Big Hops is a cute frog game that remixes the best Nintendo games

While playing Big jumpsa new 3D platformer starring an adorable frog, I kept feeling like I was breaking the game — and as with The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom TearsBreaking it is kind of the point.

in Big jumpsYou play as a frog named Hope. Early on, Hope is taken away from his home, and works to return by collecting airship parts from several different areas, each with their own cute animal characters and stories. Since it’s a frog, its primary way of interacting with things is by raising its tongue. You can use them to grab pots to throw and break for coins, as a hook to access new areas, or to grab foods with special powers that you can find scattered throughout the game’s colorful, cartoony worlds.

With a combination of tongue, hop Super Mario– Such as jumps, diving, wall running, and a Zelda– Like a wall climbing stamina meter, you can easily throw the slingshot around the world and climb dizzying heights. But those special foods are what truly Allows you to be creative. The mushroom turns into a bounce pillow to help you climb to the top. The thrown apple becomes a grappling point on the wall. Throwing a cactus plant turns it into a tightrope that you can use to cross chasms. (Technically, they’re not all foods; one is an oil glob, one is a bomb rock, but you get the idea.)

Best of all, you can store multiple foods at once in the Hoop Backpack. By serving the right foods to the right problem, you can come up with your own solutions for platform sections, and even go beyond the intended solutions. With the difficult wall running challenge, I kept falling only Short of target. But when I accidentally landed on a wall near the end, it spawned a flying fruit that I could grab so I could get to the final platform. I can’t wait to see what tricks the speedrunners come up with.

In addition to the main objectives, there are also small purple dots scattered everywhere that you can pick up. (There were always some hidden in hidden corners or atop a dangerously high cliff.) Collect enough points, and you can earn trinkets to place on your backpack that give you special perks, like indicating where points are on a compass or reducing the amount of stamina you use while climbing. You can also find and identify bugs, which is nice and can also help you earn more rewards. There are flower petals you can eat to help customize Hop’s outfit. The blueprint she picked up turned into a railgun that could shoot ropes stretched across huge gaps. Since there are no enemies wandering around, you really have to focus on exploration and platforming – although there are a few boss ‘battles’ that I didn’t find too challenging.

It all creates a virtuous cycle that encourages your own solutions to basically everything in the game and rewards you for finding them. If you’re a fan of Nintendo’s 3D games – which were… a lot What I played growing up – you’ll find a lot to love Big jumps. There are rooms dedicated to platforms that remind me of the secret areas in them Super Mario Sunshineone area full of gravity shifts as I remember it Super Mario Galaxyand at some point I realized that a complex sewer area wouldn’t look out of place Zelda cell.

Big jumpsThe effects are obvious, but it’s the approach that makes the game special.

^{Big jumps Available now on Nintendo Switch, PS5 and PC.}