Froglike, in my opinion, meets most of the criteria for a near-perfect mobile game: it’s easy to play with one hand in portrait mode; it can be played for a few spare minutes here and there as well as for long, focused sessions; it has a progression system where you’re always working on something meaningful, even if you have a few “oh, I’m going to die” turns; and it has the eternal “easy to play, but hard to master” cliche. Froglike tries to answer the question, “What if Frogger was a roguelike?” and it succeeds, blending fun action gameplay with a solid progression system and roguelike elements. The goal of each level is to get to a large special lily pad, which grows in number as you stay on it, reminiscent of the land-grabbing mode of a multiplayer game. The point of playing Froglike is to constantly avoid getting killed by trying to stay on the big lily pad long enough to activate the next level. Each level consists of a grid with randomly placed floor tiles, also known as lilies, and your nameless frog hero can move to any of these tiles using cardinal points. “Standing still” and “dodging a constant barrage of attacks from all directions” are diametrically opposed goals, and it’s this back-and-forth movement that makes the Toad game so much fun. It takes a few turns before everything falls into place, but when it does, Froglike is highly addictive, and since it’s free, there’s no reason not to try it. When the water lily reaches a certain number, a warp appears and you move on to the next level, pausing briefly to select a random bonus. When Jimjum Studios announced their new game Froglike and said it was a roguelike about a frog, I was thrilled with the title alone. In places where only water separates parts of the level, tree trunks roll and, if you have the right time, you can use them to cross these water channels. Where there are no lilies, there is water, and even if you are a frog, you won’t want to jump in the water. The game has lots of cool power-ups that you can unlock and improve, as well as lots of cool skins for your nameless frog hero. When Froglike officially released on iOS and Android this week, I couldn’t wait to see if the gameplay would live up to its ridiculous name. There’s also a multiplier effect: the longer you stay on the lily without interrupting, the faster your score grows. There is no IAP in the game, only video ads for doubling rewards or respawning after a kill and random intermediate ads, so everything is earned by the game, and the ads are easy enough to ignore, although an IAP to remove them would be greatly appreciated. These items are unlocked by passing certain stages or with “crowns,” which are the currency of the game.