Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge Walkthrough – Tips, Tricks & Breeding Guide

When it comes to simulation games, players can have their pick of cat, dog, and bunny rescues. However, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is bringing diversity to the rehabilitation pot with a game focused entirely on raising and caring for frogs.

Kamaeru isn’t a complex sim, with systems that are easy to master. Players will take pictures of frogs, breed new species, and spend time rebuilding the wetlands that have dried up. To help you make the most of your froggy care facility, we’ve put together this walkthrough with tips and tricks for success.

Note: This guide is complete as of 6/9/2024, but will be updated if future content is released for the game.

**Completed 6/9/2024**

Basic Gameplay Overview

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is made up of three basic points of gameplay: Caring for the Frog Rescue, rebuilding the wetlands, and breeding new frog species.

Frog Rescue

The Frog Rescue is the first portion of the game players are introduced to. Here, furniture can be placed for frogs to relax on. This provides opportunities to take pictures or capture new species for breeding projects.

Rebuild the Wetlands

The next area players will work on is the wetlands. Using the “travel” option in the main menu, they will be taken to a dried stretch of wilderness. Here, ponds and wild plants must be built to restore the habitats frogs need to flourish. As the wetlands are rebuilt, frogs will also populate the ponds for players to take pictures of or catch as needed.

Frog Breeding

We will get into this aspect of gameplay in more detail below, but the breeding aspect of this game is required to access every pattern and color of frog.

What Consoles is Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge On?

Players can enjoy Kamaeru on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Xbox X|S. The PC version supports controllers, but it is easier to play this game with a mouse.

We’d recommend the PC version simply because the interface feels designed for the mouse and keyboard experience. That said, we played the game on the Nintendo Switch, and despite shaky load speeds directly after launch, it was well-optimized and enjoyable.

Is Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge on Xbox Game Pass?

No, the game is not available on Game Pass at this time. It will cost $19.99 on all platforms that currently support it.

How To Get and Place Furniture

To get furniture for your Frog Rescue in Kamaeru, you will need to visit Alex’s Shop at the bottom left of the Frog Rescue area. It shows up as a caravan attached to a bike.

Once a piece of furniture is purchased, open the menu and select the “Stuff” tab. Click on the furniture you would like to place and use the bumpers to turn it to the correct angle. Once placed, frogs will hop on for adorable photo opportunities.

How to Paint Furniture

To paint furniture, players will need to speak with Djena after she joins the Frog Rescue team. She becomes available after the Mayor first speaks with Cleo. To paint furniture, do the following:

• Purchase a piece of furniture that has a color wheel icon. Not all furniture can be painted.
• Head to the building at the bottom right of the Frog Rescue map.
• Speak with Djena and select the option to color furniture.
• Toggle the paint colors using the tubes on the right side of the screen.
• Spray the paint onto the selected furniture item.

How to Get Frog Food

One of the most important resources in Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is frog food. Frogs eat four different types of bugs: Flies, Caterpillars, Diver Beetles, and Dragonflies.

Flies are the most common food type, followed by Caterpillars. Diver Beetles and Dragonflies are much harder to get and spawn infrequently at the start of the game.

To get food, players will need to place ponds and plants on the wetlands map. They can then be collected when they pop up in the wetland habitats.

Helpers

Once Dylan and Jon join the team (they both arrive after hitting 15% Bioscore), they can be assigned to collect insects via the “helper” tab of the shack.

Dylan can collect Flies and Caterpillars, and Jon catches Diver Beetles and Dragonflies. They will both capture a total of five bugs per session.

Insect Hotel

After reaching Level 2, speak with Anabelle at the frog breeding lab in the Frog Rescue. She will task you with obtaining an Insect Hotel for the wetlands.

The technology for this item can be purchased in the technology tab of the Shack in the wetlands for 100 Gold. After unlocking it, go to Alex and purchase an Insect Hotel furniture item for another 100G. Place it in the wetlands to passively generate bugs.

How to Make Money in Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge

To get money in Kamaeru, players will need to make items to sell via the materials they generate in the wetlands. Using the berries, cattails, and ferns, players can make Jam, Candy, Cattail Hearts, Red Cups, Boxes, Sketchbooks, and Nettle Powder. These are crafted at the kitchen and the paper mill located on the Wetlands map.

Once crafted, players can take these goods to Alex’s shop and sell them for gold.

How to Use A Beehive in Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge

The beehive, like the Insect Hotel, is a special item that requires a few steps to use properly.

After arriving in the wetlands, Dylan will ask the player to place two beehives. To get honey from beehives, unlock the beehive technology at the Shack for 90 Gold.

After this, go to Alex’s shop in the Frog Rescue, where the Behhive furniture item can be purchased for 100 Gold.

Return to the wetlands and place these to begin earning Honey. All collected jars can be sold to Alex for a profit.

Rebuilding the wetlands is fairly simple. Players will build ponds of various shapes, and then surround them with Berry Bushes, Ferns, and Cattails. However, to boost rare insect spawns, megaponds can also be created.

To do this, players will need to set ponds down in the exact shapes and orientations as depicted above. Each shape of Megapond attracts different types of bugs.

Frog Breeding Guide For Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge

Breeding is one of the more difficult mechanics in Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge, and not because players will have plenty of mechanics to master. It’s the over-simplified methods that may throw breeders into the reeds.

Unlocking the Breeding Lab

To get started with breeding, players will need to unlock the lab. This is done by completing the first few tutorial quests. When Anabelle arrives, breeding will unlock, allowing players to combine frog genetics for new variations.

How to Breed Frogs

To breed frogs, select two parents after interacting with the breeding laboratory. Each frog will have traits for patterns and colors. After selecting the parents, players will navigate a minigame where they must try and get a line of three for their desired traits. Any traits that are successfully lined up will be guaranteed to be passed down to the offspring.

The minigame plays out like a match of tic-tac-toe. The player will place a gene, and then “nature” will randomly select a gene to pass on. Up to three traits can be guaranteed in the minigame.

After the game concludes, any empty slots will randomly fill, and the offspring will auto-generate. If the baby frog is one players don’t have, they will have to tame it with bugs like a wild frog, so don’t breed without snacks.

Breeding for Rare Traits

Some colors can only be obtained through breeding for specific traits. Cookie and Blush are the current colors only obtainable via breeding. To get these, players will need the below combinations:

• Cookie – Peach + Banana
• Blush – Pink + Kiwi

It is best to select frogs that have the desired mixing colors on both pattern sets. This increases the odds of obtaining the desired color, as players can roll twice for the genes following the tic-tac-toe minigame. Once the color is obtained, these Blush and Cookie frogs can be mixed with other variations to obtain different looks across each type.

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is otherwise a fairly short game. Players can obtain the majority of Frog types from the Frog Rescue and Wetlands, allowing them to focus on breeding special variations. Other than that, repairing the wetlands and raising the Biodiversity score are the primary goals for gameplay.

Looking for more adorable, cozy game? Check out our guides for Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends, or Miniami Lane for new adventures.

About the Author

Laura Gray

Administrator

Laura Gray, known as Ezra when not putting pen to paper, is a D&D enthusiast with a love of all things written. They are a collector of fantasy and sci-fi novels, a lover of cooking weird food, and a player of farming sims and Pokémon games. When not engrossed in a re-read of Anne McCaffrey or a deep dive into the Adventure Zone: Balance, they can be found sniffing the cats and napping in half-finished crochet projects.

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