SummaryFrog Sqwad is a slapstick puzzle-platformer the place as much as 8 gamers can develop into foolish frogs with sticky tongues.Have a look behind the scenes of this enjoyable, friendslop romp with developer Panic Stations, and learn the way the concept got here to life.Frog Sqwad is heading to Xbox Collection X|S, Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud in 2026, and also will be accessible with Xbox Sport Cross.
Once we shaped Panic Stations in June 2025, we didn’t wish to spend years in pre-production. We had a aim to launch our first recreation inside 12 months. We needed to maneuver quick. Having labored collectively beforehand, we jumped straight into improvement. Our mission was easy: Maximize enjoyable per minute. To maintain that momentum, everybody at Panic Stations is hands-on. We’re all within the engine, breaking issues, making them higher, breaking them once more after which discovering success!
We began work on Frog Sqwad nearly instantly. We rapidly found that frogs are the final word platforming protagonists. Their tongues even have a stunning quantity of makes use of. They can be utilized as grappling hooks for verticality, swinging for momentum, catapults for launching teammates, interacting with objects, and, most significantly, kissing your pals.
Authentic Idea artwork for the sport – not too removed from the place we ended up.
Our Design Director, Joe Walsh, began by specializing in the texture of our character and controls. After the fundamentals, he explored mechanics for gamers to work collectively in enjoyable methods. The extra we leaned into the tongue physics, the extra hilarious the multiplayer interactions turned. It felt like the right match to mix 3D puzzle platforming with a friendslop extraction recreation.
While many extraction friendslop video games lean into horror and darker aesthetics, our Artwork Director, Dan Hoang went the wrong way. We love these video games, however we thought there was additionally room for one thing extra lighthearted, goofy, and vibrant. With this in thoughts, we got down to make Frog Sqwad extremely saturated, daring, and memorable. Dan established the design of our frog characters actually early in improvement.
Character designs for the Frog, Frogspawn, and Megafrog.
As soon as the look was set, our animator, Kashif Ahmed introduced the frog to life. Since we established the artwork and animation model so early within the venture, we had a very expressive frog bouncing round placeholder cubes. Even with out textures within the atmosphere, the sport was already making us chuckle. That’s been certainly one of our inner compasses all through improvement. If we have been having enjoyable and laughing whereas playtesting the sport, we knew we have been not off course.
Now that the frogs have been in a position to transfer round and work together within the swamp, we wanted to start out engaged on some sewers for them to discover. Our Engineering Director, Steve Taylor, developed a customized procedural era system which locations hand-crafted rooms after which joins them collectively utilizing a sequence of pipes and tunnels. Steve labored carefully with our degree designers to ensure the sewer layouts felt intentional, difficult, and most significantly, enjoyable.
However what makes a ‘enjoyable’ sewer room? Initially, our designs have been extra cerebral, with logic puzzles and brain-teasers that wanted to be solved with a view to entry any meals. As soon as we began enjoying these in context, nonetheless, we discovered that gamers have already got sufficient stress from the time stress, making the entire thing really feel just like the world’s greatest escape room. The tone of Frog Sqwad is rather more manic than that, and gamers had a a lot better time as soon as rooms had clearer, extra lively objectives that allowed you to get caught in with tonguing stuff.
We additionally discovered that rooms which have a transparent id are nicely obtained. Shouting “I bought frogspawned within the room with the large historical pyramid” is much more useful than “…I’m on the bit with the pipes in?”. We attempt to ensure each room has a second of co-op in there as well- whether or not it’s opening a lunch field, holding a door open, or slingshotting a hotdog throughout a lava chasm, we’re all the time making an attempt to nudge you to strategy content material as at the least a duo!
We began out with very maze-like sewers, filled with twists and turns. This seemed nice from a chicken’s-eye view, however made getting round an actual slog, because the sewer must wrap all the way in which round bigger rooms. Issues felt a lot better going for one thing easy and straight – every room is all the time solely a room width away. We may then layer in changes to maintain issues attention-grabbing, like setting rooms again from the primary path and including a number of bends, whereas holding the primary path by means of the sewer simply navigable and intuitive.
Bringing our first recreation to Xbox has been a wild journey for the reason that first prototype in June 2025. We will’t look forward to you all to hop within the recreation and test it out for yourselves! Get able to develop into a frog with your pals! Frog Sqwad is coming to Xbox Collection X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud June 2026 and might be accessible with Xbox Sport Cross.
Frog Sqwad
Panic Stations
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
Storm The Sewers for the glory of the Swamp King! Swing, soar, catapult your pals, and eat eat EAT till you develop right into a humongous Megafrog. A co-op extraction puzzle-platformer for as much as 8 gamers. Squad up along with your frog pals for a friendslop occasion on this slapstick physics journey!
