Princess Izzie is a casual game that sees our heroine – Princess Izzie, of course – transformed into a frog in a modern take on the classic Frog Prince legend.  The game then revolves around you trying to reach the Prince and – hopefully – gain a kiss and be restored to normality.

Princess Izzie includes ten levels, which become progressively more difficult.  Despite your frog-like status, you fail the level if you fall in the water and therefore must make full use of a variety of objects and items on the pond’s surface, including lily pads, revolving barrels, floating logs and pond weeds.  Crossing the pond involves considerably more than just jumping from item to item.  Lily pads will flip over if you stay on them for too long, some items – such as logs – move or rotate and generally timing is the key to successfully navigating each level. 

You use the keyboard to control the game: arrow keys for moving (left, right, forward and back) and ALT to jump.  You can also use CTRL to eat flies and try and obtain the very useful ‘double jump’ option.  Although it is fairly straightforward to control, I did find that it took me a little while to master directions as the frog didn’t always seem to move in the direction I expected, particularly on rotating items.  However, it’s fairly easy to get used to and the earlier levels are easy enough to allow you to develop these basic skills quickly.

You are timed during each level and also receive a score at the end, which can be displayed in the ‘High Scores’ option.  Whilst you can potentially fail at a level as many times as you like, your time will constantly creep up as you keep trying to tackle the level.  However, I did notice that leaving the game partway through a level and then returning to it later would see your time reset to 0:00, suggesting a potential way to ‘cheat the system’ for less honest players!

Princess Izzie is a fun cartoon-like game, which requires some quick thinking, careful planning and a steady hand, not to mention a bundle of patience.  Supported by music that is highly reminiscent of the old-style arcade games, it does have a somewhat retro feel about it.  With only ten levels, the amount of play you get out of it will largely depend on how good you are and how much time you are willing to spend on improving your times.  However, this is a casual game with a low price tag and as such even a few hours of play represents reasonable value for money.  This is a title that I found surprisingly durable and the idea to keep pushing on until I completed a particularly challenging level certainly had me pulling my hair out at times but also experiencing defiant satisfaction when I finally cleared a tricky stage!  A good family friendly choice for all, particularly those with a love of frogs!