Frog Fractions, Game of the Decade Edition: A Lesson in Moving On
Frog Fractions is a charming little game. I don’t remember exactly what year it was I played it- sometime in the early 2010s- at the insistence of my sister, a bit baffled as to why she was so set on me playing this funny little bug catching game. I was, of course, very quickly enamoured.
If you haven’t played it yet, I’d highly recommend that you do so before you keep reading. It’s very much a ‘more than meets the eye’ sort of game and a not-insignificant portion of its charm stems from the sheer unexpectedness of the turns it takes. Also I’m probably not going to explain what goes on in enough detail for it to make sense if you haven’t played because I’m a horrible little goblin and frankly I don’t care if anyone reads this anyway.
Please play Frog Fractions it’s free on Steam.
Please it’s a great game.
In a lot of ways, Frog Fractions feels like a relic of a simpler time, even in just the premise. Remember the silly semi-edcuational browser games we might have played as kids to help us practice our addition or what have you? (Not that Frog Fractions actually makes any effort to teach fractions, but you didn’t hear that from me.) Remember the days when the idea of someone running for president while being grossly unqualified with absolutely zero experience and a long list of reasons why they should not in fact be elected and no answer to these questions somehow just coasting by on spectacle alone was, like, strange? Good times.
The legacy of Frog Fractions that has developed over the years has been, to say the least, leaning a little towards bizarre. It’s rarely talked about openly beyond the first part but still has a devoted following, leading to a group of people absolutely insisting that you have to play this game. So you can, uh, learn about fractions. And typing. Frog Fractions teaches typing.
And of course there was the scrambling hunt for Frog Fractions 2 a few years back- somewhere out there there’s a sequel to this work of brilliance hiding behind the mask of some other unassuming game! Frog Fractions enthusiasts were wildly playing any kind of strange-looking indie game they could get their hands on, rumours abounded about this game or that- could THIS be hiding Frog Fractions 2? No, this one, this game HAD to be it. I wasn’t really gaming much at the time and didn’t participate in the hunt myself, in fact, I still haven’t actually played what was eventually discovered as the true Frog Fractions 2. Though I did watch the unfolding chaos of the hunt from a distance, vaguely amused.
I’d be interested to know if the Frog Fractions 2 hunt had any impact on the sales and press coverage of small indie games around that time. Not interested enough to actually look into that myself, mind you, but interested enough to remark on the possibility of looking into it.
I’m sure there’s some kind of lesson to be learned from the whole debacle, and maybe if I ever actually played Frog Fractions 2 that’s the unnecessary essay I’d be writing instead of this one. The real Frog Fractions 2 was the fun we had along the way, maybe?
But I haven’t played Frog Fractions 2. Not yet, anyway. Maybe we’ll get that rambling pile of word vomit another time. But I DID play the Game of the Decade Edition of Frog Fractions that went up on Steam- and I played the Hop’s Iconic Hat DLC that is offered with it. And wow, did I love it. And what happens when I love something? That’s right, I obsessively ponder over it over and over again until you end up with a horrifically bloated essay of ridiculous thoughts just simmering in my brain, waiting to be released. And here we are. Here we are.
There are some fairly straightforward messages contained in the story of the Hat DLC, the most obvious of which manifest itself in the character of Phil. A smug, argumentative little prick who does nothing but bad-faith argue about how this that or the other is unrealistic, pandering, too political, blah blah blah. Even spouts a few iconic right-wing douchebag lines word for word- “facts don’t care about your feelings” indeed. Fuck off, Phil. He’s the smiley, sunglasses-wearing avatar of chumps like that One Angry Gamer fellow, and does nothing but piss Hop off for the entire time he’s present.
Phil may introduce his obnoxious asshole self by complaining about Hop having a hat, but we all know what comes to mind as he talks. Anyone who pays any attention to video games has seen them over and over. The weirdos who obsessed over nutrition and workout regimens in a post apocalyptic context because they were angry that a female character was, uh, kind of muscly. Not even truly jacked, just, kind of muscly. Or people who worked themselves into a rage because the character on the box art was confirmed as a lesbian, not even in the game itself, but in some obscure piece of supplementary media. Or throwing a fit because there were tiny pride flags on a character’s desk. The list goes on.
And, well, there are things in this game that could set these same freaks into a frenzy, aren’t there? The presence of Bug Pride. The pansexual flag on October’s closet door. Gay and trans pride flags adorning Draggy’s desk- in a very similar arrangement to the pride flags in Celeste that got the peanut gallery riled up, it’s worth noting.
And hey, if Hop finds Phil nothing but irritating, maybe it’ll make it clear enough to these tools that their presence here is not wanted. Maybe they’ll actually keep their annoying mouths shut. Probably not, but we can hope.
But none of that is really what’s captured my attention. The Hat DLC shows us a Hop many years on from the events of the original game. He’s been impeached for his gross abuses of power as president (which is a thing that should happen if a president is abusing the power of their office for their own gain, funnily enough), and lives with his wife, his teen daughter, and the annoying secret service agent who enforces his presidential curfew. He’s hung up on the great adventure of his youth, constantly reliving it through both reenacting it as a show for his day job and roaming the old museum dedicated to it at night. The consequences of the choices he’s made so long ago (manifesting as the annoying secret service agent) are with him still. His job is unfulfilling, his freedom is stifled, his daughter thinks he’s lame, and Phil the annoying heckler keeps making fun of his hat. And so he seeks solace in the museum, amongst the ghosts of his glory days with his bored daughter who would rather be anywhere but here, while his wife goes out on grand adventures like becoming the Demiurge and such.
But he is suddenly thrust into another adventure and forced to confront an awful truth: he is not, in fact, the original Hop. In the depths of the office of some generically evil company or another, crates upon crates of Hop clones are stacked upon each other. The original Hop reveals he has been generating these clones, each trained to be sent forth into the world, desperate to make himself ‘cool’ again. Trying to produce a new Hop, trying to claw his way back into the spotlight and relevance he once had.
There are also other things he’s doing, strange gimmicks his company has been developing, perhaps to try to supplement the Hop project to bring himself back to relevance.
It’s hard not to think of this as a parallel to the original Frog Fractions game itself. Perhaps the developer has found himself facing some of these same problems. Maybe he sees himself in Hop (the one who is our protagonist), with nothing to his name but a single old success while everyone else moves on to other things around him. Or maybe Hop (the original one doing the cloning and all that), scrambling to regain a semblance of his old glory. I don’t know, I’m not the developer, and I haven’t talked to him about it. Or even looked up whether or not he’s discussed the Hat DLC or its messages in any detail. But it’s easy to imagine, isn’t it?
But Hop is able to leave the past behind. He’s able to let go of the shadows of his glorious adventure, and look towards the future with his wife and daughter. He’s able to accept that he is no longer in the limelight anymore, and in the final chapter of the game is perfectly content to play a supporting role to the much more interesting story of his wife as she navigates her new role of Demiurge. He leaves the traces of his old life behind, and travels to deep within the bowels of the earth so his family can be together.
It’s a nice story. We don’t need to scramble for great adventure or glory. As of the possible dialogue options says, maybe the true adventure was family all along. We can set aside the laurels of our past glories, and look to the future together.
