I love a game that lets you collect creatures of all shapes and sizes, and as someone with an affinity for the more obscure a frog collector was bound to pique my interest. Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge blends farming sim elements with creature collection to create a heartwarming story of conservation for my new amphibious friends, and I fell in love from the second I hopped into its watercolour world. What came next was a feeling of pure joy I haven't had with a creature collector since I downloaded Cat Collector Neko Atsume in 2014.
Along with letting you design a frog sanctuary, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is a cutesy farming sim that encourages you to restore the biodiversity of the wetlands. Between digging ponds and farming crops, you'll use your harvest to create goods to sell and reinvest your profit into your sanctuary. Basically, everything you do is for the benefit of the wetlands, which makes the experience feel more fulfilling.
Don't get me wrong, I love the satisfaction of restoring a derelict farm or an abandoned town, but there's something beautiful about watching life return to a natural habitat, which I sometimes miss in farming sims. Once you've gone through Kamaeru's simple tutorial, you're left to your own devices, and you have a surprising amount of ground to cover within your sanctuary. This is a refreshing change of pace for someone like me who is used to a single phone screen worth of space in something like Neko Atsume.
But this space can't be filled immediately.
