Turbo Pudding
Every window in Vitrea is stained glass, and every morning the sun comes up through it. This morning it didn’t. Someone locked the sunrise in the glass, pane by pane, all over town. It’s Monday, so let’s meet the cast of Panemonium. Only one of them is a person. The rest are a lantern, a moth and her helpers, a chandelier, a bell and a very vain mirror.
Mira, the lamplighter’s apprentice
Mira has auburn hair cut in a bob, brass goggles pushed up on her forehead, an amber scarf and a teal coat. Her job is to put the lamps out at dawn, so a town with no dawn is a personal problem. Her first thought is about work: “No dawn, no job!”
She is brave, impatient and loud, the kind who breaks first and apologizes later. Her very first broken pane gets “Did you see that? A bit of morning! Ha!” And when a sleepy little moth begs for quiet in Belfry Heights, she has an answer ready: “Some of us are about to be very awake.”
Her tools are the Prism, her paddle, and the Spark, a ball of light. Every pane she breaks lets a bit of morning out, and the town behind the glass gets lighter.
Gaffer, the lantern on her pole
Gaffer is an old talking streetlamp, a six-sided copper lantern that hangs on Mira’s pole. His face lives in the flame: two drop-shaped eyes and a curly moustache of copper filigree. His name is a nod to glassblowing, where the gaffer is the master who leads the work.
He keeps Mira’s spare sparks, so every extra life you catch is “A spare spark for the lantern. Don’t waste it.” He calls her “apprentice” and pretends not to approve of any of this. When the prologue asks whether breaking glass is really the plan, he says, “I’d never tell a young lady to break windows. …Use the Spark.”
Duchess Dusk
The one behind all this is Duchess Dusk, a velvet night moth with feathery antennae, a lace bonnet, a fluffy ruff and a lorgnette. She hasn’t slept in a hundred years, and she just wants to sleep in. She isn’t evil. She calls everyone “darling,” she says “Hush” a lot, and she has her own idea of the time: “Darling, it’s four hundred o’clock. Go to bed.” Mira’s reply: “I will. Right after sunrise.”
The moment Mira wakes the first sleeper, the Duchess answers: “How rude. Very well — then nobody rings anything.” And every bell in town goes quiet.
The Dimlings
The Dimlings are the Duchess’s helpers: tiny moths in pointed hoods, with leaf-shaped wings and two big round eyes peeking out of the shadow. They are sleepy and would like everyone to keep it down. “No ringing… please… some of us are sleeping…”
They also have opinions about the capsules that fall from broken glass. If one makes your Prism smaller, a Dimling giggles: “Hee… your Prism is tiny now…” And when you break into one of the gift-wrapped panes, they give it up with a yawn: “Hey… those are our presents… yawn… fine, take them.”
Up in the Moon Dome, they come out onto the glass itself. In the level Little Visitors, two of them stand on the panes. Every 1.2 seconds, a Dimling hops to a pane next to it. If the pane under it is cracked, it stays and mends one crack in two seconds. Touch a Dimling with the Spark, and it giggles and flies off, 50 points to you. Nobody gets hurt.
Mira’s view: “They’re patching the panes! Shoo, little moths, shoo!”
The sleepers
At the top of Lantern Lane, Belfry Heights and the Glasshouse waits a boss, and none of them is a villain. They are townsfolk the Duchess has put to sleep. You don’t defeat them. You wake them up.
The Grand Chandelier is the festival chandelier of Lantern Lane: three tiers of crystal around a candle with a face. The Duchess has wrapped her in black crystal, and she murmurs in her sleep: “Shhh… the square… must stay… dim…” Gaffer knows what to aim for: “The candle in her heart is the real her.”
Old Bellamy is the great bell of Belfry Heights, a bronze bell with his eyes on his waist and the clapper for a nose. “He rang every noon since forever,” Mira says, but now he sleeps under a velvet hood and has only one word: “HUSH.” His first ring surprises even him: “BONG! …Pardon me. Haven’t done that in a while.”
The Looking-Glass lives in the Glasshouse, an oval mirror in a gold frame, with long lashes and a high opinion of herself. “Who’s the fairest of them all? Me. Obviously. Now hush.” She has one rule for anyone with a Spark: “Don’t you DARE scratch me.” Once she sees the sunrise, she admits it is prettier than her. Mira, kindly: “Close second.” Gaffer, less kindly: “Mirrors.”
Meet them in Vitrea
The first five levels and the first boss are free to play in your browser at panemonium.com. The full game, all twenty levels, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Panemonium page.
