Abstract
- Frog Sqwad is a slapstick puzzle-platformer the place up to 8 gamers can change into foolish frogs with sticky tongues.
- Have a look behind the scenes of this enjoyable, friendslop romp with developer Panic Stations, and learn how the thought got here to life.
- Frog Sqwad is heading to Xbox Collection X|S, Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud in 2026, and also will be out there with Xbox Game Cross.
Once we fashioned Panic Stations in June 2025, we didn’t need to spend years in pre-production. We had a aim to launch our first sport inside 12 months. We wished to transfer quick. Having labored collectively beforehand, we jumped straight into improvement. Our mission was easy: Maximize enjoyable per minute. To maintain that momentum, everybody at Panic Stations is hands-on. We’re all within the engine, breaking issues, making them higher, breaking them once more after which discovering success!
We began work on Frog Sqwad nearly instantly. We shortly found that frogs are the final word platforming protagonists. Their tongues even have a shocking quantity of makes use of. They can be utilized as grappling hooks for verticality, swinging for momentum, catapults for launching teammates, interacting with objects, and, most significantly, kissing your folks.
Our Design Director, Joe Walsh, began by specializing in the texture of our character and controls. After the fundamentals, he explored mechanics for gamers to work collectively in enjoyable methods. The extra we leaned into the tongue physics, the extra hilarious the multiplayer interactions grew to become. It felt like the right match to mix 3D puzzle platforming with a friendslop extraction sport.
While many extraction friendslop video games lean into horror and darker aesthetics, our Artwork Director, Dan Hoang went the other way. We love these video games, however we thought there was additionally room for one thing extra lighthearted, goofy, and vibrant. With this in thoughts, we set out to make Frog Sqwad extremely saturated, daring, and memorable. Dan established the design of our frog characters actually early in improvement.
As soon as the look was set, our animator, Kashif Ahmed introduced the frog to life. Since we established the artwork and animation type so early within the challenge, we had a very expressive frog bouncing round placeholder cubes. Even with out textures within the surroundings, the sport was already making us snort. That’s been one of our inner compasses all through improvement. If we had been having enjoyable and laughing whereas playtesting the sport, we knew we had been on target.
Now that the frogs had been ready to transfer round and work together within the swamp, we wanted to begin engaged on some sewers for them to discover. Our Engineering Director, Steve Taylor, developed a customized procedural era system which locations hand-crafted rooms after which joins them collectively utilizing a sequence of pipes and tunnels. Steve labored carefully with our stage designers to ensure that the sewer layouts felt intentional, difficult, and most significantly, enjoyable.
However what makes a ‘enjoyable’ sewer room? Initially, our designs had been extra cerebral, with logic puzzles and brain-teasers that wanted to be solved so as to entry any meals. As soon as we began taking part in these in context, nevertheless, we discovered that gamers have already got sufficient stress from the time stress, making the entire thing really feel just like the world’s greatest escape room. The tone of Frog Sqwad is way more manic than that, and gamers had a a lot better time as soon as rooms had clearer, extra energetic objectives that allowed you to get caught in with tonguing stuff.
We additionally discovered that rooms which have a transparent identification are properly obtained. Shouting “I acquired frogspawned within the room with the massive historic pyramid” is much more useful than “…I’m on the bit with the pipes in?”. We attempt to ensure that each room has a second of co-op in there as well- whether or not it’s opening a lunch field, holding a door open, or slingshotting a hotdog throughout a lava chasm, we’re at all times attempting to nudge you to method content material as a minimum of a duo!
We began out with very maze-like sewers, full of twists and turns. This seemed nice from a hen’s-eye view, however made getting round an actual slog, because the sewer would have to wrap all the best way round bigger rooms. Issues felt a lot better going for one thing easy and straight – every room is at all times solely a room width away. We might then layer in changes to hold issues fascinating, like setting rooms again from the principle path and including a couple of bends, whereas holding the principle path via the sewer simply navigable and intuitive.
Bringing our first sport to Xbox has been a wild trip because the first prototype in June 2025. We will’t look forward to you all to hop within the sport and test it out for yourselves! Prepare to change into a frog with your folks! Frog Sqwad is coming to Xbox Collection X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud June 2026 and will likely be out there with Xbox Game Cross.
Frog Sqwad
Panic Stations
Storm The Sewers for the glory of the Swamp King! Swing, soar, catapult your folks, and eat eat EAT till you develop right into a humongous Megafrog. A co-op extraction puzzle-platformer for up to 8 gamers. Squad up together with your frog buddies for a friendslop get together on this slapstick physics journey!