Earlier today Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hermen Hulst announced that a new studio had joined the PlayStation family. TeamLFG is a group of Bungie ex-pats who seem to be reviving a project that started at their former company, along with developers who worked on such games as League of Legends, Fortnite, and Roblox. And even though TeamLFG introduced themselves with a statement explaining their mission, most people seem hung up on one tiny detail—and it involves frogs.
In that statement TeamLFG explains their new studio’s name. It stands for “Looking For Group,” which represents the studio’s focus on multiplayer games driven by “friendship, community, and belonging.” They plan to make action games that are “immersive multiplayer worlds… that players can learn, play, and master for countless hours.” And their first game, which is team-based, looks to a number of co-op and competitive-minded genres for inspiration—including MOBAs, fighting games, platformers… and something they call “frog-type games.”
I don’t know if it needs to be said that there isn’t really a commonly referred to genre known as “frog-type games.” Most people will probably think of Frogger when they hear that name, but Frogger is pretty definitively a single-player game; I don’t even see how one could make a team-based Frogger. There is one largely forgotten game from the earliest days of the medium that old-timers might be reminded of, though, that’s both a multiplayer game and one that didn’t seem to have much influence on subsequent games—meaning it could be ripe for rediscovery by a studio looking for something that feels news and innovative.
I knew it as Frogs and Flies, which is what it was called on the Atari 2600. That was a port of an Intellivision game called Frog Bog, which Mattel seemed to have lifted almost entirely from an earlier arcade game made by Sega/Gremlin called Frogs. (You can find Frogs and Flies in one of the expansion packs for the excellent Atari 50 compilation.) All three games have the same basic premise: two frogs sit on lily pads in a small pond, jumping back and forth and trying to eat as many flies as possible before it gets too dark. Whoever eats the most flies wins. You could play against a friend or against the computer, but it always required two frogs, and it was built entirely around two of the three things frogs are known for: hopping and long tongues. (Perhaps a modern version could introduce a mechanic based on that third frog property, giving people warts.)
Now, the odds of Sony rushing to pick up a laid-off team of devs working on a cancelled project inspired by a very basic game nobody under the age of 45 has ever heard of seems pretty unlikely. And nothing about Destiny, Halo, or Fortnite resembles the game I will always think of as Frogs and Flies. But I would be genuinely excited if this is what TeamLFG is working on—not because I’m some nostalgia-addled grandpa who likes to recognize things, but because so much of what makes Frogs and Flies memorable would feel even more unique and special today.
Long before “immersion” became an overused marketing term, Frogs and Flies tried to strip away the barriers between its world and the player’s. There’s no title screen, no music, not even any camera cuts or perspective changes. There’s simply two pads, two frogs, and the lushest pond possible on 1980 technology. Instead of a timer, the screen changes from day to night, its background growing darker until both frogs suddenly hop away off-screen during the middle of the night, ending the game. The only on-screen elements that aren’t a part of the game world itself are the scores above each lily pad—you get one point per fly swallowed—and a small, final “The End” graphic pulled on-screen by a flickering firefly at the conclusion of every game. Unlike so many games at the time and, somehow, still today, it wasn’t a generic outer space battle, war game, or fantasy adventure, but a simple slice of real-life nature that could be as relaxing and low stakes as you wanted it to be, or as stressful and high-pitched as any game of Combat. (I’ll let you guess how it was played in our household with three boys.) It was something truly different, and even with the medium growing to encompass so many other types of play in the four decades since, it would still stand out as a thoroughly unique game.
Perhaps this is what TeamLFG means when they say they’re inspired by “frog-type games”?
I’m sure it isn’t. I’m sure developers of big-budget, very modern war games aren’t pivoting to pastoral nature games, even if head-to-head competition is baked into it. And I’m sure Sony wouldn’t go out of its way to pick up a project cancelled by Bungie if it was a spiritual successor to an unloved anomaly from over 40 years ago. I don’t think Frogs and Flies could be turned into a team-based, co-op game without ruining the simplicity that makes it work in the first place. But when I see the words “frog-type game”—and when I see the confusion and consternation of other game critics and outlets who don’t know what that could mean—I think of one thing: Frogs and Flies. (Well, two things: Frogger and then Frogs and Flies.) And as unlikely as it would be, I love the idea of hotshot devs from the biggest companies in gaming racking their brains over modernizing a game as obscure and gentle as this one. It’s a shame Frogs and Flies had no lasting impact on the medium, but it’s never too late for studios to start drawing on it for inspiration.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.
