10 Plot Twists That Change How You See Video Games

5. Frog Fractions - Meta Maths

Prey game
Twinbear Studios

Frog Fractions is one of those “learning is fun!” type games that was probably among the few online games that weren’t blocked at school. It’s a cute, harmless educational flash game about solving simple fractions. At least, it is for the first couple of minutes. But then the twist happens…

What starts off as an anodyne arithmetic affair soon expands into a metafictional mathematical masterpiece. With just a couple of simple upgrades, the friendly turtle on which the titular frog sits transforms into a dragon fitted with a warp drive, allowing the frog to transcend the confines of his own game and eviscerate the fourth wall entirely.

Most frogs are pretty good at hopping, but not usually genre-hopping. This frog is the exception, as he bounds across boundaries between many different game genres, including a space shoot-‘em-up, a visual novel, a rhythm game, a text adventure, and an ocean exploration game accompanied by a lecture about the history of boxing.

It’s truly bizarre but utterly brilliant, pushing the medium of video games forward by deconstructing its very essence. Maybe fractions really can be fun.

In this post: 
Prey
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor

Patch is a pop culture enthusiast and purveyor of puns. He writes about media in a vague attempt to justify the alarming amount of time he spends consuming it. Nobody's convinced... but nobody's told him that yet. He spends his spare time working on Portal 2: Desolation, an ambitious fan-made sequel to Valve's beloved puzzle games.