Surreal characters are a staple of gaming, but Ribbit King may be the first game to introduce a walking, talking picnic basket. This is not the game's only oddity. You play a sheep-like thing that, with the aid of the talking picnic basket, must win a tournament of frolf to get an energy source to save his home planet. With its quirky take on the game of golf and sense of humor, Ribbit King is both a unique and amusing game, but not everyone is up for the amount of time it takes to actually complete a game.
Frolf is basically a mutant version of golf. Instead of hitting a ball with a club you catapult frogs using hammers. The goal of a game of frolf isn't necessarily to reach the hole in the shortest amount of strokes, but to rack up points by hitting gimmicks on the course. Every course has a theme and several gimmick gimmicks. Bubbles that are popped by flying frogs and flies that give you points and recharge your frogs appear on most maps. There are also trampolines, ponds, rivers, slides, and escalators. Most maps will have one or two hazards that can hurt your frog unless you hit a button at the right time, but will give you a big bonus if you succeed. Hitting several gimmicks in a row allows you make a combo and your points earned for each hazard are multiplied as your combo grows.
A game of frolf is about 4 holes long. This sounds pretty speedy but it is not. Ribbit King is a huge time investment because there is no way to skip watching your frog as he jumps around the course, racking up gimmicks. Worse yet, there's no way to skips your opponents round so you have to watch exactly what his frog does as well. This gives you about 30 seconds of action -- viewing the course, making a decision, and whacking your frog -- to about 2 minutes of inactivity. It gets excessive after a while and frolf ends up being a game to play in short bursts to pass the time rather than something to beat as quickly as possible.
The world of Ribbit King is an odd one. Your world is running low on the energy source that powers the entire planet, Ribbitopium. Your King summons you quite unceremoniously and tells you to go find some at any cost. So naturally you join the frolf championship. The wackiness doesn't end there. Every person you face off against has their own cutscene introduction including a militant panda who attempts to turn Ribbit King into a fighting game and a very lazy fish princess. The courses themselves try to make sense given their themes. On Ribbitopia, a topical world, trampolines are spider webs and most of your hazards are things like mammoths who want to crush your tiny frog.
Collecting is actually a large element of the gameplay in Ribbit King. At the end of each game of frolf the unapologetically fruity referee awards the player with the entire total of all points earned during the game. These are spent on the FUV (Frolf Utility Vehicle) to get power ups like food, wings to make your frog fly farther, and other game-changing goodies. After you first beat a character they will also offer to sell you things, and each course has gimmicks that give you power ups as well. Add this to collectable bottlecaps that you gain when you defeat people, and collectable frogs, and there is a strong collection element to the game.
Ribbit King is a game with a great sense of humor and a very lighthearted and silly concept. It has a gentle learning curve, making it great for kids at the beginning, but steadily grows more challenging until playing through a round with no attempt to win, just to see how many points your opponent will rack up, becomes common place. The real problem with the game is the amount of time it wants you to invest. Rounds of frolf simply take a long time. If you are looking for a light, easy to learn time waster with a surreal sense of humor, Ribbit King is for you.
