Developer: Projects from Basement
Publisher: Ultimate Games
Platform: Switch, Android
Tested on; Switch
Frodoric the Driver – Review
The Switch has become a breeding ground for shovelware with zero quality control from Nintendo. While it seemed like older Nintendo platforms had a bit more quality content, the Switch seems to attract every crappy first ‘basement project’. This actually brings us to developer ‘Projects from Basement’ that presents us with Frodoric the Driver. The name does not make any sense, as we never spot someone with the name Frodoric, and the generic old school Flash game visuals were somewhat off-putting. While it’s never our intention to bash someone’s hard work, but this game was hardly working.
Story
Even though there is a named driver in the title, there is no story to be found in this game. Every time you start your run on exactly the same spot, you see two animals enter your chosen car, and we have no clue why. Are these animals actually driving the car? Are these your pets? Why are you trying to destroy everyone while wrong-way driving? We can only guess. Well, not really, as the store page does have a description, which is just stupid:
‘’Frodoric is a Belgian shepherd who has run out of his favorite cigarettes. Due to the regulations set by the government and national health care, the Tobacco Store is far away and requires him to embark on a journey through hundreds of locations. Hop in the car with your best friend Furcat (persian cat) and drive!’’
Graphics
The graphics of this game remind us of those free-to-play games on children’s websites, where you just had to perform one menial task the entire time, getting a higher score. This actually already describes the gameplay for Frodoric the Driver as well. That being said, you have a lot of simplistic top-down drawn models for different cars and trucks. On top of that, you’ll see barrels scattered around the road, which represent power-ups. Then last but not least, you have disproportionate animals littered around the road, in oncoming traffic, which you have to avoid. The design of these animals is straight out of a low-budget horror production and we just don’t see why this atrocious mix of designs seemed like a good idea.
Now, with the models described, there’s the actual backdrop and movements that don’t make things any better. If we have to be perfectly honest, it feels like someone ate a sketchbook from a toddler and then vomited out everything they had eaten. This mashed pile of drawings then seemed like a good whole to the developers, who then made an incoherent game out of this. Then we also notice that the creator is unknown to the physics of actual moving cars. You drive in the wrong direction into oncoming traffic. Sure, this is not strange. It gets a bit weird when every oncoming car looks like it’s standing still or driving backward. It just feels like there’s something horribly wrong when looking at the physics of this game, as animals, who are standing sideways, are then moving as fast as the oncoming traffic.
Even in the garage section, when you pick another car it doesn’t even change the top picture of the car that is chosen. At the bottom, you see a few car models, and you basically have to guess which is which of the cars you can unlock, as they’re not even in the right order.
Sound
The soundtrack consists of a few generic tracks which loop over and over. We have to be honest however, this is actually the best part of the game. The soundtrack may be limited, but it’s the only thing that feels like it didn’t come from a blind developer who has no idea on how the outside world looks like. The sound effects are simplistically handled, but they suffice for the limited and crappy action unfolding onscreen.
Gameplay
Frodoric the Driver is one of those autoscrolling top-down games where you dodge obstacles. In this scenario, you are a driver that is driving into oncoming traffic. It is your goal to get as far as you can, destroy cars with weapons you pick up, and for some reason, even hit them in the back when passing them. The latter is just basically slamming into every car you pass, as this will give you more credits. These credits then can be used to unlock new cars.
When looking at the controls, these are quite simple, albeit basic. You can only steer left or right, use your weapon when the cooldown ends and turn your lights on. The first issue immediately lies with the cooldown, as you cannot properly see the cooldown of your weapon(s) and the same counts for the power-ups. It’s somewhat a game of ‘guessing’ when your invulnerability or multipliers will end. Then, the developers clearly wanted to make his game more complex, as sometimes you’ll be driving in the dark, for a full seven seconds, making it so that you should better turn your lights on. This is a small gimmick to add a bit more substance to the otherwise dull and annoying gameplay format.
The game basically only has one goal, and that is to grind for money and unlock new cars. Sadly, even this doesn’t seem to properly work in Frodoric the Driver. When we unlocked our new and fancy car, we could select it and we could play with it. So, we dived in to do some more grinding, but upon revisiting our garage, our purchased car was nowhere to be found anymore and we couldn’t even select any of the other options anymore. This means that after buying our first car, the game just gave up, and didn’t want to register anything new in the garage anymore. With the limited things to do in the game, you’d at least expect for the ‘end goal’ to actually work.
Conclusion
While we don’t like to resort to cursing or foul language, Frodoric the Driver is the equivalent of ordering a dearly priced meal in a highly rated restaurant for the waiter to eventually show up with a pile of horseshit on your plate. It’s one of those games or projects that were better left in the basement, or buried in the backyard for that matter. Even for a simple score-beater, the game has no real redeeming qualities and just feels like it should have been released for free, as a starting project of the developer, and not with its current $5/€5 price tag.
Frodoric the Driver - Review,
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