Collect, breed, race, and trade your way to Trophies while completing your 'dex! How many froggy beauts can YOU collect?
It's Graphically Gorgeous and Froggily Fun!
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The first thing anyone would probably notice about the game is that it is graphically gorgeous.
The frogs who are the highlight of this game are, quite simply, tiny works of graphic design art and the attention to detail in the supporting art - the environment/habitat and habitat additions - is just as incredible.
The art alone might make the application worthy enough to download just to have a looksee, but combined with the gameplay/funplay (because the 'game' isn't quite a typical 'game' in my opinion), the application becomes a must-have.
Between raising frogs and hopping them everywhere out on the pond and hopping around for presents to add to the habitats to breeding frogs to earn trophies and add to the Froggydex to trying to breed for the elusive Glass and Chroma darlings, there's plenty for the frog enthusiast to do.
Are you a collector? Then simply collect your favorite frogs to look at and admire while building up the best-looking habitats for them to live in.
Are you a trophy winner? Then strategize your frog collection and build your catalog to complete your trophy accomplishments by careful planning and breeding mixed in with a bit of luck!
Are you some of both? Then mix and match and play along at your own pace!
It is in this way that the real beauty of Pocket Frogs shines. The aesthetics and gameplay/funplay merge together to create a unique experience that can be custom-tailored to the frog enthusiast's desires.
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Fun with Frogs!
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There are a lot of reasons that Pocket Frogs is a must-have application for both the iPhone and the iPad. Here are some of my favorites:
1) Graphically Gorgeous
Pocket Frogs on a whole is a very graphically-oriented application. It is no surprise, then, when I say that part of the fun is simply in being able to find, breed, and collect so many beautifully detailed frogs.
2) Fill the Froggydex
For the frog collector or for those who simply like to keep track of the frogs that have hopped in and out of their lives, the Froggydex provides a one-stop solution which indexes and lists all of the frogs possible (species, colors, etc) and marks off the frogs that have hopped in and out of your habitats.
3) Hop It!
Breeding can be a very tedious process (more on that later in the Froggy Funkiness section) and being able to interact with the frogs by taking them out to the pond to hop them around, catch flies, and find presents is a great getaway from the repetitiveness and sometimes hairpulling frustration of breeding.
4) Ace the Accomplishments!
Like trophies? If you're someone who loves achievements - say, collecting 8 different sorts of frogs that have certain patterns, then you will find earning the trophies to be a bit of a fun (and sometimes tedious and frustrating) challenge.
And speaking of challenges...
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Froggy Funkiness
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The game, as simple as it sounds and as much as it offers for its size, has a few challenges and a few misses. Where some are more easily overlooked than others, they are challenges and misses nonetheless with some more apparent than others.
1) Catalog and Habitat Limitation
1 Catalog that catalogs 50 frogs max.
8 Habitats with 8 frogs each.
Considering that there are 10,000+ frogs to collect, this obviously means that you will never be able to collect all of the frogs to display in your habitat.
For those who are more into collecting, this will serve as a 'miss' - a feature that is wished for as collectors will find themselves debating over which frogs to keep and which to sell off and which to keep or replace in the catalog.
For those who are into achievements, this will serve as a 'challenge' as it will force trophy-goers to strategize both their frog collection and their catalog collection to make it optimal for breeding achievement-worthy frogs.
For those who are a bit of both... well... tough luck! My best advice would be to not get too attached to any of the frogs and realize that you WILL have to eventually sacrifice a favorite to win an achievement or to complete a request or to simply add to the Froggydex.
2) Time After Time Tedium
For even the most patient, breeding the 'wrong' frog time after time even when there are only 2 possible choices can get frustrating as the tedium of it all mounts.
Even worse is when this 'wrong' frog is an expensive frog. Do you use/waste Potions to make it grow so you can sell it for more money or do you simply sell at a loss and keep hoping for better results?
3) Missed Connections
I'm not a huge fan of social networking.
The fact that I need to connect to the Plus network at some point in time to catch up on certain frogs I might have missed or to catch certain frogs, period, is a bit of a turn-off.
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Frogs Forever!
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At the end of the day, the graphical goodness of the many many frogs and the solidness of the overall 'gameplay' wins me over and I have to declare my love for Pocket Frogs.
... I just wish I could keep more in my collection!