Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds, also known as Freddi Fish in Kelp Seed Mystery and Freddi Fish and the Missing Kelp Seeds, is a PC Adventure Game by Humongous Entertainment released in 1994. It's the first main game in the Freddi Fish series.
A young fish named Freddi is visiting Grandma Grouper when she finds out that the elder's stock of kelp seeds has recently been stolen. Grandma Grouper's kelp garden has become barren without the seeds, and fish will begin to starve if something isn't done soon. Together with her friend Luther, Freddi needs to follow the clues in message bottles littered around the sea to find the missing seeds and save the farm.
Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds is a significant milestone in the history of Humongous Entertainment. It is their first title to use hand drawn animation, defining the company's visual style for most of its life. It is also their first Junior Adventure game to randomize Plot Coupon locations to increase replay value — another signature feature of the company — though the need to grab the message bottles in a set order means the game is much more linear than its successors.
Tropes:
- Angry Guard Dog: The junkyard is guarded by the Junkyard Dogfish, who angrily growls at Freddi and Luther after they wake him from a nap, and won't let them in unless they give him a bone first.
- Black Comedy: An unused animation found within the game's files has Freddi imagine convincing Eddie to leave by feeding Luther to him, before doing an Eyelid Pull Taunt at the player.
- Company Cross References:
- One version of the game's intro has Freddi give a flower to a fish named Jason, who is designed to resemble Putt-Putt. Additionally, Jason was the name of Putt-Putt's voice actor at the time.
- Fatty Bear appears on a poster in the sunken ship.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Freddi has a slightly different design in this game, mainly due to her upper fin being taller and less wide. The overall animation is also noticeably less refined than later entries.
- The stakes of this game are fairly high, as many fish are stated to be threatened with death via starvation if the seeds aren't found. Later games are much less dire with their stakes and Never Say "Die".
- Purple sea urchins are used merely to weigh down a bucket in order to access an area. In later games, they're used as currency.
- Being one of the earliest Humongous games to feature Story Branching, the bottles in the first game work a little differently to the Plot Coupons in later ones; you need to find them one after the other, and the next bottle won't appear until you've found the current one, whereas later games would allow you to find the Plot Coupons in any order and work on multiple puzzles simultaneously. In addition, puzzles still appear even if you don't need to complete them; you only need to rescue Fiddler Crab if the second bottle is at the deep canyon, but you can still get the key, free him and get the fishing pole even if it isn't. In later games only the relevant puzzles to that playthrough would appear.
- Food as Bribe: The solution to getting Eddie the Eel to stop blocking the way to the three caves is to give him the peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich you get from Grandma Grouper at the beginning of the game.
- Funnel-Mouthed Cephalopod: The octopi in the Feeding Frenzy mini-game are depicted with funnel-shaped mouths.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: Gabby the guppy gets his fin pinned under a heavy rock in a cave and can't pry it off. His mother, Mrs. Halibut, tries to enter the cave to free him, but she's too big to fit through the entrance and ends up getting her head stuck until Freddi and Luther pull her out.
- Linked List Clue Methodology: Spongehead's bottles have clues that lead to Grandma Grouper's stolen kelp seed treasure. Spongehead did this because he has a bad memory and wanted to remember where to find the kelp treasure he helped steal. Unfortunately for him, Freddi and Luther find the bottles first.
- Message in a Bottle: The Linked List Clue Methodology is done via messages kept in bottles that are hidden around the area. Goes really well with the ocean environment.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: King Crab sounds like an impression of Glenn Shadix.
- Penny-Pinching Crab: One character you come across is King Crab, a crab monarch who mostly just sits on his throne. He has a bunch of tiny pedestals topped with pearls leading up to his throne, and on some playthroughs, you might find that one of the pedestals has a Message in a Bottle instead (as the locations of the bottles change in every playthrough). King Crab won't let you have the bottle until you bring him another pearl to replace it.
- Pirate Song: The pirate fish Fineas sings a song about how he likes to say "Argh!"
- Plot Coupon: In order to get closer to finding the kelp treasure, Freddi and Luther have to hunt down each of the bottles. Each one contains a note with a clue leading to the next one, and the fourth bottle will always reveal the location of the treasure.
- Shell Game: In order to obtain the pearl from behind the shrimp net, the three oysters will shuffle around, with only one of them having a pearl in their mouth. The player must keep track of where the pearl is and click the correct one once they stop shuffling.
- Skewed Priorities: Luther wants to find the treasure so he can become rich, ignoring the fact that the fish will all starve if they don't find it.
- Stock Femur Bone: A standard human femur bone is used to placate the Junkyard Dogfish. And it's somehow found in the old whale bones.
- Useless Item: Every item is always available to be picked up, regardless of whether or not they are required for any of the randomized puzzle choices on that particular playthrough. So some items just won't do anything depending on which bottle locations are picked by the game.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Rescuing Fiddler Crab, rescuing Gabby or giving Herman the non-glowing shell may not be necessary depending on which path you're following, but the option of helping them or not is still open to you. Rescuing Gabby is actually never required since the reward for doing so is one purple sea urchin, which can be collected through other means, though there are extra bits added to the ending that are only shown if you rescue Gabby and Fiddler Crab.
