Icelandic Developer Aska Studios Is Ready to Talk About Their Debut Title, Gang of Frogs

Yahoo

a day ago

'Frogs, Hippos, tadpoles, crabs,' this is just the start of what you can expect from Aska Studios' first game, Gang of Frogs. Aska Studios is a studio out of Iceland that has been working on their debut title, Gang of Frogs, for the last two years. If you know me at all, you know that I have a deep love for Iceland, especially their gaming culture, so when the opportunity to talk to the team about the game came up, I just couldn't pass on it.
Gang of Frogs is a roguelike, shooter, deck-builder, and its art style is absolutely stunning. Pairing that with a studio with tons of experience across the board, a community-first approach, and a lot of light-hearted fun, it looks like the game has a strong future ahead. I was able to sit down with Aska Studios Co-founder and Gang of Frogs Game Director, Halldór Heidberg, to learn more about their Icelandic studio and what we can expect from the game in the future. Read to the end for more information on how to play Gang of Frogs a lot sooner than you think!
Tell us a little bit about Aska Studios and how it came to be.
Halldór Heidberg: Aska Studios was founded at the end of 2022 by me and my childhood friends. Ever since we were 10 years old, we dreamed of building video games together, even going so far as to sketch out ideas and concepts on paper way back then (Which are still kept safe and sound in my co-founder's basement). In 2022, we found ourselves growing up and involved in different industries, myself in games and film, Friðrik in programming and Jóhannes in sound engineering and the music world.
Suddenly, it just made sense to combine our complementary skill sets and realize our dream of making a game together. Since then, we have been extremely fortunate to get top talent from across the industry to join our team, people who have worked on everything from Call of Duty to Marvel movies. Most recently, we had Ólafur join our founding team with his previous experience from CCP Games, Riot Games and 1939 Games, and we are really excited about the next chapter for Aska Studios.
At Aska, we pride ourselves on the highly effective remote work culture we have built in the last few years, and this allows us to work with the most talented people from across the globe, which bypasses one of the biggest problems we have, being on a small island in the North Atlantic — access to gaming industry talent. We have 15 people now working on the team, along with a network of contractors, all laser-focused on making Gang of Frogs into the best game we possibly can.
What is your role at the studio?
Halldór Heidberg: Founding a company requires you to wear probably all the hats over time, and that has definitely been my experience as well. My passion has always been on the creative side of things, and I have led our creative efforts since day one, but through this process, I found myself loving the process of building a great team and given the calibre of people we have on board at the moment, I think that has been going pretty well.
As for my role, it has evolved gradually over time. As the studio grows, I'm able to step more into a full-time game director role, but it's been everything from company management and business development to character design throughout the process.
is well-known for game development. How has being a studio based in Iceland benefited your team?
Halldór Heidberg: I think there are benefits and drawbacks to being based in a small country like Iceland. The biggest drawback is obviously access to talent and connection to the wider games industry, although this has improved in the past decade, especially with how successful CCP Games has been; they have really seeded the market with amazing people.
In terms of benefits, I think the biggest benefits for us have been being a part of a tight knit industry in Iceland where we can seek advice or input from industry veterans and powerhouses fairly easily, something that might be more difficult if we were a small studio in LA looking for some face time with CEOs of bigger gaming companies. I also think the company culture and vibe is very Icelandic, something about being from a small island and having to fight for your existence creates oversized ambitions, perseverance, and a fighting spirit, all of which I think define the day-to-day culture of the team. No one is afraid of challenges, and we are excited to pursue ambitious goals.
You have people on your team all across the globe, despite being headquartered in Iceland. What does Aska Studios gain by branching out in that way?
We get a lot from the global nature of the team, not only do we get to work with talent that would be difficult to find if we were only looking within Iceland, but we also get different perspectives from people that come from very different backgrounds to us, and that, ultimately, creates a much better end result when it comes to the game.
This also helps us better understand regional nuances, whether that is understanding how to build a good game for the North American market or the Asian market and this aligns well with our ambitions with the game, ultimately we just want to make something worthy of people's time and want to see as many people as possible find their inner frog and enjoy conquering hordes of space crabs.
What kind of experience does the Aska Studios and team have, and how have you been able to harness that talent for this game?
Halldór Heidberg: The team around the game has a lot of experience. We often say that we are first-time founders backed by industry veterans, and I think the resumes of our team back that statement up fully. We have members of the team who have previously worked at Activision/Blizzard, Riot Games, CCP Games, Raven Software, Mountaintop, Warhorse, and more. This means that everything that makes it into the game, from gunplay to the UI/UX design, is backed by years of real experience with what works and what doesn't.
If you combine this level of talent with a high-trust company structure and a culture that emphasizes regular feedback and open communication, it is amazing to see what can be accomplished without a specific need to 'harness' any talent; good stuff just flows from talented people in this case.
is the first game to come out of Aska Studios. How did the concept come to be?
Halldór Heidberg: About four years ago, I created the character Hank, a reptilian hammerhead shark, which ended up being quite well-received and became the captain of the frog crew in Gang of Frogs. I've been a massive frog fan my entire life. There are no frogs in Iceland, so moving abroad as a kid, they really stood out. They are these very memeable, loveable creatures, and I just felt they hadn't been represented like I wanted them to be in games.
So after Hank, it just made sense to keep building this universe, Frogs, Hippos, tadpoles, crabs and in the future greatly expanding this roster.
'About four years ago, I created the character Hank, a reptilian hammerhead shark, which ended up being quite well-received and became the captain of the frog crew in Gang of Frogs.'
What can you tell us about ?
Halldór Heidberg: Gang of Frogs is really the game a lot of us wish we had access to today, nothing super complicated, just fun, action-packed and pretty! We absolutely want to invoke the same type of feelings and experience we remember fondly from our childhood playing some of the early consoles, where you could absolutely get lost in a virtual world and have a great time while doing it.
Obviously, a gang of frogs is unique. Why frogs?
Halldór Heidberg: Frogs are just fantastic. Our mantra is that Frogs > No frogs. Originally, we had plans to include many types of animals, but as the game progressed, the frogs just stood out as our favourite of the bunch. They are fascinating animals, and a lot of people around the world love them. Being able to interpret different characters as frogs in terms of how they are built, what colours they are and how they accessorize is a fun project as well. But even though the game is called Gang of Frogs, who knows if more types of animals will join the fray?
What makes it different from other co-op shooters, aside from the frogs?
Halldór Heidberg: Gang of Frogs is a rougelite shooter, that already sets it apart from most core gameplay loops within the shooter genre. The game can be equally rewarding to hardcore players who want to grind to the end game and to players who just want a quick trip to space for some action to unwind at the end of their day. But the truly unique aspect of the game is its deckbuilding core.
In each run, the player must manage their economy to purchase cards that represent upgrades, modifiers, weapons and abilities and based on the deck a player builds throughout a run, their experience can be vastly different. From being a DPS machine with a damage boosted minigun to being an explosive specialist with grenades and airstrikes at their disposal the game will offer over 100 billion build combinations at launch in addition to permanent upgrades and more all serving to make each playthrough feel different and give the player a lot of agency in choosing their preferred path every time they play.
What do you think players will be most excited or surprised by when they go hands-on with ?
Halldór Heidberg: We are definitely trying to maximize the fun factor. It is our core belief that if players decide to invest their time and money into Gang of Frogs they should be rewarded with a fun experience that is worth their time.
The art style in is beautiful and colourful. What was the inspiration behind it?
Halldór Heidberg: We are '90s babies, so we are greatly inspired by Y2K aesthetics. I generally believe the colourful, contrasting worlds, odd characters and adventurous themes will resonate with a lot of players today. Movies/games such as Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Ratchet & Clank, all sorts of 90s anime and other themes really hold a lot of thematic inspirations.
We call the games art direction 'Historical Cyberpunk' or putting neon lights into flying wooden ships and building skyscrapers out of crooked stone and wood buildings, which would be quite related to Steampunk, however, minus all the brass and gears. You mentioned a community on Discord. How has having a place for the community to grow and interact affected the development and the team?
Halldór Heidberg: We have been extremely lucky to have found a dedicated core group that is interested in the game early on. Now, as we start getting closer to releasing the game in early access, we are working closely with the community on every step we take. This means regular playtests and being very open about what we are doing and what we are thinking about when we make changes or add new things to the game.
It can be hard for people that spend all day, every day thinking about the game to notice things that might not work or realize that the wrong assumption was made a few months back, so having the community there to help us identify what we can do better and what we are doing well is invaluable and really allows us to build the best version of Gang of Frogs we can.
It's also just a great place for us to get to know people and for people to get to know each other.
What has the reaction to been like so far?
Halldór Heidberg: So far, the reaction has been fantastic! The trailer we released has received close to three million views across different channels and through content creators sharing the trailer and their thoughts on it, which is something we are delighted to see. Reading through the comments, we can also see that there is an appetite for the type of game we are creating, something you can play with your friends and just enjoy the fun of playing together without having to worry about fairness in matchmaking, hackers or any of that stuff.
Add to that a humour-laden narrative and interactions, and you have all the ingredients for a great night of gaming action, fun, humour, what's not to love?
People also seem to like the art and visual style of the game, and we believe there is a lot that we can do within this new world we are building that can deliver countless hours of fun to our players. Our initial playtests were also extremely promising, with most people who play the game saying that it is fun and they would like to play more, which is always a good sign.
But we will, of course, continue to listen to the feedback and our community to improve the game all the way up to launch.
Can you tell our audience anything about upcoming playtests or events, or how to stay up to date on ?
Halldór Heidberg: Absolutely! We would love to see everyone join our Discord community and sign up for future playtests through there. We aim to run tests bi-weekly for the time being and then do more frequent and longer play tests as we progress further in development. We are rapidly increasing the number of players involved in each playtest, so players who sign up now shouldn't have to wait for a long time before they get their chance to play the game and give us feedback.
Through Discord, we will also be doing dev hangouts, Q&A sessions and preview streams in the near future.
The Discord server can be found here or through our website. We would also love to see people wishlist the game on Steam so they are notified when the game is released. Our Steam page can be found here.
Finally, we have social media accounts we post on occasionally, but we will be more active there in the coming weeks and months, so for anyone interested in following us there, they should connect with us on the following socials:
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gang.of.frogs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playgangoffrogs/
X: https://x.com/gang_of_frogs
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Gang-of-Frogs
CGMagazine is happy to announce that Gang of Frogs will be hosting its next playtest on July 31st, 2025, so make sure to join their Discord for your chance to go hands-on with the game.