Out officially August 9th, but in beta now

Image credit: Luckshot Games

Big Hops is the cool 3D platform game with the frog who can use their tongue as a grappling hook. Despite much questing and fervent prayer, I have yet to encounter a frog that can do this in reality. Real-life frogs are a slothful, unimaginative bunch, content to use their tongues purely to catch food with. Some frogs, like the African dwarf frog, don't even have tongues at all. What foul sorcery is here!

It's just as well, then, that we have Big Hops, which is being updated with the ability to play through the whole campaign in eight player co-op. With eight frogs in the field, the tactical applications of tongues multiply exponentially. You can tongue items right out of your friend's backpack! You can tether yourself to another frog like in Chained Together, but with the option of letting go before your mate walks you into a laser! The developers, Luckshot Games, are calling the update Big Hops Together. It's available right now in beta, with the official release coming 9th August.

Watch on YouTube

"It's a full rewrite," explains Luckshot's Chris Wade in a video blog. "The game systems across the whole game have changed and been rewritten to make this work. And it was really complicated and hard, and took four months of full-time work from me and some support work from members of the team who otherwise are done working on the game. So, it's a huge deal."

In the video, Wade confesses to a bit of "FOMO" regarding the "friendslop" genre, aka streamer-friendly, prankish co-op games for groups of four or more. He also discusses a couple of more specific inspirations for Big Hops Together: a Mario Odyssey online multiplayer mod from a few years back, which Wade finds interesting for how players "recontextualise" levels they know from single player, and a Mario 64 co-op mod that allows people to jump into maps without waiting for each other. "I played that and I was like wow, this is an amazing game experience and nobody has made this game for real," Wade says of the Mario 64 mod.

Watch on YouTube

I've heard that Big Hops is rather good. We never reviewed it, which you might categorise as a symptom of professional negligence compounded by lingering resentment of real-life frogs who won't even use their tongues as pogo sticks or prehensile lockpicks, for crying out loud. You would be entirely incorrect to lodge such a foolish and impudent accusation. We didn't review Big Hops because I forgot. Also, RPS contributor Robert Yang worked on it a bit, so I guess this is one of those "conflict of interest" situations.

I can't promise we'll ever get round to that full review, but I am keen. Again, Big Hops Together launches properly on 9th August. If you're planning to tackle that campaign as a group, you'll be very hoppy to hear that story and collection progress is shared.