I had vague memories of Brandon Sheffield mentioning on the IC podcast that Frog Fractions 2 was going to be released as some sort of mystery that had to be uncovered. Since it’s been–whoa–over 3 years since FF, I decided to check in on the progress so far.
Though I don’t suggest that anyone read all 62 current pages, when the Polygon article offers a pretty good highlight reel up until December 2015. God knows what’s happened since then, though if anyone is participating or wants to read through it, I’d love to hear more highlights.
Basically, I think I agree with the conclusion of the author: I don’t think this ARG is actually a solveable puzzle that leads to a completed version of Frog Fractions 2. I think it’s more of a way to keep the community involved, as they’re working on Frog Fractions 2, and when FF2 is ready, they’ll probably use it as a platform to point to where it’s hidden.
Right now I’m mainly wondering if FF2 will have any sort of retail version or if the Kickstarter profit is the complete profit of the game. After all, pay gates are not very mysterious. Though an ARG-ish thing that actually asked you to deposit real money for Story Reasons would actually be kind of cool as a form of monetization…until KFC makes an ARG to support their new Chicken Kickers.
This could also be a Talk About ARG’s thread, btw.
When I was in a video game discussion class at Ithaca College, we had a guest lecturer who was a former soap opera lead writer who was, at the time, working for a college to make custom ARG’s to act as an alternative to mandatory gym classes. I think it was basically geocaching with an ARG skin, and involved a lot of running around campus and stuff. Still: that’s a pretty cool way to handle mandatory gym credits: way to meet the nerds half-way.
I can’t remember anything about this dude other than that, though I think he was actually visiting the class because he had worked on computer games and stuff. I dunno.
The kickstarter info addresses that, actually: there’s gotta be a retail version of something else that’ll be sold. Should you discover that it’s Frog Fractions 2 and you already paid for Frog Fractions 2, you’ll get a refund for the something else.
pretty sure that FF2 is that little guy who talks to you when you order a Domino’s pizza. I think there’s more to be seen there but i can’t figure out what order to click on the toppings
Like, once I find a restaurant I really like, I’ll order the same thing from there every night for months and months.
This tends to happen naturally to me, because I’m pretty precious about food; and it’s easy for me to get hung up on what to order and to almost get paralyzed with the choices and the sort of unknowable questions about whether I’ll like it or not. I’d rather not waste thinking about dinner every night, so it’s easier just to eat the same thing I love over and over.
But if you just decided to eat Dominos every night, you could self-impose that toppings rule and ensure constant variety and exploration.
Actually, if I were going to do it, I’d want to normalize my budget. So I’d assign a set number of toppings to each day of the week, rather than starting with none and then adding and subtracting as I go. So, Mondays would start as every single topping variation, and become every double topping variation once the single toppings are exhausted. This stabilizes your dinner budget pretty well and avoids the issue of having a much higher pizza budget in month three than in month one.
Frog Fractions was a nice series of progressively weirder surprises, a great little metajoke. I feel like an ARG is the only place it can go without feeling diminished. Like i can’t imagine a “true” sequel being anything but disappointing. Surprises are no fun when you know they’re coming!
Yeah, totally. When I heard he had hinted that the new game would have to be “found,” I was glad that he was thinking about how to build the concept of the game.
I think the way to do it without making it an ARG is just to hide things in really esoteric places or have so much weird, recursive content that it can still feel surprising.
nobody will ever be able to take away the feelings and faces i made playing Frog Fractions on a laptop, under the covers, at 2 in the morning one night
i heard that Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 is a potential FF2, and it makes sense based on what i’ve seen of it. I wouldn’t be suprised if maybe there’s a FF2 at the end of Desert Golf
My ultimate sadness was trying to show my brother FF probably a little too late at night. He couldn’t beat the first part, so he was just like, “Look, I get it: irony. But why do I have to keep playing this?”
