Game World and Play Summary | Hungry Frog German language software program example

The Game World is where the game action takes place.You can use your own backgrounds for the game world (see examples for Hungry Frog German language software program). The Player Name of the logged in player is below the bottom left border of the game screen background image. Your Frog Family and your Tadpoles inhabit the bottom of the game world display area, and the Bugs which your frogs attempt to eat pass by above.You play the game by eating bugs with your frogs and getting as many tadpoles as you can in the process. You help your frog family to eat by clicking on a frog to make it Hungry and then clicking again on a bug so that the selected (Hungry) frog will attempt to eat the bug by putting out its Tongue to eat. If you have chosen the right bug, then your frog will gobble it up and you gain points and other benefits. If you have selected an incorrect bug, then you will lose points and some of your 'power ups'. You can then choose to eat another bug, or you can click on a different frog to make it Hungry or move by the keyboard. You can learn all about moving from frog to frog in the single and two player games in the 'game controls' manual page. The frog which is Hungry is drawn in a different color text (the name of the frog), and it is the frog which is hopping up and down the highest.

The Hungry Frog is the only frog which will speak to you. For the above screen captures, the Hungry Frog German Language game displays frogs which represent German words from the current German lesson of German dictionary words in that lesson. The German word on the frog is spoken aloud to help you with German pronunciation of all the German dictionary words you encounter. You can also use your own recorded sounds with your own German pronunciation for German words and German phrases. See the German Teacher Menu German dictionary manager page, and the German Teacher Menu German Lesson planner manual page. The Hungry Frog speaks it's name (the German word for the German dictionary entry it represents) when you select it and the frog periodically speaks its name as long as it is hungry all through the level. You can play the game without having to look at your frogs at all, if you use the space bar to move from frog to frog instead of the mouse or use other keyboard controls to move from frog to frog. When you use the keyboard to move from frog to frog, you can just listen to the frogs speak their names, and use the mouse only to attempt to eat matching bugs. You can always choose to select a new Hungry Frog by clicking on the frog with the mouse, but try using the keyboard controls as well. Hearing the German words spoken aloud helps you with learning German pronunciation for those words from the dictionary.

IMPORTANT: Bug which appear during a game level as you are playing it appear in a process called BugSpawning. You can use the Basic Options slider to control all of this process with one easy slider, or you can control at a finer level of detail Because Bug Spawning is complicated, you may prefer to use the simple Basic Options slider, but if you prefer you can modify lots of Advanced Options parameters to change what sort of bugs spawn and when and in what quantity. See the Bug Spawning options slider description in the Advanced Options pages for details on Bug Spawning.

Game Levels

As you progress though the game you move up in levels of difficulty. In the Hungry Frog German language software program, you are playing a German lesson (which may have been chosen by your German homeschool teacher, or your classroom German teacher, or you can create yourself as part of your own homeschool German program). Choosing the German lesson you use is done with the German lesson chooser. Creating and editing German vocabulary lessons is done with the German Teacher Menu German Lesson planner. Editing and managing your German dictionary files is done with the German Teacher Menu German dictionary manager. You can adjust lots of parameters to suit your play style (see Advanced Option Player Menu). At the start of each new level, you get a new family of frogs and a new dollop of tadpoles which comes in one big bunch and quickly spreads out to swim around with your frogs. You always have tadpoles as long as you have either a Time Bonus remaining or you continue to be actively (and rapidly) correctly eating bugs with your frogs. The screen capture above shows a game screen capture shortly after the start of level 2. The more little tadpoles you have swimming about (green and yellow or otherwise) the better you are doing and the more likely it is that you will pass the level you are on and move to the next level of difficulty.

In order to progress from one level of the game to the next you need to successfully complete the level you are on. You end the level you are on by clearing the screen of all the bugs. Then you move on to the next level if you have enough tadpoles (see Score Tally). It is really really important that you have lots of tadpoles when your level ends, or you may not be able to move successfully to the next level. However, if you don't have enough tadpoles to move to a higher level of difficulty, but you still ended the level with tadpoles, all is not lost. If you don't move to the next level of difficulty, then you replay the same level with new frogs and new bugs. If you really are having lots of trouble keeping up with the bugs and end several levels in a row with insufficient tadpoles to move upwards in level, then you may even drop back a level. Your score and your level achievement are complementary, but you can have a higher score on a lower level in one game than in another game because of how many points you get during each level's play. See Bonus Bugs, and Time Bonus and Accuracy Bonus.

Eating Bugs

Correct Attempts: You can eat as many bugs at a time as you can grab with your hungry frog tongue. Different frogs can simultaneously eat different bugs if you are fast enough to catch bugs before the currently eaten bugs ae swallowed by the frogs which are eating them. The next screen capture shows a frog eating more than one bug. For example, as shown in the Hungry Frog German language software program screen captures, the frog can eat as many bugs as match it. If a German dictionary entry has more than one English definition, then it may mean that several bugs are on screen at the same time each with one of the English definitions for that German dictionary entry as its bug name. Then the frog of that German dictionary can eat as many of those bugs as it can - even if each bug is not identical. As long as each of the those bugs is a valid English definition for the German dictionary item of the frog, it can be eaten. Of course, if there happen to be many bugs on screen at the same time which all are the same English definition for that dictionary entry, then the frog can eat all of them too at the same time. Specifically, in the screen capture below this is possible because in the example Hungry Frog German screen capture 'orbis' means both 'ring' and 'circle' so the same frog can eat two entirely different bugs because they are both definitions of the frog's dictionary entry.

When you make a successful attempt, you get a 'score burst' on screen which displays how many points you earned for eating that bug. Your game score for the game increases and the score display text enlarges as it counts up to your new score. In the German language game example screen capture, you can see a score burst in the bottom right of the screen background. You see a bunch of '+5' score markers which relate to how many points you got for eating the bug you just clicked on successfully. The more correct bugs you eat in a row, also the wider your frog tongue gets and the more points you get for every bug you eat. You can think of this as a kind of 'power up' like in a video game. You can also get wider tongues from Tongue Bonus Bugs.

Missed Attempts: However, if you make an incorrect attempt to eat a bug then you first lose entirely the overall 'power up' tongue width increase for ALL of your frogs - not just for the frog which made the mistake. This is the broad tongue bonus which applies to all frogs and grows as you eat more and more bugs correctly in succession. This is a complementary bonus to the tongue bonus the individual frogs can earn by earting the Tongue Bonus Bugs. When you make a mistake, you also lose this entire special individual tongue bonus you may have acquired on that particular frog by eating Time Bonus bugs. You also decrease partially the time bonus bug tongue bonuses on all the other frogs. It pays to think before you eat, as these are pretty serious consequences for a mistake, but you will find that by being careful you can very quickly get your tongue power ups back up again, so if you miss a bug it isn't as big a deal as it sounds. There are always more Bonus Bugs on the way, and you always increase all your frogs' tongue widths as you answer eat more and more bugs correctly. You need to be careful at the end of a lesson though, because if you miss bugs when you have few tadpoles, then you may end up lsoing your last tadpole and the game will end. Missed attempts to eat bugs also cause you to lose score proportional to how big you tongue is at the time you try to eat the wrong bug.

Game Score

Your game score is continuously displayed in the center top of the game screen. It pulses and enlarges in size when you have scored new points and your score is increasing, and it pulses diminishes in size when you have lost points and your score is decreasing. Remember missed attempts will cause your score to go down, as well as remove power ups for your frog tongues.

Studying German while eating two bugs and gaining score points:

For example, in the above screen shot the Hungry Frog German word 'orbis' just ate two correct bugs with different valid English definitions for that German dictionary entry so the tongue width of ALL the frogs increases. In the next screen capture from the same game, the same frog eats another 'circle' English definition bug matching the 'orbis' German dictionary Hungry Frog German word for that frog and at the same time is eating two Bonus Bugs for bonus points. You can see that the tongue width has increased because the player has eaten several bugs in a row which are correct English definitions for the frog German dictionary word.

Time Bonus and Accuracy Bonus | Hungry Frog German Language software program example

Time Bonus: You can see from the same sequence of screen captures above from the same Hungry Frog German language software game (three screen captures in close sequence) that the Time Bonus has been decreasing. The Time Bonus is always going down over time, but you can increase it by eating Bonus Bugs with time bonus on them as their special kind of bonus. Time bonus also may briefly increase when new bugs arrive on screen. As long as you have a non-zero time bonus remaining, you can count on having at least one tadpole left and that the game can't end yet. Once your time bonus runs out however, you must keep eating bugs correctly or else your tadpoles will all eventually perish and the game will end. You must keep matching up your German language words to their English definition bugs to keep your tadpole family healthy with lots of tadpoles. The more German language words you match correctly in succession, the greater your Accuracy Bonus at the end of level Score Tally which determines if you move to the next level of difficulty.

Accuracy Bonus: As long as you keep eating bugs correctly fast enough, you will keep your tadpoles alive and even increase their number. The more different bugs you eat in succession, the greater the number of tadpoles you get and the greater your accuracy bonus will be at the end of the lesson. If you miss bugs and make wrong attempts to eat with your frog, then your accuracy bonus will decrease rapidly and so will the size of your tadpole school - and you risk ending the game early when your tadpoles run out. Accuracy bonus gives you tadpoles and a boost to your score at the end of each level, so try to keep eating bugs in succession that are correct.


Hungry Frog German language software program game play in action, accumugermang accuracy bonus:


You can see that as more and more English definition bugs are eaten correctly in succession that all the frog tongues get wider and wider and score points accumulate faster. Remember that any valid English definition for the German dictionary entry German word which a frog represents can be eaten right away, and you do not have to wait for a frog to finish eating one matching English definition bug before it starts to eat another matching English definition bug or before you switch frogs to select a new German dictionary entry with its own set of English definition bugs. Keep matching German dictionary words to their English definitions on the bugs, and you will keep gaining points. Because the screen captures are only a limited sequence of frames, you do not see all of the points being acquired by the frogs. You will not always see every English definition for a given German dictionary frog on screen at a time, but during a level of play you likely will see at least once every English definition for each German dictionary frog in that level. You should get a good idea of how the frog tongues grow for all frogs as long as you keep eating correct bugs. In this example, there were no Bonus Bugs with bonus tongue power ups - all the frog tongue width increase was due to accuracy bonus accumulation.There were plenty of tadpoles at the end of the level (when all the bugs were cleared) that it was easy to move to the next level.

You can also see the time bonus decreasing. The game play is sped up in the animation because a lot of frames were cut out to make a small size movie for the web.