If you are interested in game development, we'd like to share with you a little bit about where the game came from, and why we made the choices we did.

CHRISTOPHER NATSUUME, CREATIVE DIRECTOR:
Interestingly enough, Frogs in Love started as a simple game called “Pond Life” and was only the part of the game where you hopped around and shot flowers into the flower lines. At the time we were working with Encore (who we worked with on Jewels of Cleopatra, Jewels of Cleopatra 2, and Hoyle Enchanted Puzzles), and they suggested that we take the game in a more “RPG” direction – with more subgames and characters to meet, and so we took them up on it with a pretty radical change in the game design.

Sadly, somewhere along the way, they lost interest in the new idea, and then in the game in general, and we parted ways on this game. But we felt the idea remained strong, of a bit overly complex. So we simplified it out a great deal, and tried to really focus on making the subgames more interesting and fun.

As for what I would change… Not totally sure. I think it works pretty well now as it is. Maybe we stripped off a bit too much of the RPG - some of the original story was really fun. But it tended to confuse our players, who just wanted to get to the subgames. So maybe I’d leave that to what we changed it to.

ZHOU XUANMING, DESIGNER
I hopped onto the Frogs in Love bandwagon about halfway into its development.  Then, the game had just gone through massive revamps, resulting in most of the game levels being hastily pieced together in accordance to design changes.  The core design of the game was finally stabilizing when I joined the team, and it proved to be a good thing because it set a solid foundation as I went about, slowly and carefully, testing every existing level and redesigning when necessary.

Overall, it has been an extremely fun and enriching learning experience for me as a new designer.  Frogs in Love is the first game I got design credits for and I am definitely proud of what it has become in my hands, and how it has come to be this way.  The graphics are revolutionary in the casual gaming space and the art, done by Ben Wong, complimented the prowess of the engine very well.  It has been awesome working with a group of experienced developers, and I feel myself growing a lot as a designer in the process.

ALLAN SIMONSEN, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
From a technical point of view, the perhaps coolest thing was the water, and how things move on it. We layered the world and added fully dynamic water, so everything could have reflections and refractions, and canopy leaves could wave softly in the wind. Everything that moves (like the koi underwater or the leaves on the surface) make subtle waves which ripple out across the pond. The end result looks pretty neat.

BEN WONG, ARTIST
Frogs In Love has to be the biggest… if not the most massive casual game I’ve ever done to date. I mean, there’s at least 13 GAMES-IN-ONE!! The amount of art involved was… substantial, to say the least. Miraculously, the team’s pulled through and the game was up! I’d have to say one of the most interesting aspects of the game aesthetically was the water ripple technology, which really isn’t an Art-side related issue, but it’s really impressive and I am extremely thankful for Allan not having the art team animate water waves… :P

It was very rewarding in the end, as I got to do some character art illustrations, which I actually haven’t touched since 2002. Luckily I still remember how to use a pencil but darn the cost of a 2B pencil nowadays…