I love Bonte Avond. It’s a Dutch indie studio whose games elegantly walk a line between being competent, polished projects and recognizing where it is worthwhile, or even hilarious, to cut corners. I first fell in love with Bonte Avond’s work via 2022’s Once Upon a Jester, which won the IGF Best Student Game Award in 2024, so it was a given that I immediately leap on their latest: Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime.
Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is a narrative adventure about a bear dressed as a frog who’s having a rough go of it lately. Her neighbors imply she’s been somewhat of a shut-in recently, and when her friends try to celebrate her “bearday” with gifts and cake, the local beach bully shows up and ruins everything. His thievery of one of her gifts, a mysterious and possibly magical seashell, kicks off a quest that sends Bonnie and her pals out into the world to find more shells like it and, hopefully, save the imperiled game of “Frogtime.”
In Bonnie’s world, everything from petty disputes to world-shaking conflicts is solved via Frogtime, a 1v1 strategy game featuring, yes, frogs. It takes place on a 9×3 grid with each player taking a side and placing three frogs of their choice down in the first column on their side to start. The goal is to move your frogs to the opponent’s side of the grid so they can do “damage” to the other player’s damage board, eventually reducing it to 0 so you can win the game. Players take it in turns to move frogs one space at a time, but different frogs have different abilities that may allow them to leap over other frogs, push enemy frogs back or friendly frogs forward, and so forth.
Different opponents will use different types of frogs and strategies—there are offensive frogs, defensive ones, controllers, and so forth—as well as require different amounts of damage to finish the game. At first, your own deck will only include mediocre frogs that can just jump and move, but you’ll earn a coconut-themed currency from winning games that will let you buy more frogs via different types of gachapon “Toad Bags.”
If you hate gacha mechanics though, please don’t fret. Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is a very gentle, self-contained, narrative game that isn’t trying to irritate you by making you grind for better frogs. Its gacha pulls are exceedingly generous, and the randomness of them mostly serves to help vary up the kinds of decks you might build in a given game as well as encourage you to play Frogtime with Bonnie’s friends more often, since many of the matches are actually optional. I didn’t need the incentive, personally. I didn’t come to Bonte Avond’s latest expecting a highly competent little strategy game, but that’s exactly what I got. Frogtime is fun. I like collecting more frogs (though I wish I had more storage space for them), I like leveling up my self-worth by winning matches, and I like putting stupid little hats on my favorite frogs to make them look sillier.
What I did come to Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime for, and got in spades, is the goofy, earnest writing and acting. The actual story of Bonnie Bear is sort of nonsensical, but it doesn’t matter. The writing is genuinely funny throughout, full of dumb little jokes that often made me scare the cat, I was laughing so hard.
Those gags are delivered by a combination cast of actual, professional performers and the devs themselves, but the actual professionalism on or not on display at any given moment is sort of moot. Every actor seems to have been encouraged to be silly or even over-the-top ridiculous with their characters’ voices, which pairs beautifully with the playful writing and absurd character designs. Bonte Avond also, as in its previous games, frequently leaves in flubbed takes of certain line reads to hilarious effect:
Also in longstanding Bonte Avond tradition, Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is a musical. The studio proper is made up of two musicians, so of course they’ve written a bunch of songs to be performed throughout the story by the various characters. In most song scenes, you’ll be given an instrument you can use to play along with a few button prompts however and as much as you like, and your notes will genuinely line up with what everyone else is doing so that it all sounds all right. I love these little musical interludes, and I especially love them for having no stakes. A complex minigame here would force me to focus in a way that would take me out of the enjoyment of the song, but just watching the performance without participation would probably bore me a little. As it is, I feel like I’m still a part of the scene, and can enjoy it alongside everyone else in it.
What really works about the combination of all this for me is the total, unapologetic sincerity of Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime. Everyone just seems like they’ve having such a good time that I can’t help but have a good time with them. The little mistakes and rough edges are just as much a part of Bonnie Bear as all its best bits, and the confidence with which both are put on display gives the game an earnestness that’s rare and lovely to see. Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime brings the energy of a bunch of college improv students with a guitar and a costume chest riffing in the green room, inviting you to come in, put on a silly hat, and sing along. You should take them up on that, and you can now: it’s out on PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.
