He may be small, but he’s no croak
Jump into the big world of a little frog in Big Hops, a 3D adventure platform game, developed and published by Luckshot Games.
As Hop, you are abducted by a crafty spirit called Diss while exploring the forest you live in with your sister. Diss wants you to help him find and gather pieces of dark energy called Dark Drip’s, and he will not take you home unless you help him. Naturally Hop distrusts Diss as he will not say what he wants the dark drips for, so Hop refuses to help.
Now stranded and needing to find your own way home, you will travel across worlds of varying terrain, including deserts, oceans and mountains, to find pieces of a broken airship that an old raccoon called Copper tells you about. Copper can fix the ship for you to sail home, but finding the parts is no easy task. Along your journey you will find people that can help you, but need your help first to overcome their various predicaments.
Playing as Hop is nice and easy, there are no enemies to fight in the game except two boss battles, so Hop’s abilities are mostly movement based. Jumping, diving through the air and limited climbing all help you to traverse the levels, but your greatest tool is your tongue. Your tongue can be used in a few different ways, to pick up objects, swing from grapple points, interact with set items like doors and catapults, and even pick locks. One of the most common item types you can pick up are the vegetables that grow on certain trees, they all have different properties, such as the chilli’s that can set things on fire (including you), mushrooms that can bounce you high in the air to reach elevated platforms and cactus plants that form a tightrope between two points. All of these and more will help you overcome many of the obstacles in your path, chief of which will be a long fall into a bottomless pit.
Falling into the depths is one of the few ways that you can lose health, and it will happen a lot. If you run out of health though you will just respawn nearby so it is not a huge concern, and you can grab food with your tongue to replenish lost health or buy it from shops with the coins you find. You can store up to five items in your backpack, so keeping one piece of food with you is a good idea but the rest of the space you will probably want to use to carry more veggies and stamina juices. Your stamina runs out quickly while climbing and has been the cause of many a fall to my death, but using stamina juice or eating when your health is already full will double your stamina temporarily. Swimming is another action that uses stamina and if you run out, you drown. Your stamina doesn’t drain quite as quickly in the water but still much faster than you would think for a frog.
There are several different shops in the game where, along with food, you can buy upgrades and cosmetic items. Here you can increase things like your health and number of backpack slots. While coins are in short supply when you find your first shop, they are not difficult to find and you can quickly run out of upgrades to buy. The costumes you can buy on the other hand are very expensive, though if you wish to change your look for a less costly method you can dye your clothes by collecting flower petals. Personally I usually like cosmetics in games but these I just didn’t find interesting, plus the wardrobes you use to change your outfits are quite scarce.
The one thing I wasn’t fond of is the other method of upgrading yourself. Throughout the world’s you will find fragments of dark drips to collect, once you have enough to form a complete drip you can speak to Diss, who pops up at regular intervals. You can trade the drip for one of two trinket stickers that he offers you and then place it on your backpack to gain the effect. These can be things like discounts in the shops, being able to eat anything and also stacking two similar items per slot. While the system itself is great, it seemed to make Hop’s refusal to help Diss a bit pointless.
As well as finding drip fragments in the wild, you can also acquire complete drips by entering dark portals that you come across and completing the obstacle challenges within.
