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Why are toads always at the centre of stories about magic? Toads of the Bayou has a plot about a giant toad raising an army of the damned. One of the protagonists is a toad that can conjure totems and teleport. A cursory Google indicates it’s something to do with their psychedelic excretions, but it’s really taken off. Read a story about a witch, and chances are there’s a toad somewhere in the background. We’re a few years off people spending their Sunday mornings worshipping at the local garden pond.
They do make for quite charismatic characters, however, being equal parts strange and charming. Impressive, for creatures that spend most of their time just sitting and staring. Toads of the Bayou puts them to good use, too. I’m always wary when I see the description mentioning terms like ‘deckbuilding’ and ‘roguelike’, as they’re often a source of frustration. A few minor quirks aside, however, Toads of the Bayou gets away from this feeling. It is, in a word, charming.
Combat Toads
Toads of the Bayou begins the usual way for this sort of thing. When we open, the bayou is a lovely place, full of happy, smiling toads. Predictably, this quickly goes south. A strange toad swans into town and friendly toads begin disappearing. The strange toad then reveals himself to be Baron Samedi, who promptly brings in his occult friends to overrun the Bayou. A resistance soon forms, led by our choice of three toads: the Leader, the Sister and the Seer. Each of these have their own skillset. I like the Sister, because she has a gigantic gun. My kind of religious relic.
Liberating the Bayou takes us across three islands, broken down into individual missions. These have a main objective of killing eight enemies, then a set of sub-objectives, which usually involve protecting some precious resource. Once a mission is chosen, you land down on the map and away you go. The action is turn-based, with individual actions dictated by a deck of cards. Each card has a cost, and you get three action points as standard. It’s turn-based strategy boiled down to its most basic elements, but there is joy in the simplicity.
The joy largely stems from the different playstyles that each character has. The Leader is focused on close combat, for example, so the winning formula is mainly about being in the right place. The beauty comes from a mechanic called ‘Push’, where an enemy collides back into another one. Play it right and you can knock ’em around like pool balls. Completing objectives nets you oil and gold, which you can use to stack your deck, or buy ‘support’ toads, that add extra bonuses. At the end of the day, though, you’re still only controlling one toad, which I rather liked.
Charming Amphibians
For me, Toads of the Bayou‘s gameplay hits the sweet spot of simplicity, thoughtfulness and speed. Each individual mission is fairly short, but requires some thought. Just look at the other characters. The sister, for instance, does a lot of damage with her rifle, but it pushes her backwards. Fire it in the wrong place, and she’ll hit the wall and crack her head open. You need to make sure you manoeuvre yourself with a bit of forethought. Even more so with the Seer, who specialises in swapping places with enemies and transferring negative statuses. Chaining together a hand of cards to wipe out multiple enemies is a wonderful feeling.
That said, there are a couple of odd quirks in the gameplay that give Toads of the Bayou an unpolished feel. For one, if you drag up an attack card, decide against using it and release your mouse, you risk attacking yourself to death. Preventing the Seer from clawing his own face off would have been polite. There’s other stuff too, like not being able to back out of the card removal screen. Lastly, the balance could perhaps do with a tweak. It’s fairly easy to get one or two supremely powerful cards – like one that draws itself every turn and lets you move diagonally – that snap the difficulty.
Those are my main complaints, really, and accidental death aside, they didn’t bother me too much. I think my sense of forgiveness is heightened by the fact that Toads of the Bayou is very charming. The visuals ooze personality. It’s not just that they’re bright and colourful, or that it’s pixel art (one of my weaknesses), but there’s a lot of cute little details. One objective is to protect toads in barrels, and you can see them poke their heads out. The main base is in a pub, full of toads chilling in the background. Someone had fun with the art and it really shows.
Toads of the Bayou – Simple, Charming, Fun
I’ve seen some concern on Steam about the length and replayability of Toads of the Bayou. Well, replayability is helped by the fact that you need to win with the three main characters before you get the true ending – though I admit there’s not much new after that. It didn’t worry me that much, though, because you can probably expect to sink in somewhere around fifteen hours to get to the end, depending on your strategy skills, which isn’t bad for a game that only costs eight quid.
Hopefully, La Grange take some of the minor tweaks on board as they go forward. I also hope they give their artist a big pat on the back. Actually, big pats all around. It’s a funny thing. Sometimes when playing games to review, I end up with a negative feeling that I have to backwards engineer. This time, it was the complete opposite. I liked Toads of the Bayou after my first run, and that was what I had to unpack. As it turns out, it’s down to charming visuals and a simple, enjoyable gameplay loop.
