A 3D frog game: flick your tongue, charge HYPER, beat the giant toads

What kind of frog game is this?

Hyper Toad is a 3D frog game where your tongue is the only weapon: you drag to hop around a pond, flick the tongue at bugs, fill a HYPER meter and use it to fight giant toad bosses. It runs for 50 levels, plus an Endless Hunt survival mode, and the first 10 levels play in your browser.

If you are looking for a frog game, it helps to know which kind this is. Plenty of frog games are lane crossers in the Frogger tradition, where you dodge traffic, or single-hop timing games. Hyper Toad is neither. It is a score-chasing arcade hunt seen from above, where the question each second is which bug to go for next, not how to avoid a car. You are choosing targets, positioning yourself and committing to a flick. It is also not a long frog adventure game with a story to follow: the toad is a cartoon hero with skins to collect, but each level is a short arcade round of catching, dodging and fighting.

One tongue, one decision

Movement is a drag anywhere on the screen. There is no jump button and no aiming stick, so where you stand is how you aim. Steer close to a bug and your toad snaps it up by itself. For bugs a little farther off there is one Tongue button: it snaps the tongue out at the nearest bug in reach, and if a Giant Toad or a monstrous bug is close, the same button strikes it instead. The whole screen also works as a button: a quick tap on empty ground fires the tongue.

Four kinds of bug drift around the pond, wasps, spiders, bees and butterflies, and each level names one of them as the target and asks you to collect a set number. Your tongue catches whichever bug is nearest, but only the target kind counts toward the goal, so look for the right one before you flick. Bugs also back away from the toad as you close in, so steer into them rather than chasing from behind. Tap while nothing is in range and the tongue goes out empty, but the empty flick is not wasted: it gives you a short burst of extra speed.

Charge HYPER, then fight

Every bug you eat fills the HYPER meter, and a full meter is the heart of the game. HYPER lasts several seconds. While it is up your auto-catch range widens and your tongue hits a Giant Toad for double damage. Without HYPER your tongue still hurts a giant, just at half the strength. The sensible habit is to hold your big hits for when HYPER is active, and to spend it where the pond is busy.

The giant toads chase you, and they do not just walk into you. They crouch, lunge toward where you were standing and then recover tired, so a sidestep beats the lunge. You have a handful of hearts, and a boss hit costs one.

Five giant toads across 50 levels

There are five types of Giant Toad: Warty, Bigjaw, Swift, Boulder and Venom. They differ in size, speed and toughness. Swift is small and fast, Boulder is huge and slow and takes a lot of hits, and the others sit in between. Early levels send one giant at you. Later levels bring more of them, up to four at once, along with monstrous bug chasers that you have to deal with while still collecting your target. The difficulty climbs across all 50 levels on a formula, so each one asks a little more than the last.

A surge also hits periodically during a long level: a burst of extra bugs and a giant that is briefly enraged and faster. It keeps a long level from going flat.

Streaks, coins and upgrades

Catching bugs builds a FEAST streak, a multiplier on the coins you earn. It climbs faster when you eat the level’s target bug and more slowly when you eat an off-target one, it fades if you stop eating for a few seconds, and a hit from a boss cuts it in half, so there is a reason to break off before a giant lands.

Coins buy toad skins, including recolours such as Jade Toad, Amber Toad and Violet Toad, and permanent upgrades to hop speed, maximum hearts, tongue reach and how long HYPER lasts. A small buddy frog follows you and now and then catches a nearby bug. It helps with your count, but it never fills your HYPER meter or fights the giants for you.

Endless Hunt and missions

Endless Hunt is a survival mode beside the campaign. Waves keep escalating, and when you die your score is the attempt, so the loop is to try again and beat it. Daily missions reset each day and mix fixed goals, such as catching bugs and defeating giants, with a couple of rotating ones, and weekly missions have bigger targets and bigger coin rewards.

Play the frog game online, then get all 50 levels

You can try the game in a browser with no account and nothing to install. The browser version plays levels 1 to 10 and a few waves of Endless Hunt. After that it points you to the frog game app, where all 50 levels and all five giant toads are unlocked.

Is it free?

It is free to play, and there is nothing to buy with real money. The game does show ads, and one can appear after you complete a level. In the app you can also choose to watch a short ad for some extra coins. The app plays offline after the first launch: open it once online and it keeps working with no signal.