正文
Travel Frog
, or
Tabi Kaeru
, has been topping Apple’s App Store across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan since its release two months ago. It’s been downloaded around 4 million times from China’s App Store since December, according to the BBC. Created by Hit-Point, the Japanese company responsible for the popular Kitty Collector (Neko Atsume) in 2014, play involves helping your frog prepare for its solo journey by providing it with food and money—yet the player has no control over when and where the frog goes, or when it will return. The frog communicates with the player with, ironically for a digital game, postcards from his traveling destinations.
The game is easy to play, and some players have said it helps them think about parenting and relate to their parents’ anxieties about them. But many players also say they find the game appealing because of its philosophical approach, which teaches that one must learn to surrender control in order to move forward.
