The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game cracks the case today
Ghost Science is the best kind of science
It's not easy being green, unless you're a semi-famous frog detective, in which case it's pretty chill. Released today, The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game is the longest game title I've typed today and also an endearingly daft, cute little hour-long-ish first person adventure by Grace Bruxner. A sloth named Martin lives on an island, and can't sleep because it's probably haunted, but the ghost scientists he hired can't find anything. So he's hired a frog detective instead, who is a detective of many things, not just frogs. There's a trailer below, okay?
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game has one joke - delivering an extremely silly situation full of jokes (which are all part of the joke) completely straight, usually with a vacant, froggy smile. There's not much interactivity here, beyond dialogue trees and simple item-swap puzzles, but that's okay, as anything fiddly or demanding would ruin the entirely relaxed pacing of its humour. You just meander between characters, getting into increasingly silly conversations and maybe getting closer to uncovering the ghost secret. You probably will. Frog Detective seems good at this.
As a detective, you're armed with a magnifying glass, which I'm sure is very useful for seeing small things, but everything here is big and chunky so it's just funny to use it to stare at people with. I can't rightly call this a review as I've not finished it yet, but will probably do so immediately after writing this. I can say that I'm having a lovely time so far, and have had to stifle a few laughs, so as to not wake up sleeping family. This is a good thing to buy if you like cute, funny things, and I hope there are more (and potentially longer) cases for Frog Detective to go on in the future.
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game is still a pretty long title that I should be copy-pasting instead of typing every time. It's also out now on Steam and Itch (which gives you a Steam key anyway) for £3.59/€3.59/$4.49. You should also look at the Frog Blog on its official page for some deep Frog Detective extended universe lore.