Game Pass has brought us many a wonderful title over the years, and the service continues to be a boon for both large and small scale productions alike. For players, having a subscription based access point to Yazuka, Halo, and even Forza games means a massive savings over potentially dropping hundreds on these landmark series. For indie developers, it’s a vector point that gets Sea of Stars a much larger recognition base, or Eastward into hands of people who otherwise may not have tried it. But it’s also a wonderful roulette system to discover something enjoyable and entertaining, and that’s how my family and I ended up with Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery.

Frog Detective is a trilogy of first-person puzzle/mystery games that work out very similar to the point-and-click adventures of yesteryear. The player is strapped into the role of Frog Detective, who, over three cases, must find out the truth behind ghosts, destruction, and corruption. You engage with a case of eccentric and cagey characters to find out the truth behind all of these mysterious events, sometimes by assisting them with finding items or delivering messages. In the end, you’re able to use your amazing crime solving expertise to find out who (or what) is at the center of the crime at hand and deliver justice once and for all!

Not a great start to his career, I must admit.

In theory, that all sounds gritty and noir and totally something in the vein of Blacksad or maybe Phoenix Wright. In actuality, Frog Detective seems to be Twin Peaks by the way of Sesame Street meets The Amazing World of Gumball. A truly inoffensive and unflappable title, Frog Detective has to engage with some of the most eccentric and bizarre anthropomorphic characters, ranging from a sea-swimming koala scientist, to a extortion-loving rhinoceros, and even an overly complimentary sloth outlaw. Each character is essential to painting the world of Frog Detective, adding more and more silliness with each exchange and additional detail they deliver unto the world.

Be prepared to utter this line many times.

Silliness, as both an identifying personality trait and a distinct flavor, is the constant of Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery. If, for some reason, you are more a person who needs both seriousness and stringent logic for your detective story, you will be utterly put off and aghast at the tonality of our Frog Detective. While there is never anything purposely goofy happening – as he does take his job quite seriously – there is an irreverent nature to everything that never dissipates, regardless of what might happen. For example, talking to the Supervisor between cases (played by a raven), the dialogue will often get off track by simple misunderstandings that evoke Laurel and Hardy in banter and exchange, with neither party getting heated in the process. Or, when engaging with the suspicious mole sheriff, Frog Detective will happily provide one hundred words of conversion to the stilted, single answers he receives.

But what if i want you to be, one eyed lion?

Broken into three different cases, you’ll never really get challenged or even need to exert a lot of effort to move forward in Frog Detective. Each time, you have the approach: keep talking to everyone, fulfill the dialogue requirements and then talk to someone else. Eventually, you’ll find an item (either on the floor or as a present from an NPC) and you’re off to the races to run items back and forth between various entities. Soon everyone will have what they need and the story will fully unfold, either with an explosion, a revelation, or a good old fashioned dance competition. As long as you have basic reading comprehension skills, you can figure out what to do and how to solve each case.

For what it’s worth Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery does show the evolution of the game series in a positive light. While the first case has a very limited UI, the second and third case incorporate a notebook which serves as both a handy inventory and a hilarious Facebook of all people involved in the investigation. You even have the opportunity to decorate your notebook with stickers in the second game (and the design carries onto the third game!) and choose who in your notebook to mark as “suspicious.” From what I can tell, this changes nothing other than you put a sticker on them in your notebook that you can also remove at any time. After all, Frog Detective isn’t faultless and will rescind his accusations when necessary.

Mary is a fantastic character and should be in the next DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3.

The third case, Corruption at Cowboy County, also brings out a scooter for you to ride around the world, and this serves as a double edged sword. On the one hand, the faster transportation and necessity to explore in order to find some items helped change up the gameplay and add some excitement. On the other, due to the way Frog Detective is modeled, it also made for some unwieldy movement that resulted in multiple swings to get to a single spot and, as a result, made the camera whip around in a bit of a stomach-churning way. My daughter needed to take a break after a few minutes of Cowboy County, which did not occur in the previous two installments.

Lastly, the soundtrack is a jazzy and spiffy thing that really captures this mock crime solving vibe in the best way. When you think of games like Gemini Rue, Truberbrook, or even Thimbleweed Park, they balance this idea of soundcrafting the world to best incorporate the feel of their level of high strangeness and inquisition.

Frog Detective really uses music to further along the personality and vibe of the Frog Detective himself. That is, someone picked up a book called “How to Sound Like a Seedy Detective Movie from the 50s” and went to town, but in the most sincere and earnest way. It lends so much validity to the commitment to the bit that I can’t help but love it. The music also changes a bit depending on the backdrop (a bit more tropical for the first case, rustic for the third) and shifts wildly into some dynamic excitement when you’re on the scooter. Yes, even when you play the bizarre and pointless (but fun) scooter-only mini game.

Seriously, I’m beginning to question how well Frog Detective does his job.

This was such an unexpected treat. I adore reading in games, even though that feels counterintuitive to the point of video games. Being swept up in visual novels is a passion of mine, so I love when I can get that safe effect elsewhere. Frog Detective is such a silly and genuinely funny read from start to finish that I didn’t even mind that it was in the first person perspective. It’s like Inspector Clouseau and Detective Drebin taught a frog everything they knew and sent him off into the world. There’s so much charm in simple exchanges that I could easily go back and pick these titles up again. I hope that fans the world over do readings of the different characters and fan voice it, if not inspire the developer to officially voice a fourth installment.  It’s not just a great game: it’s toadily delightful.

Frog Detective: the Entire Mystery is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Xbox One X.