Teenage Tadpole ‘Tecting – Frog Detective: The Complete Mystery Review

Developer: Worm Club | Platform Played on: PS5 |

Playtime: 4:05 | Platinum: 3:50

Originally released as three games, the Complete Mystery groups together all 3 adventures of the #2 Detective, suspected Gay Icon, Frog Detective. Along with a quirky group of side characters, you’ll tackle a haunted island, a mysterious village and the Old West, all in compact packages.

These games, like many in the wave of more wholesome titles, relies heavily on its dialogue. Frog Detective is one of the better examples of this, with dialogue being silly and amusing – unrelentingly positive in a way that you can’t help but smile. Unlike other similar games, I never felt the game dip into trying to be overly funny and self-aware about it. Frog Detective is an optimistic guy, and it shines through in all of his dialogue.

Something I wasn’t expecting was for each of the three cases to have a through narrative which culminates in the third case. When these games were released individually, the cliffhangers would have to endure a 1 year then 3 year gap. This is not a story that can justify 4 years (Which is no slight against the developers – small team, COVID, no blame to be passed around), but as one short narrative delivered in one title, it’s pretty good.

Three different games being rolled into one package does hampen the gameplay ever so slightly. Case 3 gives the player a scooter to navigate around the slightly larger play area of the Wild West. On the one hand it feels sort of like a natural evolution, but on the other hand I feel like it highlights the discrepancy between Case 1+2 and 3.

You get what you put into these games, as at their core they are no more than fetch quest/scavenger hunts –You are given a task, involving items you need. Need item? Talk to NPC who needs different Item, give NPC item and receive another item – most of the time the item makes sense, sometimes it’s a wee bit arbitrary (To its credit, the game does make fun of this in the third case when you receive a shovel from a photographer).

If you allow yourself to enjoy the cute visuals and entertaining dialogue, then you’ll find a lot to enjoy with Frog Detective. If you can’t look past simplistic gameplay, no amount of charm in the world will convince you otherwise.