This really took me back to playing games in an arcade. Great voice acting! The music, sfx, and art were also good and fit the style of game really well. I appreciated the range of accessibility options and that some were specific to the game/performance, too. I don't feel like it fits the theme at all, though. I barely used the flashlight, either, as missing the frogs was more costly than not opening a chest.
Overall, very fun and nostalgic. Congrats on making such a polished submission!
Thanks for playing and for the kind words! I'm quite happy with how the audio and visuals came out for this one! And I agree with your critique, though I don't think I realized how off-theme the game had become until the last day of the jam, since my initial idea was explicitly based on the theme my intent with it was still there. As I was working on it and trying to find the fun in it, I think I lost the plot a bit and nearly all the things that were obvious matches to the theme had disappeared from the game. It can be so hard to realize that's happening sometimes!
Basically, the flashlight makes a frog in each wave signal that they have the key, and the keys open chests filled with bugs that signal Froglet's location. I had another half-baked system in mind where you would help the frogs signal to each other how to avoid predators, but that very quickly became out of scope haha. I decided the game seemed like it would more fun overall if you didn't get punished for catching the "wrong" frog (something I intended to add later as part of a difficulty progression), and I ran out of time so the Froglet pickup ended up in a chest just like other loot, without player-facing information that monitored the connection between finding Froglet in a chest and collecting the bugs. I think I ended up with something that was a bit more fun, overall, at the cost of really losing track of keeping the theme front and center. So yeah, I think I'd actually give myself a one or a two on theme for this jam, even though the "game" that lived in my head before I started was closer to a four or a five. Oh well.
And I try to be strict with myself for not making adjustments after everything seems to be working well, but oh gosh did I want to break my rule on the last day and significantly increase the point penalty for missing a chest. I TOTALLY agree that missing frogs was the only thing that even slightly felt like a problem in the final product hahaha. There's always next time! I almost reached out to you to see if you still needed help with your audio montage but decided to just stick with my own game this time. Would love to do a jam with you sometime in the future!
