La Grange and Fireshine Games have created a unique deckbuilder featuring a fresh froggy thematic in the form of Toads of the Bayou. It might need some additional deckbuilding design depth, but it has enough to hold players over for several roguelike runs.
What do you get when you mesh a strategy RPG, roguelike, and deckbuilder with a froggy thematic? Toads of the Bayou, of course. I came across it when its trailer was shown during PC Gaming Show 2024, chock full of upbeat banjo twangs and a glimpse of the dragging and dropping of card-based gameplay. Needless to say, the frog-based pixel art looked so dang unique while the game appealed to my love of deckbuilding games. I was so excited for its release to roll around so I could get my hands on it.
I’ve now had the chance to play Toads of the Bayou. On one hand, I had fun getting lost in its deckbuilding and creating a new deck on every new roguelike run. On the other hand, I kept wishing for it to have greater depth in its design, as the punishment of starting from scratch turned Toads of the Bayou in a grindfest.
Deckbuilding and roguelike gameplay can go hand in hand. Inscryption, a recent deckbuilder from Daniel Mullins Games, captured players’ attention through psychological horror and fourth-wall busting meta narratives. While the deck-building element of Inscryption evolved over its three acts, its core remained consistent: The player was to build a deck of cards that would help them survive combat. Putting thought into adding and removing cards from the deck is just as important as playing the right cards at the right time. The best deckbuilders layer in deck management alongside opportunities for players to demonstrate their abilities in navigating variance.
Toads of the Bayou starts off simple. It sent me to a scenario which took place on a little grid. It taught me how to place my little frog on a grid, use available cards in my hand to slay as many enemies as possible, and stay alive. My “starter deck,” if you will, was comprised of basic movement cards, a ranged attack, and then some melee attacks. I could use ranged attacks from any range so long as I was in the same row as enemies, but melee attacks meant that my frog had to be positioned adjacent to an enemy. I could only use a handful of actions per turn, regardless of how many cards were in my hand, so it was up to me to maximize my efforts.
Each scenario had an overall objective (i.e., kill a certain number of enemies), alongside one or two secondary (yet optional) objectives in the form of protecting an allied unit or resource from enemy attacks. If I failed the secondary objectives, a negative card was permanently added to my deck on the run, so I was constantly balancing pursuing the main objective while completing the secondary objectives the best I could. Once I finished the main objective in the scenario, I was taken to a little pub which served as a hub, full of froggy merchants who sold me additional cards, single-use items, and froggy pals who granted me passive effects.
The card-based combat system proved to be easy to pick up while difficult to master. Dragging a card from my hand and onto an enemy proved to be satisfying so long as I was in control of the battlefield, but the further into the game I went the more I found the game to be excruciatingly punishing. Later levels pit me against hordes of enemies who would target the secondary objectives I was to protect from the start, putting me at an immediate disadvantage before I could set up tactical plays that cleared the battlefield.
In between scenarios, I would often have just enough resources to make a single purchase, be it one new card for my deck or one new item that I could use in an upcoming scenario. The early game proved to be a slog in the deckbuilding department only because I was building my deck one card at a time. It would have been nice to have had access to more cards from the start, just so I could get the ball rolling. The first island of scenarios involved me using the same handful of cards given that I hadn’t yet unlocked additional shop slots.
By the time I had reached the boss at the end of the first island, my knowledge of Toads of the Bayou was turned on its head. Bosses were fixed at the center of the grid and could not be moved by any means. On the other hand, I could attack them freely, but they almost always had attacks that targeted a large chunk of the battlefield. My first attempt at slaying a boss was futile: I could never get into position to hit it and then move back out.
This is where the roguelike element kicks into play: Upon losing, I am taken back to the start of the first island with my starter deck. Everything I had bought on my first go-round disappeared and I was to build a new deck. Like other roguelikes, the more I stuck with Toads of the Bayou, the more I appreciated it in how it pushed me into trying new techniques and collecting new cards. Persistent elements across runs existed in the form of additional shop slots – once I had unlocked a new slot in the shop, I would have more cards and items to select from on future runs.
Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much persistent power granted to me in future runs. In its current state, it’s probably for the best that Toads of the Bayou lacks those levers of persistent power. It took only three hours (read: seven runs) for me to complete the game with the first available froggy, The Leader, only to be told that I was to complete the game again with the Sister and the Seer to see it through to the end. Locking additional characters beyond a successful run was smart here, as it forced me to learn to build a deck and stick with it so I could learn how to use The Leader to the best of my ability.
By the seventh or so run, I had encountered a situation where the best deck I could create was one involving Strength and Stab attacks, clearing even the toughest of enemies in one or two turns. I had become so strong on one run that I was able to defeat the third (and final) island’s boss in three turns thanks to how I had put together a deck full of strength cards. I had no incentive to use things like traps and veves (single-use charm items) because I was using a deck that made the game feel like easy mode. I don’t see this as a bad thing, per se, but I would have liked additional card types to change up deckbuilding and give it depth. Having additional objectives in the form of using traps and veves would have been a great way for me to use all of the tools at my disposal, too.
The potential for depth is there in Toads of the Bayou, but there needs to be additional mechanics in its set of available cards to make it feel like there is a grander strategy in deck design. There were cards that involved self-inflicted status effects (burn) and traditional poison, but I was rarely in a position where I was coming across enough cards to make a deck feel fully realized with a specific element or mechanic. It’s just…there needed more cards to make later runs feel fresh.
Balance and deckbuilding depth aside, Toads of the Bayou is fun for a short time. A long time would be a stretch only because of the lack of endgame variety – perhaps future updates to Toads of the Bayou will add more strategy to the deckbuilding. I surely hope more is coming, though, as the gameplay is fun in short bursts to hold me over for an afternoon.
La Grange and Fireshine Games have created a unique deckbuilder featuring a fresh froggy thematic in the form of Toads of the Bayou. It might need some additional deckbuilding design depth, but it has enough to hold players over for several roguelike runs.
