Turbo Pudding

FernevaleLevel secrets

Ring every bell, water the fern

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

The corridor at Pine Hollow in warm lamplight, where Daina, a girl with a long brown plait and a pencil behind her ear, in a long dark gray dressing gown with a cape collar, stands by Sister MacRae’s desk while Sister, in a white cap and round glasses, writes in an open duty book under a green-shaded lamp, with a row of brass bells on curly springs high on the wall above them, a small key board with hooks marked STORE, LINEN and CONFISCATED, a grandfather clock, a tall bookcase with books and a gray bag, and dark silhouettes of a vase of reeds and a potted palm in the foreground

Fernevale’s first two chapters take place at Pine Hollow, a sanatorium in Surrey, in October 1911. It’s a house of rules: rest hour at eleven, bells off after ten, and a stitched sign that says REST IS THE CURE. It’s also full of small things the game never asks you to try. This Tuesday, a handful of them. We’ll keep the answers to the big puzzles to ourselves.

Ring every bell

Behind Sister MacRae’s desk in the corridor hangs the bell board: brass bells on springs, a little flag for each room and a box of eight pulls. Getting past that desk takes the right bell. But every pull does something, and most of them are worth hearing.

Pull the kitchen bell and a cook backs through the swing door with a cup of cocoa. “Somebody rang for cocoa?” Sister: “Nobody rang for cocoa.” The cook: “Well, it’s made now.” Daina drinks it and calls it the first sensible thing that’s happened to her in England.

Ward Four belongs to Mrs Bunce, who is sitting right there in the corridor when her own flag drops. “O-o-oh! My room is ringing!” Off she marches to catch whoever is in it. Mr Pockett’s bell gets you “Mr Pockett wants his blind up. Mr Pockett can want.” Ward Two gets “Ward Two’s empty,” and then “...Ward Two is empty.” Mrs Bunce’s feathers stand straight up.

Then there’s the small bell marked Matron. Pull it and the whole corridor stops. The music cuts out, the light bulb flickers, Sister’s pen freezes. “...Who rang Matron.” Mrs Bunce whispers that Matron is in Eastbourne. Daina has her own theory: “Not Matron. Not God. Me.”

A close-up of the bell board at Pine Hollow, a dark wooden panel with PINE HOLLOW painted in gold along its peaked top, a row of white flags numbered 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 11, one marked KITCHEN and a red flag marked MATRON that has just dropped, a brass bell hanging under each flag on a curly black spring, the bell for 11 the biggest and the Matron bell the smallest, and on the right, against yellow wallpaper with a leaf pattern, an open wooden box of eight brass pulls on wires, the sixth hanging much lower than the rest on a slack wire, with a small TEST tab on the box door
Searched “point and click game with lots of bells.” Ring for cocoa.

Mind the knobs

Dr Fell’s apparatus has three brass knobs, from LOW to HIGH, and a glass tube that is supposed to glow steady. Here’s the one hint we’ll give: each knob looks after one third of the tube. When a knob is set right, its third goes smooth, while the other two keep misbehaving.

Turn the knobs long enough and you’ll meet the side effect. Every fourth turn, the tube buzzes like a bumblebee in a jar and a little blue spark jumps from the glass to the end of Daina’s plait. “My hair is having opinions.” Dr Fell is delighted: “Tingling? Splendid. The nerves being tidied.”

In Dr Fell’s consulting room, with green walls, wood paneling and a plank floor, Daina, a girl with a long brown plait and a pencil tucked behind her ear, wearing a long dark brown dressing gown with a cape collar, jumps back wide-eyed with her mouth open from a dark wooden cabinet with three big brass knobs on a black panel marked LOW and HIGH, while a purple glass tube on a stand beside her glows and a black cable curls to the floor, with a wooden chair, a desk with a green-shaded lamp and papers, a red rug and a window onto pale birch trunks on the right
Search: “adventure game puzzle with knobs.” Mind your plait.

Water the fern

On the second evening, Daina gets a glass of sleeping draught on her tray. You can drink it, or pour it into the big fern by the radiator, or just stall: “Five minutes, she said. I can be undecided for four.”

Drink it and Daina sleeps like a stone. Sister even says “Good lass.” Pour it into the fern and Sister only says “Hm,” and looks at the fern a moment longer than a fern deserves.

The next morning, the fern has reached the ceiling. Mrs Bunce gasps, “A yard in one night! That’s not botany, that’s propaganda!” Dr Fell is thrilled: “Chloral as fertiliser! Hm-hm. I must write to Kew.” Mr Hatch notices what the doctor doesn’t: “Reaching south, she is. All ’er fronds the one way.” And there’s a drawing on the wall that Daina doesn’t remember making. What it means is yours to find out.

Daina’s room at Pine Hollow in the early morning, where Daina, in a long brown dressing gown, stands surprised beside her bed with brass knobs and a chart on the rail, while a huge bright green fern grows out of an orange pot by the wall and spreads its fronds all the way up and across the ceiling, and on the wallpaper beside it a big pencil drawing shows a path winding over a hill, with birds, a hare, footprints and a small lamp, next to tall French windows with the dark silhouette of a monkey puzzle tree against the dawn sky and a red bell pull hanging by the bed
People also ask: can a fern grow a yard in one night?

Count the hares

Daina’s grandfather Opi had a game: “Where’s the hare? There’s always a hare.” Fernevale plays it too. One hare hides in every chapter, and Daina’s sketchbook keeps count, six in the first part of the story.

We’ll give you the first two. In the prologue, look hard at the moon. In chapter 1, Dr Fell keeps a porcelain hare on his papers, with very knowing ears for a paperweight.

The chapter 2 hare is out in the night garden. Mr Hatch has carved lanterns for the fence posts the Somerset way, out of mangel-wurzels: grinning, frowning, one cross-eyed. Punkie Night, he calls it, to keep the dead off the cabbages. One lantern on the gatepost has long ears, and it’s a turnip, not a mangel. Daina knows at once who carved it: Sister’s a Scot.

While you’re out there, look at the bonfire heap for the Fifth. The Guy on top wears Mr Hatch’s second-best coat, and Daina thinks he looks less bored than she is. And in chapter 1, give Mr Hatch’s leaf heap a look. It snores.

The garden at Pine Hollow at night under a dark blue sky, where Daina, in a dark dress with a cape and her long plait over one shoulder, smiles with her eyes closed by a small sign reading ARAUCARIA 1871 at the foot of a monkey puzzle tree, while in the middle a Guy with a round white face, a black cap and a sly grin sits on a big heap of brushwood and sticks, two owls perch side by side on a branch at the top, a glowing white lantern with long hare ears sits on a gatepost by the fence, and on the right Mr Hatch, in a cap and round glasses with a pipe, stands lit orange by his lantern at the door of a wooden shed, with a wheelbarrow in the grass in front
Typed “adventure game with hidden hares.” One of them is a turnip.

Walk softly

Chapter 2 happens at night, and Pine Hollow listens. Step onto the veranda boards and they creak, and a lamp flares up in the corridor window. “Not on foot. These boards are tattletales.” Look around before you try again. The beds on the veranda run down to the ramp on wheels, and the first one is occupied. By a hat.

Come and poke around

Pine Hollow is full of these: a radiator that’s the only warm thing in England, a hook marked “Confiscated” in plain sight. The prologue and chapters 1–2 are free to play in your browser at fernevale.com. The full game, all seven chapters, is $9.99, paid once. More about the game is on its Fernevale page.

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