I am not a frog, but I have become more frog-like in the last few hours. I can croak like a frog, I can splooge like a frog, I can stick my tongue out of my mouth and grab items or use it as a grappling hook to pull me up a cliff or swing me from ledge to ledge. As the little human captain of the adventure game "Time on Frog Island," I spent a lot of time here (Frog Island) and became an honorary amphibian.

The original title of Time on Frog Island was "Trading Time," which still fits the game to this day. Shipwrecked on a colorful island with a bipedal frog society, I am running around frantically trying to trade things with them. I need something to fix my broken boat, but they won't give me that stuff until I bring them what they want first. At first it feels like just a bunch of simple fetch quests where if I bring the frog a feather, they will give me a rope, but the fascinating inhabitants and the island's gradually revealed secrets make me think that maybe I should forget about the broken ship and just live here forever.

The frogs of Frog Island have many occupations: painter, fisherman (Fisher Frog), bartender, handyman, bishop, and many more. They make sounds and communicate with painted word bubbles. My little captain doesn't talk either, but he grunts and produces his own picture bubbles. When I touch a frog, he tells me a picture of what he wants in return. It gets tricky when he asks for something he has never seen on this island or something he doesn't recognize.

Sometimes things are not straightforward. For example, there is a merchant in town who has a wheel that will fit my boat, but he wants me to bring him a lamp instead. The owner of the lamp is a frog monk, and he is trying to meditate on a church hill, but the church bells keep ringing, disturbing his meditation. So, to get my wheel, I need to make the monk happy (which takes a little more work than quieting the church bells). My happiness comes from solving small trading puzzles one by one.

A small but fun complication is that you can only carry one item at a time. It's hilarious to watch them sprint at top speed across the island with their hands over their heads carrying giant mushrooms, chunks of ice, and wriggling crabs, and you can run around for hours and never get tired of watching them. [Even after dozens of dashes back and forth across the island with flowers, driftwood, gems, bones, tools, eggs, and other items, we repeatedly came across entirely new areas, including snow-covered mountain ranges, vast beaches, several small islands offshore, and areas we couldn't reach until the frogs helped build a bridge. It is exciting to discover new areas to explore, and it is especially fun to pick up, carry, and find uses for new items in those zones.

Some items give me a speed boost while I'm carrying them, like a beehive (which probably makes the captain run faster for fear of getting stung) or a plant that inflates like a balloon and rockets me around for a few seconds. At first, these seem like cute features just to accelerate my quickness, but upon closer inspection, I realize that these power-ups have a purpose: to challenge me on unlisted quests that have nothing to do with my ship. Attributes like the aforementioned frogs and spots on the island where you can grow mushrooms to bounce pads are also key to speedy travel.

Side quests were not labeled or explained, so I felt like I was absorbing information about the world and piecing it together bit by bit rather than being told exactly what to do. These little activities were scattered all over the place, so I could not immerse myself in the actual quest for hours.

Some days it rains on Frog Island, which at first seems like a bit of an extra ambiance, but the water (both rain and river) occasionally plays a role, with certain items on the island changing shape when wet, complicating some quests and making me wonder what other experiments I could do with the various items It makes one wonder what else can be experimented with the various items. That is what makes "Frog Island" so fascinating. The question of how much more is left unsaid in "Frog Island" encourages me to continue exploring and investigating. Once I learned how to fish (not the normal way), I tried to use different items as bait each day. With so many items on Frog Island, I was much busier, even if the fish (and other things) I caught were rarely part of the quest. [Frog Island is not a game of rushing time, especially since waiting a day (or resting near the campfire to speed up time) may be necessary for certain tasks. There is also a bit of backstory about the captain, but this is only revealed if you choose to sleep in one of the few campsites. The captain's story, told one still image each night, explains how you got to the island, why the potted plant you brought is so important to you, and why you automatically hug it when you pick it up. And don't worry, after you have repaired the ship and sailed away, you can continue playing after a short cutscene and credits.

The art, charm, little secrets, creative activities, and peaceful nature of the game make me wish I had five times as many frogs to trade in on Time on Frog Island. It probably took me about 4 hours to complete the main quest, and I spent another 4 hours checking achievements and looking for things I might have missed. I could have played for another dozen hours. My time on Frog Island was well spent.