As I’ve stated many times before, life is pretty tough when you’re trying to make a splash in the Nintendo Switch eShop with a platformer. Even removing the likes of Mario from the picture, there are still an abundance of high-quality, tight, and well-designed games in the space for all skill levels. So, if you’re a new kid on the block you’d better be doing something right to make a positive impression.

Froggie - A Retro Platformer, on the surface at least gets quite a number of things right, even if visually it has adopted a very minimalist monochrome look that may immediately scare some folks away who are expecting a modern game to be more of a looker. In terms of the overall level designs, as you make your way through its series of relatively short and sweet stages (which are a plus in my book) you’ll see a fair amount of variety, though also nothing groundbreaking either. In terms of the challenge level, most of the time strong fundamentals and general experience should serve most action veterans pretty well, but it can definitely get tricky.

That is, unfortunately, where some of the problems lie though. The higher the bar for precision the stage design sets, the more tight and responsive the game’s controls need to be in order to provide the best experience. Sadly, in terms of precision the game falls a bit short, with a pretty floaty feel, especially when it comes to bouncing off of enemies, so since there’s no benefit to killing them overall you’re better off simply avoiding them when possible. One positive is that at least the stages tend to be on the short side, and those that are a bit more involved at least have checkpoints so you won’t tend to lose much progress when you die. Still, when you’ve got games out there like Super Meat Boy and a few others setting the gold standard for expectations in performance, if you’re asking people to pull off some crazy maneuvers you’d better be sure the control side is appropriately up to snuff.

So what we have here is an admittedly very budget-friendly platformer that does many things right, while coming up a bit short in some key areas. In terms of the value proposition that still gives it some appeal for hardcore action fans looking for a challenge, you’d just need to set your expectations for needing to roll with the punches where the controls are concerned. For more casual players, I’d say the appeal is a little more limited as there are more approachable budget offerings out there that won’t be as potentially frustrating.