We’ve gone through the Leap Year Frog round-up for the stats, and it’s pretty incredible: over 280,000 achievements were unlocked over the whole event. Organizing the timing for this (both how long each game will take to give an achievement and the time during the day to accomplish it) as well as strategizing which games to play, budgeting, and juggling other necessary tasks during the day is quite a feat. By the end, contestants were each gaming for dozens of hours and unlocking well over a hundred achievements every day, not to mention buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of the games needed to continue this far. Taking into account the different timezones, many were playing well into the next morning. Overall, it’s an incredible feat, and now that it’s over, we’ve had the chance to talk with the final five finalists: Black Blood, Huaracocha, BrutishMuffin, cyberber, and Psychic Shiva, who were kind enough to tell us all about it.
How these five finalists managed to compete in the longest-running TrueAchievements Leap Frog contest ever
Reaching 165 days in TA’s Leap Frog contest is staggering, and it was fascinating to see the contest keep going every day. Black Blood, who was this year’s victor (and one of 2020’s Leap Frog victors too!), describes it as “very taxing” but “very rewarding,” and says that their previous experience helped. “I may be crazy, but it was not as bad as you’d expect it to be. Throughout the contest there were very long days and a couple of hiccups due to mistakes in planning or unlocking too many achievements at the same time. But overall, with my experience from the previous 2020 contest, It went pretty smoothly.”
Huaracocha, who made it through an incredible 164 days, says they feel “amazed, quite proud,” and, understandably, “more than a little exhausted! It felt like it started to ramp up in difficulty/time investment properly somewhere around day 80,” they add. “By 120+ it was quite a mission each day. It’s something I’ll never forget, but I was more than ready to stop by the end.” Their difficulties were exacerbated later in the contest by issues with saves, bugs, and general Xbox troubles, and by the end of the contest, Huaracocha had to hard reset their Xbox One several times a day because it was struggling with how many games had been opened. “Near the end my achievement notifications went silent on Xbox and PC and I couldn’t get them back for quite a while,” Huaracocha continues, adding that they’re still coming through on their phone. “This was costing me 30 seconds to two minutes per game… it adds up to a lot of time with 150+ games on the schedule.”
BrutishMuffin, who made it to third place, says they’re “just glad the grind is over. It was becoming somewhat of a lifestyle during the last month or so. Just the same routine of wake up, work, achieve, then sleep where I could. I’m happy to be part of a community where we could all congratulate each other’s successes and push each other further, though.” Like with Black Blood, it seems the experience of 2020’s Leap Frog contest helped this year. “This format for the contest seemed weirdly easier than the usual format of just unlocking a ton of achievements. Each day I knew for the most part what I would be playing, because that’s what I was playing the day before. 2020 Leap Frog was my last big contest, and it felt like such a horrible grind each day just to hit day 90 then. I think I’m going to try to keep something similar to this going forwards for my usual gaming, so that I can make it around to different games instead of getting stuck on one forever.”
Cyberber, meanwhile, reached 161 days — an especially good feat since their goal had been 150 days — and say they found this year’s contest more fun than Leap Frog 2020. Psychic Shiva, meanwhile, who also made it into the top five, reached 135 days. They had initially had the same goal as Cyberber, and say “It honestly took me a while to be content at day 135, as I was aiming at 150 days regardless of the position I finished at… It was an unthinkable rush to hold my spot… around all the big gamers who were part of the competition.” Psychic Shiva adds that after a point, each game “became a part of my psyche — gaming was the first and last thought day after day… For the first time I realized how serious this stuff was. The planning, time management, resource management and sleep sacrifice — all were so relevant and real. But of course, before and beyond anything and everything, a must-have is a super supportive family to support your mad gaming needs.” Overall, it was a positive outcome for them: “Reaching Day 135 was a very good feeling and a superb experience. Although I did fall short of my own target, it was not without a few solid learnings and prep pointers for the next edition. Without actually realizing I had been part of a competition for almost four and a half months. That’s some real mad gaming!”
How to strategize unlocking an achievement in one more game every day for almost six months
Just to reiterate this fact, since I still can’t get over it myself, each of the top five in 2024’s contest had been consistently unlocking achievements in over 100 different games every day well before the contest ended. One of our biggest questions was what sort of strategy you’d need to manage this feat. “Reflecting on my past experience in Leap Frog 2020, I knew the end game of the contest very well and planned accordingly,” Black Blood says. “I dedicated a sizeable chunk of time every single day to this contest consistently. In the first portion of the contest I would fill that dedicated time with games that had an estimated completion time of 6-8 or 8-10 hours; as the contest went on and more achievements were required, those games would then be rotated out with games of decreasing difficulty. Doing this meant that it took about the same amount of time for every single day of the contest, instead of taxing myself when the achievement requirements got so high.”
Huaracocha, too, thought ahead to leave themselves games to come back to further down the line. “I used an Excel spreadsheet to track my games. I had them kind of split into ones that take (relatively) longer but should be ‘core’ games especially if they had lots of achievements remaining, ones that are not ‘core’ but could be used when time permits, and ones that are just super fast and the most ideal ones to use. For ideal-type games I tried to avoid running them low on achievements and rotated them out of my playlist periodically so I could keep achievements left to be used in those games wherever possible.”
BrutishMuffin, meanwhile, went through their recently played games for the first 80 days. “After that, the recently played list doesn’t really work anymore, because it has a limit to how many recent games it will sort out. I played alphabetically through my games list from day 80ish onwards, which worked out pretty well. As you can imagine, you kind of scrape the bottom of the gaming barrel when you’re choosing 160+ games to play daily, but I usually tried to have at least one or two decent games that I played each day. Bioshock was my go-to series for a lot of the contest to keep me motivated.” Cyberber aimed to “save the easy games for as long as possible,” but explains that it wasn’t always manageable, while Psychic Shiva, after day 100, “strategically placed” their games and aimed for those which had achievements for completing chapters or levels, “or a game like Halo MCC where you get a never-ending list of achievements and play it still in the most efficient ways for the game to go longer.” They, too, aimed to “play more time-consuming games” earlier in the contest and keep the easier ones for later.
The stats here are pretty incredible. As Psychic Shiva puts it, “135 days, 135 achievements, 135 games: to play here one needs a mad inventory, a mad library, some mad money to support that library, intense data maintenance of achievements… a constant supply of high-speed internet and electricity all the time… a family that supports and understands you gaming for ten to 14 hrs a day, and above and beyond everything else, one needs to develop a psyche of doing one thing every day with each day adding a minimum ten more minutes of gaming.”
Escaping elimination
With the amount of time and motivation needed — not to mention the number of games — we were curious to hear if there were any times when these Leap Frog finalists came close to elimination, what they found to be their biggest challenges, and what kept them going. For Huaracocha, there were illnesses and trips away to deal with. “There were a couple of days pre-50 where I was ill on two separate occasions. One wasn’t really close, but one of them I very nearly chucked it in from feeling too sick to be bothered. There was a day around 80-90 where I had to go out of town overnight on a work trip. I took my Xbox with me to the hotel but the WiFi was one of those ‘enter email instead of password’ style setups and I couldn’t connect my Xbox. It took me about 15-20 tries to get my Xbox to connect to either my phone or laptop which were both sharing the WiFi connection. Luckily it held out once connected.” Lucky indeed, as being eliminated by a hotel’s dodgy WiFi after managing to get so far would have been unbelievably frustrating.
“I guess being stubborn or pure bloody-mindedness is a necessity for anyone to keep going deep in these events,” Huaracocha continues. “At times I had milestones to keep me going; getting to day 100 or trying to finish top in the UK/Europe — thanks to emzfergi for keeping me going with that one. Once PsychicShiva went out on Day 135 there was no question of stopping by choice for me.” However, finding enough games became a trickier issue as the contest continued. “The biggest challenge in practical terms was time but the ultimate determining factor was cost,” Huaracocha explains. “I spent a lot more time on the contest than I could have done if I’d been willing to use the fastest games available to me at all times and if I’d had access to all the games I might have liked.
“I stopped when I did primarily because I could see I would be out of games at around day 172, and cost prevented me getting more,” Huaracocha says. “And I felt sure Black Blood would go further. He’s since said he was set to 180 and fully ready to go to 190 — so ultimately cost would have ruled me out of going with him that long, even assuming I could have found the time.” For BrutishMuffin, time zones were a big factor. “I came close to elimination a couple times. It was definitely always a time issue. The rollover time for my time zone was 5am, so I was really losing sleep to get through all the games. There were times I would just fall asleep while playing and wake up with an hour to go before elimination and still need 20 games or something. Tense times at 4am.”
Cyberber explains that, “without thinking too much about it, I just kept playing according to the schedule. As a result, I ran out of easy games.” Psychic Shiva, meanwhile, mentions a number of “hiccups” in their 135 days in the contest. They work as a tattoo artist (“an old school artist with pretty old school ways of living”) and with clients waiting, explain that was “one major commitment I could not give up fully. Also as most artists have a thing of living on each day’s earnings… I struggled some days where the commitment of earning that day was more important than playing.” As well as work, Psychic Shiva aimed to prioritize family commitments to “calculate the approximate game time of the day and prioritize the most important work on the to-do list. The cost of maintaining a library for this kind of an event was huge. After a point it did become a challenge to keep up with the demands of the competition.” Time zones and power cuts were also an issue. “For me the gaming window of 24 hours began at 3:30 pm — right in the middle of my working hours! This became a mad hurdle to tackle. The unsaid thing that kept me going was the fact that with every passing day I was being challenged in one way or the other and the ‘I did it’ adrenalin rush was way too high, especially after the 75 days mark. In many ways this competition was a huge confidence builder. Also since this was my first time leaping, I was elated to play alongside the biggies of the trade.”
Hundreds of hours, hundreds of dollars
Game Pass, sales, and backlogs all played a big part in supplying games for the contest. Black Blood, who mostly played games which had been bought in past sales, had a detailed strategy for the process. “I added all games that had enough info on them into a spreadsheet and calculated the time/achievement based on estimated completion time and achievement count. That list was sorted, and regardless of Game Pass, backlog, unplayed, or in collection, I would use that — so long as it wasn’t overly priced.” For Huaracocha, their backlog helped to begin with. “I have used a lot of Game Pass too, everything that seemed viable that I could see. Since the start I have been trolling all the weekly sales and any other sources I could find for bargain games that meet the achievement speed criteria. The vast majority of games I’ve been using in the deep end of the run are ones I purchased for this competition.”
BrutishMuffin started out with Game Pass games and set themselves a restriction to focus only on their backlog for the first month or so. “After that, it was a lot of game purchases to keep up each day. I haven’t determined a total amount spent (I don’t really want to know lol), but it was probably averaging out to $20-$25 a day at the end, just to replace out games that I completed. I loved to see each Monday roll around for the new games on sale.” Huaracocha, meanwhile doesn’t have an exact number either, but puts their estimate at “around £200 over the course of the year” with Microsoft Rewards Points to help, and mentions that they were keeping an eye on weekly sales ahead of time in anticipation of the contest. “I know I haven’t paid UK RRP for a game at all this year. If it was in the sale at less than £2 or >90% discount I considered it… and only bought it if it was a really suitable game or one I really wanted anyway.”
Towards the end of the competition, the cost was beginning to be too much. “I was definitely on a budget — I worked out that even using the ‘find the cheapest source possible’ approach, I was at the end of the shoestring possibilities,” Huaracocha continues. “To go even another ten days (from my possible ~172 to ~182), I needed a lot more new games and it would have cost me more than I had spent on the entire competition… likely upwards of £400. I couldn’t afford or justify this.” While Black Blood doesn’t have an exact number either, they “started over 600 games based on TA stats/periods, and if you assume a minimum of $5 each… that’s quite the sum. In the last month or so it was around $200CAD/week but definitely not that much earlier in the contest.”
Making it to the end
2024’s Leap Frog contest continued for one more day after Huaracocha stopped, ending on day 165 with Black Blood as the victor. “Originally I just planned to make a decent run,” Black Blood explains. “I thought the contest would only last slightly longer then the 2020 version. But as I kept going, I kept saying ‘I could do one more day’ in the back of my mind and never ended up stopping. At some point that turned into ‘I have to keep going’.” Likewise, Huaracocha didn’t enter with the expectation of being one of the finalists. “Not for one second did I see myself going this far. I’ve never entered anything like this and I entered thinking I would see if I could get to 50 days. By 50, there were so many eliminated and it hadn’t been hard so I just set goal after goal to keep going as long as I could.”
For BrutishMuffin, too, the length of the contest was a surprise. “I really didn’t think this would last as long as it did or that I would last 5+ months. I said it on the forum, but it really goes to show how much shovelware has been released over the last four to five years. I think probably 90% of all the games I played for this were released since 2020, and I should probably just invest stock in Ratalaika and Chilidog Interactive, with all the games of theirs that I bought. We were going at a pace of less than ten minutes a game over a 24-hour period though, so I’d say even with all these easy games, it was still a pretty crazy feat that it lasted as long as it did.”
Likewise, Psychic Shiva didn’t expect to be in the contest for almost four and a half months, and didn’t “realize the gravity or intensity” of Leap Frog. “When LeapFrog 24 started I honestly aimed at nothing specific… the competitors’ gamer tags and the competition level… kept me in the run,” they say, adding that around day 35-40 they felt confident enough to aim for day 100, with that becoming “the first milestone to try and reach for me as that would get me an identity within the serious gamer community on TA & Xbox. After reaching day 100 we had 12 players left… I decided to put all my time, energy, money, skills, and brains into playing Leap frog and aimed at 150 days.”
Shoutouts
A number of the five finalists had shoutouts to make, whether to family members or other contestants. “You guys put on a mighty showdown,” Physic Shiva says, noting the other finalists. “It has been an unforgettable learning experience… Well played and big congrats to Black Blood for hitting the top spot.” BrutishMuffin adds, “I also wanted to give a shoutout to my incredible wife. She is very much not a big gamer, but she was always there keeping me motivated to continue day after day. We have a 3-year-old now, and there were days that she had to do most of the childcare and housework because I had to finish a bunch of games after work, but she always kept saying to survive for just one more day. Truly the best cheerleader I have, and I couldn’t have gotten nearly as far in this without her words of encouragement.”
Finished for now, or finished for good?
Taking the time, enjoyment, cost, and dedication into account, would they take on this contest again next time? “In 2020, I said I’d never compete again, but here I am now, so who knows. I definitely will not make another deep run like this as most of the easy games have been completed,” Black Blood says, while Huaracocha jokes, “I really enjoyed this but the time investment was pretty crazy… I think my friends and family would stage an intervention if I went for something like this again. I’d love to enter another TA contest that doesn’t end up pushing towards shovelware-type games. If there’s something more TA ratio/difficulty based and I have the facility (games) to compete I might try!” Cyberber has a definite yes to returning to the contest next time, while Psychic Shiva says “definitely, if the timeframe element gets added to Leap Frog games… but will try and go all-in the next time I do, and I hope to see more mad competitors from India participating in this or other tournaments out here.” As for BrutishMuffin: “I seem to go through waves of gaming where I’ll take a couple years off of truly trying to increase my Gamerscore. I’ll probably join, but I highly doubt I’ll put anywhere near the effort, time, or money in that I did this year. This year’s Leap Frog is for sure going to be one of my crowning gaming moments.”
