Turbo Pudding
It’s Friday, so here is something light. In Dilly Delivers, every parcel leaves the post office in perfect shape. It doesn’t always arrive that way. Dilly is a duck courier in a teal cap, and her route runs past puddles, rocks, cars, brooks and a lot of dogs. Things happen.
The good news is that nobody in the valley holds a grudge. Some of our favorite lines in the game are the ones you hear when a delivery goes a bit wrong.
How a parcel gets squished
Every parcel starts at 100, and every knock takes a little away. The parcel shows it, too. Step in a puddle, and it gets soaked and darker, with drips. Bump into a rock or a car, or take a fall, and it gets a crushed corner. Let a dog get hold of it, and it comes back with bite marks.
A puddle costs 22 points the first time. The next one costs only 10, because a wet parcel can’t get much wetter. A rock costs 10 to 14, a car 20 and a fall 16. A dog costs anything from 8 for a pup to 20 for the biggest one. Fragile parcels, like a teapot or a disco ball, pay double for every knock. Only feet on the ground get wet, so a puddle you hop over costs nothing.
When a dog grabs the parcel, it turns into a tug-of-war. Pull back fast, and Dilly wins back part of the bite: six quick pulls save 40 percent of it. And a parcel never drops below 20, so even the worst trip ends with something to hand over.
Three ways to say thank you
At the door, the parcel’s condition decides what happens. At 80 or more, the stamp on the results card says “Delivered!”, or “Perfect!” if nothing touched the parcel at all. From 50 to 79, it’s a plain “Delivered.” Under 50, it’s “A bit battered…”
The neighbor’s face changes too. At 60 or more, they light up when they see Dilly. Below that, they look a little sad. Every neighbor has a line for each of the three grades, and the sad ones are our favorites, because not one of them is mean.
Take Dusty, an armadillo who lives in Echo Gorge. A perfect parcel makes Dusty “too happy to roll up. Almost.” A squashed one gets this: “I’ll just... roll up for a minute. Thank you though.”
Puddle Parade
Day 3 in Pudding Town is called Puddle Parade, and it rains the whole time. Most of its parcels come with their own thank-you lines, written for what’s inside.
Clover’s new watering can comes out a bit wonky, so “it waters sideways. My flowers will grow sideways too!” Bao’s teapot ends up with a bent spout, and now the tea “comes out all curly-wurly. Fancy!” If Hazel’s sack of flour has a rough trip, half of it ends up on the courier: “You look like a sugar-dusted duck.” And Toffee the bear knows what to do with a kite that got crushed: “a crumpled kite is a dragon kite! Roar!”
The rest of town is just as forgiving. Hazel the hedgehog, a baker in a chef’s hat, gets cookie cutters with a squished star and decides that “a squished star is still a star!” Bao’s new record skips, and the song now goes “boop-boo-boo-boop.” Bao’s verdict: “I kind of like it.” Rocco the raccoon builds a robot, and battered robot parts leave it with a one-word vocabulary: “The robot now only says ‘quack’. ...I love it.”
Further down the road
After Pudding Town, Dilly’s route runs through five more places, and the kind words travel with her. In rainy Drizzle Dale, falling into a brook counts as a puddle: the parcel gets soaked, and Dilly paddles back to the bank. Luckily, Pumpkin the piglet takes a soaked parcel well: “Good thing I love puddles. Oink!”
In Echo Gorge, Old Horn the ram shouts everything, and the gorge shouts it back: “BUMPY! ...bumpy. But here! THANK YOU!” Up on Snowpeak, Snowdrop the lynx has some advice: “We all fall. The trick is getting up — and you did!”
At Mirror Lake, Kiko the kingfisher looks at a battered parcel and says, “It took a dive. I do that daily. It’s fine!” And Splash the seal, who claps for every delivery, gives a soggy one exactly one clap.
Even in Whisper Fog, the darkest place on the route, Old Oak the little owl has the coziest answer of all: “Hoo... rough night. Sit down, little one. Have some tea.”
If we had to pick one line for the whole game, though, it would be Daisy the calf’s, for a parcel in so-so shape: “Mama says squished is still loved.”
Deliver one yourself
Chapter 1, Pudding Town, is free to play in your browser at dillydelivers.com. The full game, all six chapters, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Dilly Delivers page.
