Revenge of Toxic Frog – hints ‘n’ tips

Here’s my guide to Revenge of Toxic Frog (iOS/Universal) or, more accurately, my guide to achieving the highest score possible in that game.

Getting a very high score, reaching and passing the 500,000 milestone (and earning the Arcadelife Cup achievement), relies on one thing: combos. Specifically, it relies on being able to string together a constant sequence of firefly captures without missing any at all and without dying. I’ll tell you how the combo system works, the base scores for each type of firefly and the best levels to exploit for the highest score possible, as well as some tips for staying alive and maximising the combo multiplier in the time available.

The base score is the score you will get for landing on a firefly with the combo multiplier at 1.

The normal firefly has a base score of 100. Each successive normal firefly that you land on – without any hops between fireflies – will increase your combo multiplier by 10. This means that the second firefly that you collect will have a multiplier of x10, giving you 1000 points for that firefly. The next one will have a multiplier of x20 (2000 points) and so on.

An unbroken sequence of normal fireflies will give you a score that increases as follows: 100, 1100, 3100, 6100, 10100, 15100, 21100, 28100, 36100, 45100, etc. The key to really huge scores is building the score multiplier up to over x200.

Green fireflies have a base score of 1000. They also temporarily give your frog the ability to hop to any visible lily-pad on the screen. Green fireflies are a great help with high scores for two reasons: their base score is already 1000 and they will give you the chance to reach a firefly that you would otherwise have been unable to reach, speeding up your combo building. Additionally, they do not break your combo streak when the hopping power-up wears off. They first appear on level 7, which is worth knowing if you plan on incorporating them into your scoring strategy. Note that collecting a green firefly with a score multiplier at x200, for example, will instantly increase your score by 200,000 points.

Purple fireflies have a base score of 1000. They grant your frog temporary immunity from yellow fireflies, enabling you to collect those for a short time, much like the power-pills in Pac-Man. This sounds like a great way to score high, but there is a big catch: When the purple firefly’s immunity wears off, the combo multiplier resets. I always avoid collecting purple fireflies, preferring to wait for them to return to the normal state before grabbing them, unless I encounter one when I have less than 15 seconds remaining and my multiplier is at least x200. Otherwise, you’re throwing your combo multiplier away in exchange for whatever you manage to score while the immunity power-up is active.

Yellow fireflies can only be collected while you have the purple firefly immunity active. The base score (yellow firefly collected while immunity is active and combo multiplier is reset by 1 or more non-scoring hops) is 2000. If you manage to get your multiplier to at least x200, then pick up a purple, then pick up one or more yellow fireflies in sequence before the multiplier resets, you will achieve an impressive score. It isn’t something that you can plan for, but you need to be prepared to go for it on the rare occasion when the situation arises.

The last element that you need in order to score high is time. As the levels get harder, you are given more time to complete the goals. This additional time is also a great help for scoring high. The downside, of course, is that the later levels have more hazards. After significant experimentation, I arrived at the following conclusions:

Levels with owls – forget it. The owls fly around the screen, killing your frog instantly if they pass over it. This is a hopeless situation if you are camping on a lily-pad waiting for a firefly to float past.
Levels with the Toxic Frog(s) – almost guaranteed rage as they will hop onto your lily-pad and kill your frog when they float within range.
Levels with Tiki bombs. Don’t even bother.

The levels with giant catfish are fine because you’re only ever going to be hopping to lily-pads with fireflies on them. Catfish will never appear on the same lily-pad as a firefly.

Best level for early high-score chasing: level 2. This level is perfect, apart from the relatively short amount of time available. Scoring over 500,000 is possible, it just requires a lot of patience and a purple firefly very near the end of the timer.

Best overall level for high-scores: level 8. Time available: 02:35. There are catfish, but no other hazards apart from the yellow fireflies. There are also green fireflies which can contribute to massive scores. I finally managed to break the million point barrier on level 8.

Level 7 – If you prefer the night levels, 7 is reasonable for high-scoring but you have 10 seconds less than level 8 and the stars seem to take up a lot of the lily-pads.

It’s worth noting that the score multiplier only affects firefly scores. Collecting stars or flowers will always give you the same base score, it will not be multiplied by your combo multiplier.

Now all you have to do is get the game and you can be just as tragically obsessed as I am.