Interview with the Developers of Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime
We love the team at Bonte Avond and were absolutely stoked to be able to have Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime as part of this month’s showcase.
Thank you so much to the team for answering my questions! We’d trade frogs with you anytime!
Can you tell me about the team behind Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime?
We’re Mark and Kyon, two musicians who started making games. In our games, we try to go with first ideas and rough takes, which is the way we approach making music too. We live in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and are close friends.
Can you tell me more about the tactical game of Frogtime and how it works in the game?
In Frogtime, you have to reach the other side of the field with your frogs to do damage. Your opponent who is standing on the opposite side of you has to do the same. It sounds easy, but there are a lot of different frog types with different skills. Some can jump, others can fly, some can clone themselves and there’s even a frog who absorbs flies to shoot a magical laser beam? Throughout the game, Frogtime gets more and more tactical, but the basis stays the same; get your frogs to the other side.
What are some ways that players can increase their chances of winning a game of Frogtime?
It’s up to the player to develop their own Frogtime style, but our favorite is double-jumping. If you use one of your frogs to leap over another frog, it’ll check if there’s another possibility of jumping. If there is, it will jump over the next frog too, and so on. Sometimes this results in a continuous jump from one side of the field to the other, which feels amazing and gets you points really quickly. But you can also choose to charge up your frogs, collect magical flies for extra skills, use special jumps to shoot rockets, line up a bunch of frogs to fly over, puff strong winds, or many of the different other ways.
What can players do in the game when they aren’t challenging fellow islanders to a battle?
You can go sledding with vampires (vampire sleighers), infiltrate a beehive, take a ride on a speedboat, climb a ladder to the stars, or simply have some breakfast at Momma Bear’s bakery.
The game is also packed with songs which you can play along with, some bizarre side quests, quirky characters (all voice acted by us, our friends and lots of cool guest stars!) and small secrets to find.
Many of the voice lines in the game are first-takes? What made the team decide to embrace the tiny imperfections that come from unedited/one-take voice lines?
Like we mentioned, we’ve always seen music as a big inspiration for our game and the vibe we try to create. A few of our favorite bands are The Microphones, Cap’n Jazz, Car Seat Headrest, Sparklehorse and Neutral Milk Hotel. In their music you can hear small human “imperfections” like someone walking to the piano, rattling guitar strings, vocal takes that are a little off-key but give a fitting emotion, accidental background noises. This “in the moment” vibe of recording is something we try to do with game development.
We’re huge fans of game jams, and that is basically the vibe that we try to keep going, even with these bigger projects. To bring it back to your question; you can hear this in our voice acting too, where we often go with first takes or takes that made us laugh (which we leave in). You’d think it would break immersion, but we’ve found that it somehow increases how involved you feel with the game, because it feels like you’re there with us while we made the game, it captured a moment. Kind of like, how you feel you’re there with the people of a podcast you’re listening to. To us this is a really warm and fuzzy vibe.
If you were feeling down, what game would you play to make you feel better?
Mark: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (with the Attack FX G badge on ofc).
Kyon: Animal Crossing New Horizons, I’m coincidentally making a frog-themed island.
Do you/the team have a favorite frog and accessory combo from the game?
Honestly we ask this question ourselves a lot, and our answers keep changing over time. But right now, Mark’s favorite frog is the Ribbeteer combined with the mushroom hat. That frog shoots small rockets each time you double-jump. Kyon’s favorite is the Cloner frog (with cone hat). The Cloner frog clones itself 2 places further, making it a great setup to do a double jump over it. Ribbeteer and Cloner together are actually a really smart and fun strategy we realise now.
What does “indie” mean to you?
When we first started to make a game together we just did it to make each other laugh. There were no limits on creativity and anything goes. To make something specific that’s very authentic to yourself and to share that feels indie to us.
Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is available to wishlist on Steam now.