Having played simulator games since I was a kid, I’m no stranger to management sims of all sorts of varieties. Oddly enough, I’m not even a stranger to games where you breed frogs to save an ecosystem, having played Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge last year. As a lover of cute frogs and fun sim titles, when I was offered the chance to play Mudborne, I hopped right into it (get it?).

Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to play games during their pre-launch phases as part of my job, but one of the tricky parts about it is that there’s not always a guide to help me if I get stuck – I’m playing these games early for the sake of writing said guides so that you don’t get stuck. I love what I do, I love management sims, and I love solving puzzles, but Mudborne had one puzzle that frustrated me to the point of tapping out and asking the developer directly for some help.

Hope You Remember Basic Algebra (I Didn’t)

Your task in Mudborne is to progress through different areas of a large and mostly deserted pond, and you’ll need to breed a variety of frogs to make progress since specific species are the answers to the game’s puzzles. You’ll need heavier frogs to hold down pressure switches, soggy frogs to change moisture levels, and even frogs who are such chill guys that they’re able to physically lower the temperature just by being there. It’s all toad-allycute, but it’s not always easy to breed for the frogs you need if you don’t have a sense for math.

Related

What Does Cozy Gaming Mean To You?

To me, a cozy game is less about what you're doing and more about how it makes you feel. It doesn’t have to be all cute animals or farming fields (though those don’t hurt); if I can sink into it like a warm blanket, it’s cozy.

Posts

To change a frog’s traits into the next generation when you’re breeding, you’ll need to raise tadpoles in specific kinds of mud made from the assortment of mushrooms growing around the pond. Each mushroom modifies a trait or two when it’s ground up and placed into said mud, and the frogs that grow from there will have their traits changed accordingly. It starts off simple enough, with outright ‘plus one’ or ‘minus one’ modifiers before segueing into mushrooms that multiply or suppress effects. Bonus: if you’re mathematically inclined, the answers are all right on the screen for you.

Unfortunately for me, though, I have never had a math brain – in fact, I failed math so hard in high school that I had to retake junior-level math a second time during my senior year so I could graduate on time, and even then, I nearly bombed the encore. All my skill points got poured into other categories, I guess, so the sudden need for algebra again as an adult threw me off. I thought I was missing a type of mushroom, or perhaps I had written something down incorrectly, and with a launch date looming and deadlines for my guides, I wound up so frustrated after two days of trying that I DM’d the dev on Discord to ask for help.

They were incredibly kind in chatting, sending the steps line by line behind spoiler formatting so I could uncover only what I needed and solve the rest myself. Turns out, I had everything I needed to progress already; I’d just completely blanked on how to do basic math. A negative times a negative makes a positive? Sure. I learned that in high school more than half my lifetime ago, and that knowledge got evicted in the wake of all the more pressing life that’s happened since.

Puzzles Make You Pause, And That Can Be A Perk

After I knew the answer, I couldn’t believe how silly I felt. It was so obvious – there was even a little picture of the requisite mushroom right next to where I needed to put the frog I made with it! I’d just registered it as just another of the many atmospheric decorations, something to indicate the potential things that could grow in the area. The mushrooms did grow nearby, but I was too busy trying to do rocket science with their trait changes that I forgot to slow down.

When chatting with the developer, they mentioned that they might add more hints to the final version, which they did. The booklet you log your story progression into now displays large photos of the mushrooms you’ll need to breed the frog required to progress. However, it’s still up to you to work out the exact combination to use, providing clearer hints now while still relying on you to do the heavy lifting with them.

Even with those newer hints, though, the guide that I wrote on the puzzle is one of my most-viewed articles for the game so far, so at least I’m not alone!

People in my life outside work have laughed at me for my inability to turn off ‘guide brain,’ as I call it, where I’m always thinking of making the most quickly so I can make the most of my time with the game. Getting stuck in Mudborne, though, forced me to slow down and smell the lily pads a little in a title I was trying to cruise through for work. Turns out it gave me a chance to just play the game that I really enjoyed having.

Sure, I might have bred dozens of frogs I didn’t need in those two days, and yeah, my pond is really overcrowded with little guys now. But I spent that time scratching my head and trying to solve a puzzle, trying all kinds of different solutions along the way. Sometimes, being made to pause and think is refreshing, especially in cozy games, for an added little challenge.

10 Images 10 Images Close

Your Rating

close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10

Your comment has not been saved

Like Follow Followed

Mudborne

Casual Simulation Farming Systems Released March 20, 2025 Developer(s) ellraiser, TNgineers Publisher(s) Future Friends Games Engine GameMaker Number of Players Single-player Steam Deck Compatibility Unknown PC Release Date March 20, 2025
Where to play Close

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL
Powered by Expand Collapse