Colourful little frogs with content expressions lounging around in paddling pools, sitting on froggy-themed slides, or hanging ove☂r the sides of wheelbarrows, all depicted in a charming hand-drawn 2D art style. What more could I want from my next cosy adventure? Sometimes, you just need to relax with a comfort game that doesn’t require too much energy and that you can enjoy at your own pace.

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is an indie game I’ve had my eye on for a while, enjoying the multitude of delightful froggy scenes regularly posted on Twitter by the developer, and after checking out the 🦹demo, I wasn’t disappointed.

Kamaeru is a farming sim with an emphasis on preserving nature. At first glance, it’s just aဣ cute little froggy game. You’ll spend♔ your time between your sanctuary and the wetlands, helping to restore the latter as part of the narrative and ensuring you have a biodiversity balance in order for the area to transform and flourish. It’s an interesting spin on an old classic. While the sanctuary still lets you plop down adorable decorations for the frogs as you see fit, in line with similar titles, the wetlands require more thought so you don’t upset the precious ecosystem.

The wetlands are where you gather food for your precious hoppy friends and resources to craft different items. Producing these requires completing little minigames. For the demo, I experienc🦩ed the cooking minigame, making jam and lollipops by mixing ingredients, setting the light to reflec𒀰t correctly to heat the oven, and tapping buttons at the right time to maximise the item outcome.

Produce you make can then be sold, allowing you to purchase more furn🍌iture and features for your sanctuary and the wetlands to continue building the perfect froggy paradise. As🗹 you improve the wetlands, you’ll unlock new biomes, which in turn unlock new plants and strategies to deal with. Anything for my froggies. Yes, that is my new favourite word.

Wherever you go, wetlands or sanctuary, you won’t be alone. The frogs will come to visit and delight you with their little smiles as they sit in the pond or make good use of your hand-chosen decorations. The frogs were the big draw for me. Adorableness aside, the game has different types of frogs, giving them various colourations and patterns and adding a collectability element as you try ꦿto tame different ones by feeding them. This is exactly the kind of gameplay I love.

To sweeten it even further for players like myself who love hoarding digital creatures, you can also breed frogs. Each frog has three traits: its pattern style and two different colours. When breeding, 🍒you play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe to lock in your desired traits. There were a🎀 few different types of frogs in the demo, but the full game boasts over 500 to collect. Challenge accepted.

The demo offered a short but sweet taste of Kamaeru and has already ignited the desire to collect ‘em all in me. Creating your own little sanctuary with different fur🐈nishings that you can customise and recolour, to craft a little haven for your hoppy friends is the kind of gentle, cosy game I need this year to have a little zen time.

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge has rec♓ently announced a new release window of mid-2024, and the demo will be available next week as part of Steam꧂ Next Fest. It’s available to .