OLLIEFROG TOAD SKATER
Olliefrog Toad Skater has been on our radar since we encountered the game at a previous convention — MagWest. The cute graphics but cool, skater premise caught the attention of several of our reviewers. The frog (well, toad — there’s a whole Reddit thread on the topic of if he’s a frog or a toad, but we will be using the two interchangeably) protagonist brought an extra unique aspect to this game — and as I learned in our interview, was actually picked for a purpose outside of just being cute!
In this game, Olliefrog is just a little toad who is trying to be a pro skater. Reminiscent of Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, you’re trying to get the highest scores, make the sickest tricks, and collect the letters OFTS (Ollie Frog Toad Skater) that are hidden around the map.
The gameplay in Olliefrog Toad Skater is very similar to that of Tony Hawk games, which is exactly where the inspiration comes from. However, instead of falling down with bloody knees, you get met with a squishy frog that makes squeaking noises. This makes falling almost… fun, or at least something that doesn’t seem like the end of the world. The positivity in this game is a new concept for skating games! It helps that the froggy protagonist has strong legs and an agile tongue, which is part of the reason why he’s such a good fit for the lead of this game — Tony Hawk could never.
The graphics in Olliefrog Toad Skater are similar to those in popular cozy games these days — bright yet pastel with lots of squishy details. Your frog is customizable in this game using a color wheel and hex codes, so you can truly color your toad skater however suits you best.
As a math nerd, I was happy but also surprised to hear how mathing out Olliefrog Toad Skater was one of the biggest parts of development. As your scores rack up through multiplication and your angles tilt, I was able to appreciate it even more after learning that, yes, you are using math as you are skateboarding! This was something interesting to learn from Mr. Thee, and I enjoyed having a look into this part of the process.
Every time I’ve had the pleasure of demoing Olliefrog Toad Skater, I’ve had a blast. I am not a skater pro by any means, but I always have a great time. I look forward to trying out their full demo in my free time as well. It is out now on Steam, and you should, too! I look forward to what Mr. Thee and his team can do in this project!
Sarah: Alright, I am here today with an awesome game that is awesome and cute, and I am so excited to see more of. And I'm here with Mr. Thee here to introduce it. So what's your game? What are you working on? Give us the pitch.
Mr. Thee: Alright, your boy, Mr. Thee, is working on Olliefrog Toad Skater, the amphibious skateboarding game where it's easy to be steezy. Tony Hawk-style arcade skateboarding games are notoriously hard to make, and I want to give my own take on it because I don't think a lot of indie devs these days still have the mathematical and engineering chops to pull this kind of sports action game off.
Sarah: Nice. So, what got you into indies and making this game? I know you just mentioned Tony Hawk and all of that.
Mr. Thee: Yeah, so the genre's got covered enough. And I…game developers come from all sorts of backgrounds. A lot of indie devs tend to come from more artistic backgrounds, actually, contrary to popular belief, there aren't that many peer programmers, but there are even less programmers among them who do like physics and very math heavy stuff. So that's kind of the creative velcro I'm cut from. And so I said, ‘Okay, what's something that suits my interest that not a lot of other games on the market cover?’ Sorry, I just watched my demo throw a flag like two right times. It's good to know.
Sarah: Yeah, that's awesome that there's so much like math involved. I never thought about that. That makes me excited as a former math teacher, honestly.
Mr. Thee: I can talk about local maximum cross-products and pseudo-determinants all day. Also triangles.
Sarah: Oh my god, triangles.
Mr. Thee: I had to use a trig identity, like two weeks ago. It was messed up.
Sarah: How many parabolas are in this game?
Mr. Thee: Not too many. Well, every time you do an ollie, that's technically like a second-order differential equation. So that's a parabola. That has to be simulated carefully in order to be done cheaply and accurately. There's so much math.
Sarah: There’s so much math.
Mr Thee: Don't get me started.
Sarah: I love it.
Mr. Thee: That is Pandora's box.
Sarah: What are you most excited about for your game?
Mr. Thee: For it to be finished and done. I don't want to spoil too many secrets, but we're doing some really, really fly and interesting things for the single player campaign, just in terms of, like, quest lines and subject matter and scenario building. We're bringing out all the stops. And just like, we were originally thinking of, just like, ‘Okay, what if I just do like a standalone arcade package for like 20 bucks and let people have a good time?’ But I'm like, Nah, I want to go all the way. So, similar to the Tony Hawk Underground games, we want to do a single-player thing which just goes like, Fortnite crazy.
Sarah: So why frogs? Or toads?
Mr. Thee: Toads? There are some differences. I'm not gonna get into that now because this interview will take up your whole drive on your phone, but actually, it just got back off the game anyway. They're cute, they're round. They're very malleable. They're a good tabula rasa for creativity, which makes creating a character creator for them very easy and very fun. But they also, like, they got the strong legs, they got that they can hop. And I'm like, what if they could do a kickflip? And what if they could use their tongue to do other things? Right now, the tongue is just being used for certain tricks, but we do have some ideas in terms of, like, additional interactability, but right now, we're just… the hardest part of this game is getting the levels right, and so once that's rock solid, then we can maybe add a few bells and whistles here in terms of, like, additional mechanics.
Sarah: Alright, if you could go back in time and change one thing or give yourself some advice for your game or your development experience, what would it be?
Mr. Thee: Oh man, do not underestimate how much time it takes to manage others because while I did have the funds to hire additional folks, that's going to cut into that's going to have more context switching to manage them, and it's also just going to cut into your productivity overhead. Because I do all the programming and a lot of the 3D art and animation, and also a lot of the level design and UI work, but now, when you hire somebody, now you're losing the ability to work on any one of those given things, or all of those given things in, like, a given day or two. Yeah, so and don't be afraid to, like, tighten up or be a little more stern with feedback. Or if you want to be fair with your employees, just like, hey, do check-ins like in the middle of the week, require them, make it clear when boundaries or different like lines of quality aren't quite being hit, but also just do it in a gentle way, which I was kind of familiar to do. But going forward, after this week, and I've already talked to the team about this, just in terms of, like, Yeah, we should maybe just touch base just a little more often so we're wasting a little less time doing things which might not necessarily pan out to be nearly as productive as we think they are.
Sarah: Teamwork is always something that is tricky to get a handle on.
Mr. Thee: Teamwork communication and you can never over-communicate is a big thing,
Sarah: Yup. Yeah, alright. Well, that's about it. I'll give you. This is your little time to shine. Plug your game. Plug yourself. Where can we find you? Where can we find Olliefrog?
Mr. Thee: You can find me on Twitter, @philipwitz. Olliefrog.com should go to the Steam page. I checked the Squarespace domains right before I left, so they should be good. @MrTheeGameDev is the TikTok, and there's also a Blue Sky? I think it's [@mrthee.bsky.social]. It'll be linked somewhere. We'll figure it out. That's not super active, but I'm trying to post there once a week.
Sarah: Nice. Is there a demo or release date?
Mr. Thee: Yes, there's a free demo on Steam. For the release date, we're shooting for early next year.
Sarah: Well, thank you again, Mr. Thee, Phillip, for interviewing with me, and I hope you have a great rest of your convention.
Mr. Thee: Of course. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. You have a great PAX.
