Froggy Hates Snow is out now on Xbox and PC

Solo developer Crying Brick and publisher Digital Bandidos have released Froggy Hates Snow on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The survival roguelite launched last week. It supports Xbox Play Anywhere, so a single digital purchase covers both the Xbox console and Windows PC versions.

The premise is exactly what the title promises. You play as an amphibian who is deeply unhappy about being trapped in a frozen wasteland. Because frogs are cold-blooded, standing around in the snow is a literal death sentence. You must constantly manage your body heat by returning to a central thermal bubble. From there, you dig outward through the ice to find resources, keys, and permanent upgrades before the cold overtakes you.

Survival requires a mix of frantic resource gathering and light RPG progression. The upgrade menu has a branching path of skills. Players can invest their gathered gems into basic body strength, improved heating capacity, or direct combat abilities like a fireball attack. You can also recruit local wildlife to help automate the grind. A line of penguins will happily carry your mined resources back to base. This automation is a massive relief when you are busy trying not to freeze to death in a distant corner of the map.

Digging for survival

The cold is only half the problem. The snowdrifts are filled with dark, blocky monsters that attack in waves. Combat relies heavily on the tools you uncover while tunneling through the terrain. The starting arsenal includes standard explosives and snowblowers. Things escalate quickly from there. You can eventually equip a flamethrower to melt both the terrain and the enemies at the same time.

Each run gives you two ways to win. You can stick around to survive ten waves of enemies and defeat a massive boss. Alternatively, you can dig around the map to find enough hidden keys to unlock an escape door. This dual-win condition lets you bail out of a run early if your build is falling apart, provided you can actually find the exit in time. The map is entirely destructible, so finding the door often means frantically blasting away walls of snow while a boss bears down on you.

Cozy but deadly

Despite the constant threat of hypothermia and shadow monsters, the art style leans heavily into cozy territory. There are ten different frogs to unlock. They all wear little coats or scarves to deal with the weather. A separate peaceful mode disables enemy spawns entirely. This lets players dig tunnels and uncover secrets without the stress of combat. It turns the game into a relaxed mining simulator.

Froggy Hates Snow is the debut console release from Crying Brick. The solo developer built the game around a simple loop of risk and reward. Every time you leave the heat bubble, you have to decide if the potential loot is worth the risk of freezing. Pushing just a little further into the snowbank often leads to a great upgrade, but it also leaves you vulnerable to the next wave of monsters.

The game is a clever twist on the standard roguelite formula. It replaces endless dungeon corridors with destructible snowbanks and gives you the tools to carve your own path. It turns out that digging through ice with a flamethrower and a squad of penguins is a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.