Turbo Pudding

PitterplopScreenshot Saturday

Snapshots from Mossy Hollow

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

Gilby, an orange axolotl with yellow frilly gills, a blue drop on the head and a green scarf, perches at the top of a bright green moss wall in a sunny wood, with three brown acorns stuck in the moss below like the rungs of a ladder and a blue dewdrop between them, while on the left a grumpy squirrel with a gray-purple grumble puff sits on a leafy branch and another acorn flies through the air under the canopy

Beyond the meadow lies the Mossy Hollow. That is where Sorrel the fox cub went berry-picking with her paper lantern, and she has not come home. So Gilby heads into the woods to find her, armed with Tansy the bunny’s plan: “Step one: find Sorrel. Step two: don’t get lost.”

Mossy Hollow is the second world of Pitterplop, with five levels, and for this Screenshot Saturday we took one snapshot in each. The one at the top is from Mossy Steps.

Mossy Steps: a ladder of acorns

Squirrels lob acorns here, and a little shadow shows where each one will land.

The trick is the soft moss. An acorn that misses Gilby and hits a moss wall sticks in it for three seconds and makes a peg to stand on. The sign sums it up: “Stand by the moss, hop as it flies, then climb!” Let a squirrel throw a few, and you have a ladder. The first moss wall is five blocks tall, the next one six.

On the cover, Gilby has climbed three stuck acorns to the top of a wall while the squirrel on the branch sends another one flying. A squirrel washed with a splash of water keeps tossing acorns just for fun. They can’t hurt anymore, but they still stick in the moss.

Silkthread Glade: six seconds of silk

In the next level, silver threads hang between the trees, and a scrap of red paper that smells of berries is caught in one of them. “That’s from Sorrel’s lantern!” says Tansy.

Grumpy spiders hang under the branches here. Walk under one, and it drops down on its thread and bobs there, glaring. Land on it, and it zips home for a nap and leaves its silk behind. Gilby can swing on the line and climb it with up and down, but not for long: a line lasts six seconds, flickers in its last second and snaps. Whoever is hanging on at that moment flies on with the swing.

Gilby, an orange axolotl with yellow frilly gills, a blue drop on the head and a green scarf, hangs from a thin silver line of spider silk strung with tiny dewdrops, swinging above a pale teal pond in a sunny wood of tall gray-green trunks; at the top of the line a round dark purple spider dozes under the leafy canopy with a little z over it, a second spider with a frown dangles from its own long thread on the right under a small gray-purple grumble puff, and two blue dewdrops float in the air between them
Typed “platformer with swinging.” The spider clocked out for a nap.

A missed swing is never the end of it: a dozing spider lets down a fresh line every time Gilby comes back under it. The glade needs those lines, with a cliff that only a swing reaches and a long pond crossed from one line to the next.

Rolling Log Run: hop on

Past the glade, the woods run downhill. Fallen logs lie everywhere, and every now and then one of them rolls. As Tansy puts it, “Logs don’t roll by themselves. Somebody’s pushing them.” Somebody snorty, it turns out.

A log rolls at a steady speed and carries whoever stands on it. Jump while riding, and you come back down on the same log. It bowls grumpy critters right over, stops against walls, falls down steps and sinks in water. Some strips of thorns can only be crossed on a log. A boar can shove a log at you with its nose, but three hops on its back and it nods off: a big soft wall that stops any log.

Near the end, a woodpile on a hilltop lets a log roll out every few seconds. Those logs crumble a couple of seconds after they stop, so each one is good for a single ride: down off the hill and across the thorny step below.

Gilby the orange axolotl rides on top of a rolling log, its cut end showing pale tree rings and a tuft of green moss, along a strip of dark thorny bramble with little pink buds at the foot of a grassy hill; up on the hilltop to the left sits a woodpile of stacked logs held by a wooden stake, three blue dewdrops float ahead over the thorns, and tall trunks rise into a leafy canopy under a pale blue sky
People also ask: “can you ride logs in platformers?” Over thorns, yes.

Glowcap Hollow: lights on

Snortle the boar leads the way into the hollow, where “under the leaves it was as dark as the inside of a pocket.” It is dusk down here: teal shadows, a violet sky through the gaps in the leaves and fireflies everywhere.

The light comes from the glowcaps. Bounce on one, higher if you hold jump, and it lights up. A cap that has been lit never goes fully dark again, and in the dark that soft glow is how you find the way. Every ledge here is out of reach of a plain jump, so a cap is always the way up. Moths drift over to whichever cap is lit. A few caps are fast asleep, shut tight until a splash of water wakes them, and there is always a puddle nearby.

In a dark wood at dusk, pale teal glowcaps light up a staircase of earth pillars: one glows at the bottom edge on the ground, one stands on a low pillar of dark soil with a fringe of teal grass, and one sits on top of a much taller pillar to the right; Gilby the orange axolotl leaps through the air between the two upper caps, blue dewdrops hang in the dark, fireflies glint, and a sliver of moon peeks out under the leafy canopy
Searched “glowing mushroom platformer.” Found a staircase.

This is the cap stairs: ground, low pillar, tall pillar, plateau.

Old Oak Climb: up, not along

“The Old Oak was the tallest tree in the woods.” This level goes up instead of along: one screen wide and 92 blocks tall, from the roots to the crown. Snortle sees Gilby off at the bottom: “Snortle doesn’t do up. Snortle does down. And naps.”

Here the bark is the ground, glowcaps grow on the branches, and squirrels throw acorns from theirs. Higher up, it starts to hail: “A frosty ring shows where each stone will land. Keep moving, or wait under a cap or a branch.” The sky changes as you climb, from apricot to plum, while the woods sink away below.

Gilby the orange axolotl stands on a leafy branch of the Old Oak beside a tall glowcap with a pale teal cap and a white stem, glowing softly; on the left the huge brown trunk with wavy bark and dark knots fills the frame from top to bottom, on the right a grumpy squirrel with a gray-purple grumble puff sits on a lower branch, an acorn tumbles through the air between them, and below hangs a short wooden plank with three blue dewdrops over it, all against a dusk sky going from deep purple to soft pink clouds
Search history: “cozy platformer,” “angry squirrel,” “acorn dodge.”

Come and play

Mossy Hollow is part of the full game. The first two levels of Pitterplop are free to play in your browser at pitterplop.com, and the full game is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Pitterplop page.

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