Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge Review

Welcome to Kamaeru, a frog refuge started by your childhood friend Axel. As kids, the two of you spent a lot of time in the wetlands that were located near your childhood homes, which was home to many different types of frogs. As time passed, the wetlands dried up, forcing the remaining frogs to relocate. However, Axel has now built a refuge near these marshes, and he needs your character, Cleo, to ensure its success.

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge plays like a point-and-click game where your character doesn’t actually walk around. The game will give you an in-depth tutorial to show you how to perform all the actions that you need to know to restore the wetlands and run the frog refuge. To move to different locations, you will click on the travel button to switch which area you are in between the refuge and the wetlands, then click on the building that you want to visit. Your first task is to attract frogs to the refuge by placing different types of furniture. So your first purchase is a bathtub; once bought, it is in your inventory, so you can place it wherever you want on the land. Besides attracting frogs and looking cool, placing furniture will earn you reputation points that are represented as green hearts. Soon you will see that frogs will come and hang out in the tub. Now you will need to tame your amphibian friends. This task is quite easy, as all you need to do is feed them all the food that they want. Most love flies, but others have more complex tastes, like dragonflies, caterpillars, or beetles.

The wetlands are currently in bad shape, but they can be restored, and the resources there can be used in the refuge. To move to different locations, you will need to select the travel option that is located at the top of your action menu. Initially, the wetlands seem completely dry, yet beneath the soil lies accessible water. To restore this area, dig ponds and plant vegetation that will attract the insects you need to feed the frogs and provide resources that you can use to create items that you can sell to raise money for the refuge. Click on the shack to see information about the wetlands, like the types of vegetation, insects and their spawn rate, carbon capture, and your Bioscore. This is calculated by multiplying the carbon capture score and biodiversity together. You can also purchase blueprints to use wetlands restoration technology, like learning how to plant different types of vegetation.

Your first restoration project is to dig a pond and plant a berry bush beside it. Once planted, we sit and wait for insects to visit. When they show up, they can be collected by clicking on them. We will use these bugs to feed and tame the frogs at the refuge. The plants themselves give you resources that you can use in the kitchen to prepare different recipes like berry jam. Put the ingredients in the pot, and use the thumbsticks to move the mirrors to align the sun rays to cook. It doesn’t matter which item you are making; the process is always going to be the same. These products that you make can be sold at the refuge’s store to make money to buy more items like furniture or to spend on plants and ponds for the wetlands. At the beginning of the game, you only have three recipes available to create: berry jam, which sells for eight gold; berry candy, which earns 14 gold; and cattail hearts, which earns 22 gold.



Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge has a beautiful watercolour art style, which really makes this title feel incredibly cosy and handmade. The frogs that you get to interact with are incredibly cute, but there isn’t a huge variety here. The main image for all the amphibians is exactly the same, with the only difference being the colour of the frogs; even when the species was different, they all looked identical. It would have been nice to see some different artwork, at least between the various species. The music is calming and fits the cosy relaxed feel of the visuals very well. However after a few hours, it does feel a bit repetitive.

At the refuge, you meet Anabelle, a retired surgeon who now spends her time researching frogs and the wetlands. She informs you that some of the frog species in the area are endangered, and to help protect them, she needs your help to sequence their genes in order to study them further. The first thing you will need to do is tame two frogs and meet her at the lab to breed them. Once you have at least two, you select which ones will be the parents. Each amphibian has different shape and colour genes. Your goal is to combine them to create a new type of frog, though you aren't totally in control as nature will select its own genes from the parents, too, as you face off in an epic battle of Tic-Tac-Toe. Place the genes you want on the grid and try to line up three in a row diagonally, vertically, or horizontally. Once all the spots are filled, you could potentially have an all-new frog type!
When you are in the wetlands, the sun sets, and it gets dark. When this happens, you have a choice: do you want to keep catching insects and taming frogs, or do you want to sleep until tomorrow morning? I decided that for my first night, I would stay out late and try to catch more bugs before retiring for the night. You aren’t penalised for staying up all night, so there is really no reason not to. If you can keep working and still be awake the next day to continue, what’s the point of sleeping? I wish I could do this in real life; I would get so much more done!



Besides restoring the water in the wetlands, you will also need to improve the carbon capture rate and the biodiversity score. These rates are important factors in determining the types of frogs that will visit the refuge. For some types, certain conditions will have to be met before they come to the area. So Anabelle and Axel have set a bioscore of 15% to try and meet by placing ponds and vegetation in a balanced way. Each type of pond and plant has its own carbon capture value, so it’s worth experimenting to figure out which will work better to improve your scores.
Once you restore the wetlands, you aren't done with all your work. You will still get quests like raising the reputation of the refuge, breeding certain types of frogs, and continuing to make the place feel more cosy and appealing to attract more of them. To help you do this, you will meet new people like Djena, a builder of custom frog furniture helping to improve the reputation of the refuge, or Dylan, who has bought land close to the wetlands; he wants to collaborate on your restoration project and help you with the insects.



Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is a wholesome game that has you trying to restore the environment and help different species of frogs thrive. After a few hours of play, it can get a bit repetitive, and I wish that the frogs had a unique look between the species and that the process of creative things to cook to sell wasn’t the exact same. It was refreshing to play a game where your primary focus was to try and help restore the environment and the different species that are endangered. This is a fun title to check out if you are interested in nature conservation or frogs in general.