Pocket Frogs is a life simulation video game developed and published by NimbleBit for the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. It was released as a free game with additional in-app purchases. The aim is to complete the 'Froggydex' by earning money to breed and sell virtual frogs.
Gameplay
When the game begins, the player owns two frogs, a Cocos Bruna Anura and a Green Folium Anura, one regular habitat, a nursery habitat, and 1000 coins. In the pond view, players control their frog, eating flies to tame it, which makes it happy, breeding with other frogs players find, and finding presents. Presents include various breeds of frogs, potions, stamps and coins. The potions and stamp count are located in upper left corner of the screen, the XP is located in the upper right corner of the screen, the coin count is located at the lower left corner of the screen, and the back/menu button is located at the lower right corner of the screen. Besides taming the frog, eating flies increases their happiness and, if they are not yet mature, can lessen the time left to maturation. The size of the flies vary and the bigger the fly the happier the frog. The biggest of the flies also add to the player's current XP points. The player receives approximately 10% of the frog’s value in experience points when they are tamed and it takes 3x the rarity of the frog in flies to tame them. Frogs can also be gifted via Game Center. The game is set in real time, which means that it may take up to 2 days for a frog to hatch and grow into an adult. The player levels up by earning a set amount of XP which increases with every level. To level up the player needs to get the required number of XP, or experience points, located in the top right corner during game play, to automatically level up to the next level. Every week in the Weekly Sets, the player has to own all the frogs needed in the Weekly Sets. If the player decides to see the newest weekly set, the old one is lost, until the player has done all the sets newer sets. The player gets rewarded potions and stamps for every weekly set done. Missions require a specific type of frog to get a reward of coins, potions or stamps.
Species
Species of frog are sorted out by name from their main colour, then their subsidiary colour, and then the species's name. For example, a Green Folium Anura, a Blue Aurum Zebrae or a Cocos Tingo Symphonia.There are 23 main and 16 subsidiary colours.
Unlocking Frogs
Level 1-4 frogs are labeled "common", level 5-8 frogs are labeled "rare", level 9-12 frogs are labeled "endangered", and level 13+ frogs are labeled "legendary". Frogs unlock slowly as you level up, and can be obtained in numerous ways. Frogs leveled 1-8 can be bought daily from the FrogMart with coins. Frogs leveled 9 and up can be bought from the FrogMart with potions when available, gifted, or found at the Pond.
History
In Version 1.2, on July 12, 2011, new species Bulbus, Trivium, Geminus, Orbis, Signum, Gyrus, Vinaceus, Persona, Bulla, and Obaro were added into the Froggydex. Until Version 2.0, on 1 November 2012, there were only frog species up to Level 16. Plus+ Network was removed in the same update. The only way to trade frogs from then on was to use Game Center. On September 24, 2015, the Android version of Pocket Frogs, which was ported by Mobage, was removed, because Mobage had removed their game servers. Other games, like Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower, were affected by this switch. There are no plans for porting it from Apple Store and re-releasing it and the data from Android cannot be transferred to iOS. Nimblebit announced that future sequels or major update may include re-releasing the game into Android. On 6 September 2017, a beta version of Pocket Frogs for Android was released onto the Play Store by Nimblebit. Data from the mobage version is not recoverable. On 24 September 2017, Nimblebit released Pocket Frogs version 3.0.3, adding capability for IOS 11, but removing most features, including Catalog, racing, and mini games. In addition, Glass and Chroma frogs became difficult for players to obtain. Nimblebit stated they may add some or all features back in future updates, but didn't have plans to do so at that time. On 07 February 2020, NimbleBit released update 3.1.1. The update added several new habitat backgrounds and decorations, new breeds of frogs, and brought back racing, catalogs, and the features removed in update 3.0.3.
