Turbo Pudding
Every building in Amblestead comes with a tenant. Finish the last step of a house, a stage or a water tank, and someone small walks in to live there. This Friday, a word about the smallest people on Amabel’s shell, and the cast who welcome them.
Moving day, every time
When a building’s last step lands, the build scene adds one more beat. A tenant hurries in along the shell from the left, then climbs up to its spot: a ledge, a rail, a roof. Two soft little notes play as it arrives, and the building’s caption card gets a new line, like “A snowy owlet moved in.” Then one of the cast says hello, in a single speech bubble.
Nobody flies in, not even the bats. Everyone arrives on foot, at a brisk little hop, and only takes up its usual pose once it’s home.
And then it stays. A tenant keeps to its building for the rest of the trip, so the shell gets busier with every chapter.
Pick a building, pick a tenant
Amblestead has 31 buildings across six chapters. On some lots the game asks “What goes here?” and offers three versions of the building. Each version brings its own tenant, so the choice is also about who your new neighbors will be.
Take Nils’s Map Room in Snow Pass. Build the Map Room itself, and a snowy owlet moves in. Nils reports: “An owlet reads my maps. Upside down.” Pick the Star Window instead, and you get a star moth that “taps at the window all night.” The Sled Shed brings a lemming, and Nils sounds resigned: “A lemming took the sled. He borrows it daily.”
The greeter can change with the version, too. On the Star Deck, Nils says a night owlet “keeps borrowing my telescope,” Delva cheers a glow moth on the Chime Deck, “A free lantern!”, and Saffi loses her hammock.
“A dozy bat has taken my hammock,” Saffi says. Nobody suggests taking it back. Count every version on every lot, and 50 different tenants are waiting to move in, some of them as a pair.
Everyone has a habit
Most tenants simply stand by their building, and every now and then they do their little thing: a peck, a sniff, a look back over the shoulder. The rest have poses of their own. The sun lizard and the spice gecko bask, flattened out and breathing slowly. The canyon bat and the dozy bat hang upside down and sway. Three of the moths flutter in place. On the Ladder Shaft version of Delva’s Hatch, two beetles climb, and Delva explains: “Two beetles race up the ladder. All day long.” One lizard dances, and doesn’t stop.
The Party Stage in the Glass Desert has a drum version, and its tenant is a jerboa. Delva approves: “A jerboa on the drums. Hops in time, too.” Next door, under the Sun Awnings, Pim has two more: “Two larks under the awnings. They sing in the shade.”
Tenants also dress for the place they move into. The snowy owlet is snow white, the frost moth is icy blue, the canyon mouse wears the warm orange of Red Canyon, and the glow moth actually glows.
The welcome committee
Pim, Delva, Mayor Barty, Nils, Saffi and Baron Bulwark take turns at the welcomes, and each sounds like themselves. Saffi finds a gecko at her Spice Stall: “A gecko guards my spices. And eats the pepper.” Barty, a snail himself, is moved by the Clay Cistern’s tenant: “A water snail! A fellow snail! Welcome, cousin.” Nils, a white hare, meets a hare kit at the Pass Gate: “A hare kit moved in. No relation. Probably.”
Our favorite mystery lives at the Night Market Stalls on Aurora Plain. Saffi introduces the tenant, and that’s all anyone knows: “A market mouse. Sells buttons. Nobody knows why.”
There is one rule for who can move in, and it’s written in our notes in three words: never a dog. Everyone else is welcome.
Meet the neighbors
The first chapter of Amblestead, Mist Valley, is free to play in your browser at amblestead.com. The full game, all six chapters, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on its Amblestead page.
