Okay, so we went into Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery expecting a gritty neo-noir time of it. With grit. And crime. And neo-noir. Just look at that game art above! It just reeks of grittiness.

What we got instead was a trilogy of games by Grace Bruxner and Thomas Bowker that are very funny, warped, and a lot of silly fun.

Throw into the mix a great deal of mystery solving and you’ve got yourself a winner here, froggy!

Giggle Your Way Through Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (now with extra ribbits)

To be CRYSTAL CLEAR on this The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective was the first entry in the series. That launched in November 2018. Two more entries followed in 2019 and 2022.

Now, all three have just been bundled together and re-released as The Entire Mystery. That lot came out in November 2023 and is available on all consoles (you can get all three parts separately on Steam at super cheap price).

The game starts with Frog Detective alone in a room.

Frog Detective gets a call from their supervisor, who helpfully informs the frog of a new case. It’s at this point you realise this is a comedy game and a funny one, too. It says a lot we’d chuckled and laughed at the clever, silly dialogue boxes multiple times within 10 minutes.

The fact the game is so utterly ridiculous endeared itself to us instantly (you may have noticed we’re fond of that sort of thing… see the site name).

Everything is based on bizarre whodunnits.

For example, in the first case (The Haunted Island) you investigate a ghost causing a ruckus on a small island. You head out there with your magnifying glass to discover a bunch of eccentric animals hanging out.

You must question them and piece together the mystery, although their peculiar ranting makes for an amusing time of it.

As soon as you meet the lobster Larry and his paranoid outbursts, that’s when we knew this one was for us.

The other two mysteries you have to solve are The Case of the Invisible Wizard and Corruption at Cowboy County. And for the latter, of boy, you’ve got this sort of action going down!

The neo-noir element is kind of slapped on through the soundtrack for humorous effect (you might have noticed the game doesn’t take itself very seriously).

It reminds us of the classic adventure game Grim Fandango (1998).

Players are looking at about four hours of gameplay across the three titles. The Haunted Island, for example, takes about an hour.

It’s that breezy, whimsical running time that makes Frog Detective so accessible. But that’s complemented massively by the humour.

The game is cute and hilarious and, well, you really can’t go wrong with that as a combination.

Chuck in some bizarre puzzle solving and you’ve got a charm offensive that’s almost impossible to refuse. Ribbit to this one, you’d be hopping mad to miss out on it.

In fact, you’ll be much hoppier with it in your life. 🐸