It’s no coincidence that two of the frog’s traits map to the temperature + moisture of your cultivators…

There are four general environments on the maps where you'll find mushrooms growing: the grass on the top of any section of island, the mud denoted by brown pits with walking boards above them to keep your little froggy feet clean, indoors depending on the air quality, and in the water dotted about as you explore the pond wandering between the island segments.

It originally started as a gamejam entry for FletchFest 2023, with the theme of ‘pond’. Ell had always joked about ‘what if APICO but frog?’ before, and this seemed a perfect opportunity to play with the concept and how to take things in a new direction.

Act quickly, for failure to manage your situation will cause a rapidly-spreading merciless threat to the entire facility itself - a Rift Breach

In addition to the location around the map, you'll also need to pay close attention to the heat and moisture in the air at any given time, since this is where mushrooms can get tricky to pin down.

When using your mushrooms to create magic mud for breeding, be sure to double-check your recipes, since there are plenty of ways to accidentally make trait modifiers contradict one another.

For a hint at which mushrooms you'll need to alter genetics required to open Reflection Ponds, check out the little signs just beside the pool itself - these offer a hint at which mushrooms to use in your magic mud to create the frog that opens that Pond.

Related What Does Cozy Gaming Mean To You? To me, a cozy game is less about what you're doing and more about how it makes you feel. It doesn’t have to be all cute animals or farming fields (though those don’t hurt); if I can sink into it like a warm blanket, it’s cozy.

Like most things in Mudborne, you'll also need to pay attention to which realm a mushroom in the table below grows in, since the waking and dreaming worlds have their own mushroom variants, each of which have unique effects, so be sure to explore both realms in all conditions - you never know what you might find growing.

Build and manage sprawling networks of machines + pipes to mass produce delicious meals that can satiate the endless hunger of the beasts that are invading your home. Order Up!

In the mud on cold nights, with a Heater and a high Umbrage frog as well as a Dehydratior with a low Saturation frog nearby.

Mudborne is being created by ellraiser, one half of the indie-dev studio, TNgineers. A spiritual successor of sorts to APICO, Mudborne instead focuses on genetic manipulation and generational puzzles to create and discover all sorts of frog species, with experimentation being encouraged.

I introduce ancestry towards the end of the spawning pools - I didn’t want to have things too complex just for the demo/tutorial region, but in the full game there’ll be a lot more advanced frogs Mudborne Game requiring some clever magic mud across several generations to form.

When you spot them, mushrooms need to grow from spores before you can collect them, which takes a bit of in-game time. This can be frustrating as the weather conditions change, so look for new mushrooms right when the weather changes, since you may have a relatively small window to find them.

There’ll be lots to explore and uncover, and get to the bottom of what happened while you work to bring everyone back.