During Gamescom 2026, we had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Alexandropoulos, co-creator of Amphibian, an upcoming turn-based JRPG that combines a colorful world of frogs with classic RPG mechanics, tactical elements, puzzles and a strong focus on storytelling.
What makes Amphibian particularly interesting is the story behind its development. Greg comes from a background in music rather than traditional game development, while his co-creator James comes from software and programming. Together, they started building the game just one year before presenting it at Gamescom.
We talked about the origins of Amphibian, why frogs became such an important part of the game's identity, the team's “Super 2D” approach, its class system, musical influences, the decision to avoid grinding, and what players can expect from the upcoming demo and full release.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about how you got into game development?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I’m Greg Alexandropoulos. I’m a career musician. I studied singing in school. I’ve been in a rock band for a long time, Western Education. And I also sing in a barbershop quartet at video game events. We did the BioShock Infinite thing. We’ve done it for a long time.
After that, I started singing Barbershop, I started a video game talk show called Goddamn GameCube, and that’s kind of what got me out to all these events, and that’s how I started meeting people.
And the way Amphibian started actually was with Western Education. We put out our latest album last year, in July of 2025. And my co-director, my co-creator James, was at the concert. I knew his wife well because I worked with her, and he just liked the album, so he came to the show.
He didn’t know that some of the songs on that album were actually songs for a video game soundtrack. But at the time, before I joined Barbershop and Goddamn GameCube, I wasn’t in the industry when I wrote the songs. So I turned those songs into pop music, we had the concert, and after the concert, he sent me this long text message saying, “Hey, if you’ve got a soundtrack and you have a story and you wanna make a game, let’s just do it.”
So development started just like that.
James is a software guy and technical director, and I’m not a software guy at all. So Amphibian has come together very quickly. We’ve actually only been in development for exactly a year, so from the first day of development to the premiere was a year. It’s been very fast.
Where did the idea about the amphibian life and frogs come from?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
Sure, where did the idea come from? It’s a great question. A lot of listeners are gonna think it comes from Chrono Trigger, like, you know, Frog is in that game. But I didn’t play it as a kid.
Where it actually came from for me was a couple of places. When I was a kid, I played a lot of Breath of Fire II on the Game Boy Advance, not even the Super Nintendo version, the port, because Frog prints on two legs, and I just thought he looked cool when I was a kid.
And then I kept seeing frogs on two legs in other media, like Over the Garden Wall, where there are frogs, Slippy from Star Fox, or monsters in Quest 64 that are frogs on two legs. I just kept seeing it.
I remember a couple of years ago, I was talking to my girlfriend, she’s a French speaker, and I had said to her, “What’s the French word for frog?” And she’s like, “Oh, it’s grenouille.” And I’m like, “That sounds really cool.”
And what I said to myself was, “Oh, I don’t have to name any of the characters either, because in Amphibian… Jaba, it’s all Frog.” And so it just started coming together.
As a kid I kept seeing it. Then I started putting the soundtrack together, I started putting the story together, and you keep seeing frog art come up. I just went into this research hole of, like, okay, what’s maybe frog religion from real life? You have Egyptian goddesses like Heket, who is a goddess of fertility. There are frog gods in older Australian lore, in Northern Europe as well, and I’m like, now I think I have to make it.
It just started to combine.
So, what exactly is Amphibian and what can players expect from the gameplay?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
Amphibian is a JRPG turn-based game, but everything in the game is frog accurate. We just said all the characters’ names are frog.
All the enemies in the game are frog predators that would eat frogs in real life, so it’s a little scary. If you were to lose a battle, they’re probably gonna eat you, even if that’s not depicted on screen.
Other aspects too. Any time a character would refer to any kind of religious element in the game, status ailments in the game are frog sicknesses in real life. So it’s all connected together, it’s all cohesive.
You describe the game as “Super 2D.” What does that actually mean?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
Sure. Are you familiar with games like Sea of Stars?
So, Super 2D, what we mean by that is the game is actually built in 3D. And what that allows us to do is get better physics and gravity, and dynamic lighting.
For example, you’ll even see in combat that, even though the characters are standing still, their shadow is accurate. You can see lighting sources are accurate and do reflections properly.
That’s why we do it. It’s almost like we call it Super 2D because you kind of see the game in 2D, but in the background it’s being built in 3D.
Does Amphibian have a job or class system?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
I would describe it as a class system, and you can change the class. It is a branching class system, but it branches only twice.
Your characters all start as a base class, and then when you hit a certain level, your character can branch into one of two classes.
For example, the Archer Frog, Jaba. When he gets to a certain level, you’re gonna choose: do you wanna make him essentially a better archer, or do you want him to take on magic instead?
I’ll give you just a small spoiler – in the game his wife is a magician, so he’s almost taking the skills of his partner and doing that instead. It’s all connected.
There’s no going back. You can’t pick a class and, if you don’t like it, revert. You have to pick it and you have chosen it.
You come from a music background. Is there a big difference between making music for your own projects and composing music for a game?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
For me, this might sound crazy, but for me the pop music I make outside of game development and the music I make for Amphibian are very similar.
I want the music you hear to be very catchy, I want it to be singable, I want it to be memorable. So when I make pop music or when I make music for Amphibian, it’s the same musical identity. I want you to be able to sing along to it, I want you to hum it, I want you to remember it.
The only difference would be in video game music – the music has to be able to repeat, because if you’re in a battle for minutes upon minutes, it’s gotta be able to loop around. So when it comes to the arrangement…
But making thematic music is what I do. It has to be catchy, and I carry that through everything.
You mentioned that the original idea came from your friend. How did you decide what kind of game you wanted Amphibian to become?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
Oh, you mean how did we pick the genre? It’s a great question. Actually, the first time someone’s asked me this question.
On the surface Amphibian is gonna look like a JRPG, but I’m actually pulling elements from tactical games like Fire Emblem, and I’m also pulling some puzzle-solving and riddle-solving from Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
I’m essentially pulling from my favorite games of the early 2000s and putting them into this style.
When I was a kid I really liked the hand-drawn, watercolor art of Final Fantasy Tactics. I just really liked the art style. And the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games – I liked the sprites, I liked the animations, I liked how lively they are, but they’re very stylized and kind of blocky, and I thought it was very charming.
We don’t have millions of dollars to make something that looks like Final Fantasy XVI. The most important thing is we wanna tell the story because it’s emotional, and we wanna have it come across.
We could do it with pixel art and animation because we like those kind of games when we were kids. It’s gonna be easier on the budget, and we could express it through illustration. And that’s how we came to do that.
How many people are currently involved in the development of Amphibian?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
James and I are the co-creators. Most of our budget goes to our art team, but those folks are contractors.
So James and I are the employees of the company, and then a lot of our budget… let’s call it twelve or thirteen people are our team – animators, illustrators, sprite artists, that kind of thing.
Do you already have a release date in mind?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
I can’t give an exact date, but I’ll give you some stuff. There’s gonna be a public demo, hopefully later this year. The date’s gonna come soon.
And for us, we’re looking towards the end of ’27 or quarter one of ’28, but we don’t have an exact date right now.
Will Amphibian be released only on PC?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
It’s actually everywhere. The full release when it comes out is gonna be everything – PC, all consoles, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.
And we’re not gonna leave our Mac fans out. There will be a Mac and Linux version.
Your co-creator James comes from software development. Did he have any previous experience in the games industry?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
James is an interesting guy. He’s not here with me. James wasn’t in video games, but he’s been in software and coding. He’s been a technical director his whole career. He was in the medical fields and startups.
So he’s had all the knowledge, but never made a game before.
I wrote the story, the characters, the scenarios, and also the soundtrack. I also drew out every level on graph paper, so I drafted it all out.
And James is our lead coder, programmer, so he makes it move. But neither of us are physical artists.
Animators, illustrators – those are the folks we found a lot of online, like in pixel art communities on Twitter. Our illustrator I found on Reddit. He lives in Los Angeles, I’m in Boston.
The first thing we needed was an illustrator, because I wanted to make characters. After you illustrate them, it can then go to your animator and your sprite artist who makes them into the game.
And I was like, how do I find someone who can make Japanese pen and ink art style? So I went on Reddit and I’m like, “If you know what Final Fantasy Tactics looks like… it almost looks like concept art, but it’s actually finished… I need that.”
And I found our guy Nate on Reddit.
Do you see yourself staying in the gaming industry in the future, or do you have other plans?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
I’ve been music my whole life. The first two things I ever loved as a kid were Ocarina of Time and The Killers’ first album. Those are the two things that I liked.
And so for me, being able to make music and also make games, that’s just what I wanna do.
The goal for us is Amphibian – this is how we fund our studio. This is our first chance to take a swing at it.
Is there anything else about Amphibian that you would like our readers to know?
Greg Alexandropoulos, Co-Creator of Amphibian:
What’s unique about Amphibian beyond just the frog stuff is – it’s a JRPG with no grinding.
You can’t repeat battles. Battles are done one time, and that’s just because I like games that did that.
And it’s a very tight experience, probably ten to fifteen hours. This isn’t a forty, fifty, a hundred hour long slog.
For us, it’s all very purposeful, where the story is very urgent and very serious. And so for me, we wanna make a very succinct game where the story and the gameplay make sense together.
And that’s the mantra of the company. It has to be purposeful, it has to be intentional, and I want players to be engaged the whole time.
Every enemy is placed. I’ve only seen that a few times in video games – Divinity: Original Sin did it, Baldur’s Gate 3 did it as well, and I just like it better.
It tends to bother me when a game presents you a very emotional story, but then you can go mess around for hours.
What I like about old games isn’t random encounters. What I like is the tactile feeling – when you have to find a key to a door, and you find the key, it has a name, you find the place where you use it, you have to open your inventory and use the key on the door.
I like that because it made me think about it. I had to solve that puzzle and figure it out.
That is the old stuff that I like – puzzle solving. I call it friction. It’s kind of annoying, but I like that it made me figure it out.
Final Thoughts
Our conversation with Greg Alexandropoulos gave us a much better look at what Amphibian is trying to achieve. Beneath its colorful frog-filled world is a carefully designed JRPG that draws inspiration from classic games while deliberately avoiding some of the conventions that have become common in the genre.
The decision to remove grinding, make every enemy encounter purposeful and keep the experience around 10 to 15 hours could make Amphibian particularly interesting for players who prefer focused RPG adventures rather than massive time commitments.
The public demo is planned for later in 2026, while the team is currently targeting late 2027 or Q1 2028 for the full release. With its unusual setting, hand-crafted encounters, branching classes and strong musical identity, Amphibian is certainly a game we’ll be keeping an eye on.
