Don’t Fry the Frog is a new title from developer Blacktorch Games. The object of the game is simple - using two of your fingers, you must control an energy beam and fry all of the nasty, unhealthy flies, making sure the pesky frog can’t eat them.  Make sure you leave the nutritious flies for the frog to eat though, oh, and watch where you put that energy beam, because you don’t want to fry the frog by accident. 

That’s pretty much all there is to it. The more flies you zap the higher your score will be. The frog in question has three lives for every game, so after he has met an unfortunate end three times- usually by being fried like a chicken or by being a tad overindulgent with those flies – it will be game over. The main motivation to keep playing is to try and beat your high score, although there are challenges for you to beat and you can level up. Though doing these things doesn’t really alter the gameplay and it offers little reward, meaning they are only small incentives. 

I found that the game gets stale very fast. There is nothing about the game that drew me in. The graphics are okay. Now I never expect miracles from an iOS game but these are plain, basic, and lack any sort of charm, while the looping soundtrack gets old fast.  The gameplay doesn’t fare much better. There are special flies that will appear to mix things up in game, but as there are only 4 varieties of these, even they won’t manage to change things up enough to hold your attention.  There is also an in-game shop where you can spend the “Fly Pennies” you earn by playing the game. Here you can buy tools to be used in game, upgrade the special flies to enhance or alter their effects and buy things such as backgrounds.  

The biggest problem with the game is the controls. The game boasts about the fact that it makes use of the multi-touch nature of the iDevice. However this actually serves to be a hindrance in the long run.  You will play the game by using your thumb and index finger to control each end of the beam, meaning the electric beam will be in the gap between your thumb and index finger.  This means that as you are moving your hand around, your finger and thumb will sometimes block parts of the screen off. This is a real problem, as it makes it hard work to track where everything on the screen is - especially considering the game can get very frantic at times - and it often resulted in me frying my frog by accident. The poor fella.  Simply put, this feature is the biggest selling point of the game, and quite frankly, it doesn’t work. 

If you so choose, you can pick up Don’t Fry the Frog for absolutely nothing, as the game makes money via microtransactions. For example, you can buy various amounts of the in-game currency “Fly Pennies” using your hard earned cash. However, unless you are really stuck for something to play I wouldn’t recommend it.  While Don’t Fry the Frog isn’t awful - some people may even enjoy it in brief spells - in the never ending sea of iOS titles, being okay simply isn’t good enough. 

This review is based on the launch copy of Don't Fry the Frog, provided by the developer and downloaded via the App Store.