Frog vs Toad: Ultimate Speed Checkers

A fast, chaotic reimagining of Checkers—no turns, all kings, real-time power-ups, and handcrafted art. Frog vs Toad: move fast, jump smart, and rule the pond. 🐸👑

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🐸 Frog vs Toad: Ultimate Speed Checkers

A fast-paced, chaotic, power-up-fueled twist on classic Checkers—crafted from cardboard, felt, and sheer amphibious determination.

Inspiration

We wanted to reimagine one of the oldest games in the world—Checkers—and ask:
What if it was faster? What if it was sillier? What if it was made of paper?

Frog vs Toad was born from a love of tactile, physical play and social gaming.

Taking lots of inspiration from other favorite party games (MarioKart), we added in randomized powerups, took away players having to "wait their turn", and made all pieces "kinged" from the start.

Inspired by real-world parks like Washington Square (where daily matches unfold on public boards), we set out to capture that energy—with construction paper, felt, and chaos.

What it does

Players start at the park entrance. Here they can…

  • read the rules
  • meet up with friends (or opponents!)
  • watch other matches happening live
  • and explore other "secrets" in the park

When ready, all Players need to do find an opponent, walk to a game table, tap on a side to select Frog (green) or Toad (yellow) side, and start the match. The goal is simple:

Capture all your opponent's game pieces. Sounds easy, right?

Well, just remember this isn't your ordinary round of Checkers… no one has to wait to move.

Tap on any of your game pieces to Select it. As soon as you do, you'll see all the available places it can move (shown in outline). Tap on the outline to move your piece, or tap on another piece if you've changed your mind. When any opponent piece is diagonal from yours, you can "jump" it-- and capture your opponent's piece.

And, most fun of all, Chatterboxes will randomly spawn on the game board, and if you can manage to capture one, you'll be granted a random powerup. Tap on the powerup to see where it can be used, then tap again to choose where to Use it. Use it wisely!

How we built it

The first week of the competition was spent ideating, designing, and learning. Each day, we would create sketches, talk through design ideas, and then jump into prototyping and try our ideas out.

This practice proved useful not just for learning, but also for our game. For example, early versions of the game didn't use powerups. But, when we discovered that Players could sit back and "camp" at the edges of the board, we knew we needed to create a powerful incentive to get them moving.

Crafting supplies set the tone for project. We wanted to bring a real-world charm to the world, creating a paper & cardboard aesthetic influenced by children's crafts. We worked alone with paper & scissors, blender, GIMP, and Substance Painter to build almost every single graphic or object in our world.

So far, we’ve designed 3 powerups:

… the Freeze Powerup, which freezes any piece caught in the powerup zone for 3 seconds…

… the Extra Life, which spawn an extra game piece wherever you want on the board…

… and, perhaps, most powerful of all, the Instant Capture, which captures ANY game piece caught in the zone (your included!).

Probably 95% of development was done using the Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor and writing Typescript on Visual Studio Code. We occasionally went into VR to get 3d objects placed just right.

Challenges we ran into

Coding the logic for Checkers seemed simple at first, but proved anything but. And, ensuring opposing game pieces didn't conflict, meant creating a system that communicated in a very specific order. The game board became a "source-of-truth" for any powerup or game piece, which allowed for a "first-come-first-serve" method of movement.

We also ran into issues where matches were taking longer than we wanted. And, our solution was found in the "happy accident" of disabling non-kinged pieces from spawning in at the start of a match. We quickly learned that getting to move forward and backwards from the get-go was super fun... and also allowed for much faster matches!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Working within the constraints of mobile can be challenging. Interactions are simpler than VR, and camera focus has to be more specific. In the end, we found a fun balance of letting Players explore and "hang", while keeping the core gameplay mechanics solid. Perhaps our favorite moment came when an early Playtester said...

Ooo-- can I play another round?

Armed with this, we designed a looping match system that instantly starts another match as long as both Players are still Focused on the game board!

We're also really proud of creating a game that never has the same match. An 8x8 game board has SO many possibilities. And, with the addition of random powerups, every match always feels unique.

What we learned

  1. Checkers is not as simple as we thought.
  2. Fun visuals and art styles are quick shortcuts to Players feeling "fun".
  3. Typescript is a powerful tool.
  4. The amount of amphibian puns out there is ribetting.

What's next for Frog Vs Toad

We can't wait to bring in our Coach NPC. This giant toad (who may or may not have served alongside a space-pilot fox) is an old war-vet that hangs out in the park and teaches new Players tips and tricks!

VR is also on the horizon. We purposefully built our assets in 3d so that a future expansion would allow VR players to play alongside mobile players.

The Lobby will have some major upgrades in the near future including Frog-themed hats and gear available at the corner vendor.

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