Tadpole Tales is like playing a classic Saturday Morning Cartoon. The hand drawn art and animations are staggering for a free release, and the 'clean-em-up' environmental spin on the genre allows for that art to comfortably shine without compromising its lighthearted optimistic tone.

While it only takes about 10 minutes to see through to completion if you survive til the end, don't let the charm fool you, this is a deceptively challenging little shmup. Weaving through projectiles as well as learning the movesets and strategies for the game's three bosses will take you a few attempts, so while the length is short on paper you can expect to spend a bit more time learning the ropes. There are a few instances where I think your hitboxes aren't quite defined well enough, and a couple times where I got cornered into taking a hit that seemed avoidable, but those complaints are minor in the grand scheme of things.

Tadpole Tales also includes an Expert mode after you complete the game, but aside from a graphical change (that I do think is worth seeing!) the enemy patterns and boss difficulty stays exactly the same, leaving me to think 'Marathon' mode might've been a more apt title than Expert.

I can't believe this is free, and I hope and pray that there are Indie Publishers already getting their ducks (or tadpoles) in a row in an effort to court this team into making something more substantial. If Tadpole Tales is their proof of concept, they absolutely deserve the funding to take a crack at a full length title.

And did I mention it's free?! Why are you even reading this, just play it for yourself!