Big Hops review: finally, a sensible use for licking everything
A frog is an excellent platform-game protagonist. It jumps, it has expressive eyes, and its main piece of equipment is already attached to its face. Big Hops takes that last advantage unusually seriously. Hop's tongue is an interaction tool, a means of getting around, and a comprehensive argument against touching any public surface in this universe. Add vegetables that become traversal equipment and you have a 3D platformer where getting your five a day could constitute bridge construction.
Luckshot Games released Big Hops on January 12, 2026, for Windows, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. The Steam version now carries the name Big Hops Together following its multiplayer expansion, with macOS support added in August. Those changes broaden the same adventure rather than making this a separate sequel. Beneath the newer label sits the appealing original proposition: movement matters, and the scenery is something to negotiate creatively rather than merely admire on the way to the next checkpoint.
Reasons to look closer
The smartest part of the design is the relationship between movement and makeshift infrastructure. A conventional platformer offers a gap and expects you to perform the approved jump. Big Hops gives you more ways to argue with the gap. Its climbing, rolling, diving, and swinging form a useful physical vocabulary; portable plants supply additional punctuation. An awkward stretch of terrain becomes a problem with options instead of an examiner silently marking your timing.
That freedom has value beyond making things easier. Inventing a route asks for spatial judgment: where should the next foothold go, what can your momentum carry you toward, and which tool makes the awkward bit manageable? The player gets to participate in designing the solution. This is a much better use of an apple than eating it and being slightly less hungry.
Your mouth is now a grappling system
The tongue gives Big Hops a consistent identity across movement and interaction. Pulling objects toward Hop and using anchors to travel make the same improbable body part relevant in different situations. Rather than carrying a separate device for every obstacle, you are an amphibian multipurpose tool with personal-space issues.
The broad movement kit also gives the game something to build upon when the novelty of licking machinery inevitably becomes normal. Wall-running, climbing, sliding, and rail-grinding suggest a platformer interested in transitions, not just isolated jumps. The interesting question is how one action sets up another. A route can be read as a sequence of opportunities rather than a collection of platforms waiting patiently for inspection.
There is a tradeoff in that breadth. Anyone who prefers a tiny move set and tightly prescribed obstacle courses may find the invitation to improvise less immediately satisfying. Big Hops wants curiosity as well as execution. Sometimes the useful question is less “Can I make that?” and more “What ridiculous produce-based intervention would make that possible?”
Pack a lunch, build a road
The vegetable system turns inventory into a little collection of potential routes. Mushrooms create bounce pads, acorns produce climbing vines, and apples provide swinging points. These are distinct solutions, so choosing what to carry has a practical purpose beyond collecting increasingly expensive pocket clutter. The backpack is part of how you plan, not just where the game puts things it cannot fit on the screen.
Slowing time while selecting from the backpack is a particularly sensible accommodation. Improvisation loses some charm when the inventory interface behaves like another predator. Giving players room to think lets the construction idea coexist with movement rather than constantly interrupting it. You can appreciate a frantic leap without also wanting your lunch selection to become an advanced reflex examination.
The wider collection systems risk spreading attention across numerous errands, but they also provide reasons to revisit the movement tools. Backpack upgrades and gameplay-altering trinkets offer practical motivation alongside costumes and other diversions. For players who enjoy poking around an inviting world, that is a more convincing incentive than a collectible counter solemnly informing them that their vacation remains incomplete.
More frogs, more logistical questions
The August Together update brought online play for up to eight players to the Steam adventure. The appeal is obvious: a world designed around flexible movement becomes a shared playground. The potential chaos is equally obvious. One frog improvising a route is ingenuity; eight frogs improvising routes is a small environmental incident.
October's Steam updates added room codes and addressed multiplayer synchronization and interaction problems. That is useful context, not a promise that every unusual combination is now flawless. In particular, the eight-player Steam feature should not be treated as a blanket guarantee of identical multiplayer support on every console edition.
There is also a photography diversion in the free Cappler's Conspiracy update. Its jobs and camera tools give exploration another purpose beyond reaching the next destination. Looking closely at a space and figuring out how to move through it are complementary pleasures, and a camera offers a welcome excuse to stop treating every attractive view as merely the thing behind the jumping problem.
The verdict
Big Hops is most persuasive as a platformer for people who enjoy making their own small discoveries. Its tools encourage experimentation, its frog premise actually influences the mechanics, and its later additions give the world more ways to be explored. The attraction is not simply having lots of moves. It is having moves and objects that invite useful combinations. If your ideal adventure includes a little curiosity, some traversal ingenuity, and deeply questionable standards of oral hygiene, this frog has a strong pitch.