Awoken from a long hibernation, you find the pond abandoned and ruined. Through genetic manipulation of local frogs and plants you must restore your world, solving puzzles across frog generations in order to meet odd little goals—a bit of mad science experimentation along the way is encouraged. It's not Bloodborne, it's Mudborne, which is set to release in March.
"Through a combination of crafting minigames, menu management and puzzle solving, experiment with genetics to breed new frogs and recover what was lost," says developer TNgineers.
The truly intriguing hook of Mudborne is how it's an adventure split between two worlds. Discovering new frogs and crossing them with old ones lets you use their genetic keys to unlock paths in the world—some of which lead between alternate waking and dreaming realities. It's a thematic concept that Mudborne shares with its name-alike, Bloodborne, except I don't really expect Mudborne to devolve into cosmic horror.
Mudborne has a free demo available on Steam and Itch.io that you can play through to discover eight species of frog and start to unlock the gates between the worlds. You can catch and eat bugs. Some of the frogs have little hats. I'm not sure how to sell this idea to you any harder.
You might remember developer TNgineers from its previous game, Apico, which was a nice chill and cozy adventure about saving breeds of honeybees from extinction and propagating them so they have a nice life. Like Mudborne, it had you understanding not just bees, but how they depend on the environment around them to survive. Mudborne, however, is far more spiritual and silly.
Mudborne continues the tradition that TNgineers started with Apico, and a portion of all money made from it will be donated "towards national and international amphibian, wetlands, and environmental charities to help keep our little green friends and their homes happy and healthy," it says.
You can find Mudborne on Steam, where it will release on March 20. You can also find a demo on itch.io.
TNgineers is also working on Snacktorio, which is "a factory-cooking simulator where you must satisfy the appetites of unspeakable horrors... with food!" Honestly just sounds like parenting but I'll take a look.
