From Frogspawn to Frog Sqwad: The Making of A Sticky, Snacky New Multiplayer Sport

After we shaped Panic Stations in June 2025, we didn’t wish to spend years in pre-production. We had a objective to release our first sport inside three hundred and sixty five days. We would have liked to transport speedy. Having labored in combination prior to now, we jumped directly into building. Our venture was once easy: Maximize a laugh according to minute. To stay 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 luck!

We began paintings on Frog Sqwad virtually in an instant. We briefly came upon that frogs are without equal platforming protagonists. Their tongues in truth have a stunning quantity of makes use of. They may be able to be used as grappling hooks for verticality, swinging for momentum, catapults for launching teammates, interacting with pieces, and, most significantly, kissing your folks.

Our Design Director, Joe Walsh, began by way of that specialize in the texture of our persona and controls. After the fundamentals, he explored mechanics for gamers to paintings in combination in a laugh techniques. The extra we leaned into the tongue physics, the extra hilarious the multiplayer interactions changed into. It felt like the very best have compatibility to mix 3-D puzzle platforming with a friendslop extraction sport.

While many extraction friendslop video games lean into horror and darker aesthetics, our Artwork Director, Dan Hoang went the wrong way. We like the ones video games, however we idea there was once 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 noteworthy. Dan established the design of our frog characters in point of fact early in building.

As soon as the glance was once set, our animator, Kashif Ahmed introduced the frog to existence. Since we established the artwork and animation taste so early within the undertaking, we had a in point of fact expressive frog bouncing round placeholder cubes. Even with out textures within the surroundings, the sport was once already making us chortle. That’s been considered one of our interior compasses all through building. If we had been having a laugh and giggling whilst playtesting the sport, we knew we had been on target.

Now that the frogs had been in a position to transport round and engage within the swamp, we had to get started running on some sewers for them to discover. Our Engineering Director, Steve Taylor, evolved a customized procedural era device which puts handmade rooms after which joins them in combination the use of a chain of pipes and tunnels. Steve labored carefully with our degree designers to verify the sewer layouts felt intentional, difficult, and most significantly, a laugh.

However what makes a ‘a laugh’ sewer room? To begin with, our designs had been extra cerebral, with common sense puzzles and brain-teasers that had to be solved so as to get admission to any meals. When we began taking part in those in context, alternatively, we discovered that gamers have already got sufficient rigidity from the time power, making the entire thing really feel like the arena’s largest get away room. The tone of Frog Sqwad is a lot more manic than that, and gamers had a a lot better time as soon as rooms had clearer, extra energetic objectives that allowed you to get caught in with tonguing stuff.

We additionally discovered that rooms that experience a transparent identification are properly won. Shouting “I were given frogspawned within the room with the large historic pyramid” is much more useful than “…I’m on the bit with the pipes in?”. We strive to verify each room has a second of co-op in there as well- whether or not it’s opening a lunch field, conserving a door open, or slingshotting a hotdog throughout a lava chasm, we’re at all times looking to nudge you to means content material as a minimum of a duo!

We began out with very maze-like sewers, stuffed with twists and turns. This regarded nice from a hen’s-eye view, however made getting round an actual slog, because the sewer must wrap the entire method round better rooms. Issues felt a lot better going for one thing easy and directly – each and every room is at all times just a room width away. Lets then layer in changes to stay issues attention-grabbing, like surroundings rooms again from the primary trail and including a couple of bends, whilst retaining the primary trail throughout the sewer simply navigable and intuitive.

Bringing our first sport to Xbox has been a wild experience for the reason that first prototype in June 2025. We will’t look ahead to you all to hop within the sport and test it out for yourselves! Get in a position to develop into a frog with your folks! Frog Sqwad is coming to Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud June 2026 and shall be to be had with Xbox Sport Move.

Frog Sqwad

Panic Stations

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Typhoon The Sewers for the dignity of the Swamp King! Swing, leap, catapult your folks, and consume consume 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 birthday celebration on this slapstick physics journey!