Turbo Pudding

LullalotlLevel secrets

The ice floes of Frost Mirror

· The Turbo Pudding team · 4 min read

Prism, an orange fox kit shaped like a drop, with pointy ears, a white-tipped tail and see-through blue dragonfly wings, sings with its mouth open on a green lily pad in the middle of the dark blue Frost Mirror pond, inside a lilac ripple ring with thin pale rings spreading wider around it; two small pale blue ice floes sit on the water to its upper left and upper right, the edges of a green Pip and a lilac Echo peek in at the sides, and Twinkle’s two glowing antennae poke up at the bottom

Frost Mirror is the eighth of Lullalotl’s ten ponds, and the only one with ice. Three small floes sit on the dark water, and Glim, the firefly granny, warns you the moment the pond opens: “Ice! Ripples bounce right back.” This Tuesday, what the ice really does, and how to use it for all three stars.

Three floes and one Prism

The pond starts with a single friend: Prism, the fox kit with dragonfly wings, right in the middle. Two floes sit up and to either side of it, and the third sits low in the middle, toward the bank where Lulla waits. New friends come from the lotus bud, and here the bud offers two cards: the next newcomer, in the order Pip, Echo, Twinkle and Leap, or a friend you already know. The pond has nine lily pads, so nine friends at most.

What a floe does

When a ring reaches a floe, the ice answers with a quiet high chime and a glint, and a split second later it sends out a ring of its own. That ring is pale ice blue and reaches four-fifths as far as the one that hit it. If it reaches another floe, that floe passes it on again, smaller still.

The left side of the Frost Mirror pond at night: a small pale blue ice floe glints in a soft glow, with a bright pale blue ring spreading around it, while Pip, a green bean-shaped bunny with tall pink-lined ears and a leaf on top, sits awake on a lily pad just below and to the left of it; Prism, the orange fox kit with see-through dragonfly wings, sits on its pad at the right, a faint wide ring crosses the water between them, and the green bank with cattails and little purple flowers curves along the left under the dark night sky
Searched “can ripples bounce off ice.” In Frost Mirror, they do.

The ice itself never sings. It earns no Glow and adds no link to the chain. Each floe also passes a ring on only once per wave, so any later ring from the same wave rolls straight over it.

The rainbow stops at the ice

Prism’s ripple is a rainbow: every friend it touches sings triple. A floe passes the ring on, but not the rainbow. The ring that comes out the other side is plain pale blue, and the friends it wakes sing for the usual amount.

So keep the friends you want tripled inside Prism’s own reach, and save the ice for the ones further out. You can drag friends around the pond, and the game’s own hint holds here too: “Drag friends closer: one ripple can wake them all.”

One thing does get through the ice. Each new link in a chain adds 25 percent to what a friend pays, and Twinkle adds another 50 percent for every friend who sings after it. That boost belongs to the whole wave, so a friend woken by a floe’s ring still gets it.

Steering Leap

Leap, the teal flying squirrel with a leaf cape, doesn’t ripple from its own pad. It hops away along the wave, lands on open water and ripples from there, then makes its way back home. The direction comes from the ring that woke it: Leap always jumps away from that ring’s center.

Leap, a teal flying squirrel with leaf-shaped flaps spread wide, springs up off its lily pad with its mouth open, little blue and white stars sparkling around it; below and to the right, the low ice floe glints white in a pool of soft light, and Twinkle, a round pale yellow mouse with pink ears, whiskers and two glowing antennae, sits on its own lily pad above the floe inside a wide faint ring, with the green bank and brown cattails curving along the bottom left
Typed “how far can a flying squirrel jump.” Most of a ripple.

That makes the ice a steering wheel. If a floe’s ring is the one that wakes Leap, it hops straight away from the floe. The jump covers 85 percent of Leap’s own ripple, and if the landing spot would be on the bank, Leap simply jumps shorter. Seat it between a floe and a few sleeping friends, and its landing ripple can reach the ones nobody else could.

Echo’s encore

Echo, the lilac friend with an orange shell, answers twice: a second ripple follows the first three-quarters of a second later. Both rings belong to the same wave. If the first one already set a floe off, the second one rolls right over it, and every friend sings only once per wave anyway.

Echo, a round lilac critter with little cat ears and an orange shell on its back, sits on a lily pad near the right bank of the pond inside a wide lilac ring that rolls right past a small pale blue ice floe above it without a glint; Prism, the orange fox kit with dragonfly wings, sits on its pad at the left, pale horizontal streaks shimmer on the water at the top, and cattails with pink, purple and yellow flowers line the green bank on the right against the dark purple sky
Search: “does an echo come back twice.” This one does.

So in Frost Mirror, Echo’s second ring is mostly an encore. Echo still earns its pad, though: each song pays four times what Pip’s does.

Three stars

The first star is for waking the Moon, which means filling the Glow meter. Your own waves pay double, so taps and Big Swishes fill it faster than rain does.

The second is for a chain of seven friends in one wave. The floes don’t count toward it, since they add no links, but they can carry the wave to friends who would otherwise sit it out.

The third is the hardest: Perfect harmony with a full pond. Every friend has to sing in a single wave, and the pond needs at least eight friends. Any wave that wakes everyone pays triple, with a cheerful “Perfect harmony!”, but the star only comes with eight or more. On nine pads, that means using all of it: let Prism triple the middle, let the floes carry the wave to the edges, and put Leap where its landing counts.

Play Lullalotl

The first two ponds of Lullalotl are free to play in your browser at lullalotl.com. The full game, all ten ponds, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on its Lullalotl page.

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