How Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge highlights the importance of environmental change

Games can be a great tool to convey important messages, whether plainly or subliminally.

For Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge, developer Humble Reeds used the idea of collecting and taming frogs to highlight the importance of ecological biodiversity, and how simple restoration efforts can help save the planet.

GamesIndustry.biz spoke with the studio's co-founders Aurélien Condomines and Mélanie Christin about how they conveyed this environmental message, and what they hope players take away from the cosy frog farming sim.

Kamaeru launched on June 8, 2024, for PC, Switch and Xbox. While the duo initially sold it as a mobile game, they ran into issues with the business model.

"We didn't want to make a free-to-play game where you have to purchase stuff," Condomines says. "So we decided to put it on PC and console first."

"We'd like to [sell on mobile] later on, if we can find a partner that can help us with good marketing because premium mobile games are very hard to sell," Christin adds, highlighting that the touchscreen element works really well with Kamaeru's gameplay.

As for the concept of Kamareu, the pair were inspired by games like Pokémon and Cats & Soup. But the game found its footing from Condomines and Christin's focus on biodiversity and the restoration of nature. Condomines explains that the main inspiration for the game came from Project Drawdown, a non-profit organisation and global resource for climate solutions.

"Because the game has an environmental message, [the main inspiration] was Project Drawdown, which is something that provides pragmatic solutions for fighting against climate change," he says. "One of the solutions is restoring wetlands, so wetlands – frogs. That's how the whole game came together."

Condomines also notes that other farming sims had a major influence during development, particularly Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing.

"That's the kind of audience we get. And people like frogs, obviously. I discovered a big frog-loving audience," he says, with Christin adding that she already knew because she's a frog lover herself.

"Even at the booth here, we've seen a few people coming over with frog hats and we'd immediately go to them and say, 'Hey! We have a frog collecting game," says Christin.

Collecting adorable frogs may be the selling point of Kamaeru, but the main focus is on biodiversity and sustainability by restoring the creature's habitat.

"The more you restore the wetlands, the rarer frogs that appear which you can take pictures of and add to your Frogedex," Christin explains. "So we are using the frogs to get players to care about wetlands and to restore them, which would really help capture a lot of carbon across the world. That's what we wanted to convey [with this game]."

Condomines makes it clear that while the Kamaeru carries an environmental message, "it's not an e-learning game."

"It's a very funny game, and everything is intertwined in the gameplay. For example, you are given a bioscore which you receive for producing good biodiversity," he explains.

"You have a carbon capture gauge and the more you restore, the more carbon capture increases. You have to [achieve] this with good biodiversity, so you have to plant as much vegetation as you can so it's balanced.

"And because you have this type of bioscore, you [attract] insects to feed the frogs. So it's all in the gameplay – there's no big message being hammered into your head at any point in the game. It's just natural – that's the whole idea behind it."

Instead, Kamaeru leans more into the cosy nature of farming sims, which is accentuated by the wonderfully detailed, hand-drawn art designed by Christin. As she explains, every single element is integrated into the game world from rocks to trees, the frogs and all the critters in between.

"We are using the frogs to get players to care about wetlands and to restore them" Mélanie Christin

"She's a great artist," Condomines says. "It's all handmade, and the whole vibe is a cosy simulator. It's very low-tech, it's a very cosy game. You have no time pressure, there's nothing punitive, nothing bad can really happen to you. There are lots of natural things, animals popping up everywhere like hedgehogs and butterflies. It's part of the whole vibe, but the thing that players really like are the frogs."

Some frogs are only accessible through breeding. By feeding the frogs and taming them, players can breed the creatures to get different colours and species.

There are over 500 frogs to collect and care for, spread across three biomes. The first area players are introduced to is a typical wetland, then they can unlock an Australian billabong (a small body of water) and an Indonesian mangrove. There are different activities in each biome, which involve players using resources they've collected for crafting.

"[These items] can then be sold which will fund your restoration and your frog refuge," Christin explains, highlighting one game in particular where players can smash reeds to make sheets of paper and cardboard.

"It's all in the gameplay – there's no big message being hammered into your head at any point" Aurélien Condomines

"You can use reeds to make paper, packaging, cardboard, and insulation panels," she continues. "So these are real-life applications of what you can do with wetland resources. And it's the same in the Australian billabong and in the mangrove, you get to harvest native vegetation and actually use it. And that's a real-life use of real resources that we can find."

There are seven mini-games in total, which were surprisingly not that difficult to come up with during development.

"It's funny," Christin laughs, as Condomines says they discovered they "were naturals for coming up with strange mini-games" for a restoration title – especially one that seems like a "clicker game where you collect frogs" on the surface, as Condomines notes.

"It has much more depth," he concludes. "There's always something going on, and there's a notion of progression from going between the various biomes. There's also a narrative thread. There are NPCs you can talk to, and you progressively learn that your mission is to restore the wetlands with the help of other people.

"That's the underlying message – cooperation between people for the greater good."