/K/Ctrl on keyboard).

Keep the bomb wet to stop it exploding! Your score increases every time you hit it.

Don't touch the laser!

This game is inspired by classic arcade titles, as well as the Game & Watch series of handhelds. When making this game, I researched the Nintendo classic Donkey Kong, and was inspired by the design wisdom of Gunpei Yokoi.

Yokoi made games by giving the player two simple tasks to do at the same time. When the player has to choose between them, the gameplay becomes challenging. In Froggy Kong, I approached this by making the player jump between platforms whilst also throwing water balloons.

While I had considered first making a traditional platformer, and then making a collection of minigames (similar to a Game & Watch Gallery title) I decided to focus on making one simple game with the highest possible level of polish that I could achieve.

In spite of this simple design, this one game mechanic took three months to perfect. This is actually a very complex game, featuring:

• Four moving platforms that speed up throughout the game
• One moving bomb with a ticking countdown timer
• Projectiles
• Tile swapping to achieve the laser effect
• Palette swapping
• Scenes with more unique tiles than should be possible on the Game Boy under normal circumstances
• Multiple sprites layered on top of each other to add additional colours

Not only is this by far the most complicated game I've ever made, it pushes the Game Boy Color to its absolute technical limits in several respects, especially relating to graphics and timings.

Because of this, if you experience any glitches, particularly around graphics, please report them so I can see if I can fix the problems.

This game was made using GB Studio with the Platformer+, Platformer+ Platforms, and Advanced Dialogue plugins.

The game is designed for Game Boy Color only and will not run on original Game Boy.