Turbo Pudding
Every race in Kettlecrest ends with a Postcard. It says “Greetings from” and the name of the leg, and the boats appear on it as stamps, in the order they finished. Keep racing, and the Album fills up with a Postcard for every leg of the Long River.
It’s Saturday, so here are a few postcards of our own: one hero from each reach of the river, from the glacier down to the sea. No menus and no buttons, just the river folk and the water they paddle.
Glacier Gate: Nib on Kettle Lake
The river starts in the ice. Kettle Lake is the first Pool: three laps of a melt lake around a little island, with floes that break off the ice wall and drift around with the current.
Nib is a crayfish and the smallest of the nine heroes. He races in a straw hat with a wooden spoon, and his huge claws wear orange water wings, because he never learned to swim. He joins after the first dam opens, with a line that sums him up: “I walk on the bottom. With no current, I walked in circles for a week.”
Pinewood Rapids: Juno in the flume
Below the ice, the river runs into a pine forest. Sawmill Falls has a four-meter waterfall with three clear chutes between rock teeth, and right beside it runs the old sawmill’s flume, a narrow, plank-walled shortcut around the falls. It’s fast, with no surges and no rocks, but there isn’t much room to steer.
Juno is a kingfisher chick in an upturned umbrella, with a tennis racket for a paddle. She “wants the whole river to see her ride a surge. Twice.” When she first sees Pinewood Rapids, she is thrilled: “Waterfalls! Finally, something worth showing off on.” So of course here she is, taking the shortcut around one.
Chalkstep Terraces: Verbena on Lime Ladder
In the third reach, the river turns white and turquoise. In the game’s own words: “White lime terraces and blue basins. The water steps down the hill like a giant staircase.” On Lime Ladder, the river spills over three terrace rims in a row.
Verbena is a heron actress with two plumes, a pink feather boa and a violin case for a boat. She paddles with the bow. When we meet her, she has just spent three weeks in a very quiet play: “Mime, darlings. Three weeks of mime. I have SO much to say.” Her card on the Jetty adds that she faints at splashes and wins anyway.
Millrace Town: Burl at the sluice gates
Next comes a town of canals at dusk, with lanterns, stone quays and washing hung over the water.
On Lantern Cut, the first row of sluice gates stands right across the canal: three bays, each under its own lantern, whose boards drop in turn. One bay is always open, and the open one walks across the river.
Burl is a beaver in a hollow log, with an oar and a mustard beanie with a pompom. His card on the Jetty says he “knows every plank spot,” and in this shot he has just come through the gates behind him.
Tangle Delta: Hollis in the braids
Below the town, the river “splits into a hundred channels: roots, fireflies, mud and slow, spinning whirls.” On Firefly Braids, two calm side channels leave the main one. No surge ever gets into them, so they are shorter but flat.
Hollis is a stork who carried the river’s night mail for forty years and is now making “one last delivery: the sea.” He races in a dresser drawer, sweeps the water with a broom and keeps his mail satchel on. His first line in the game is “Zzz… Mail? Is it morning? …Zzz.”
Bell Mouth: the way to the sea
The last reach leaves the mangroves for salt marsh and low dunes, and the air smells of the sea. Here the sea pushes back with the tide bore, a breaking wall of water that rolls up the river. Tuck in behind a cluster of old mooring piles, and it breaks on the piles instead of on you. At the very end hangs the Sea Bell, and whoever rings it first gets to name the summer.
Send yourself a postcard
The first two reaches, Glacier Gate and Pinewood Rapids, are free to play in your browser at kettlecrest.com. The full game, all six reaches and twenty-four races down to the sea, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Kettlecrest page.
