Turbo Pudding

TirraleeFrom the sketchbook

Drawing the gifts of the Tree

· The Turbo Pudding team · 4 min read

Tirra, a round apricot fledgling with a crest of three feathers, and Lee, a round lilac fledgling with a curl on top and a long curled tail feather, float up over green meadow hills, each hanging on to a white dandelion seed with a fan of fluffy threads, while wind streaks and little green leaves swirl up around them under a pale blue sky with soft clouds

Nothing in Tirralee is a picture file. Tirra, Lee, the spirits, the bubbles and every crumb of cake are drawn in code, shape by shape, while you play. Even the ride between rooms is drawn that way: each fledgling hangs on to a dandelion seed, a thin stalk with a crown of fifteen fluffy threads, while leaves spiral up around them. This Sunday we open the sketchbook on the small stuff: the gifts on the ledges, the treats, the bubbles and one very big moth.

A gift on a ledge

Somewhere between 9 and 15 seconds into a room, a gift of the Tree appears on a ledge, away from the heroes. Pop four critters in one chain and the room gives you one more. Each gift floats in a soft pale glow, bobs over its own little shadow and waits 11 seconds. For the last two, it blinks, so you know to hurry.

Seven gifts

The swift feather is long, dark and curved like a sickle, with a white tip. Pick it up and you run faster.

The mint dew is a single dewdrop with a mint leaf fluttering on top. It makes your bubbles fly further.

The cricket drum is a tiny drum made of a nutshell, with two green drumsticks that keep tapping. With it, you blow bubbles faster. These first three stay with you until you get bonked.

The lullaby is Mama’s gray feather with a little purple note beside it. For six seconds, every critter in the room stops where it is under a thin coat of frost.

The heart berry is a red berry shaped like a heart, with two leaves on top. It gives back one heart, up to five, and it only turns up when someone is down to two hearts or fewer.

The amber is a golden drop with a little bubble caught inside. It’s worth 3,000 points and does nothing else, and that’s fine.

The Tree bell is a purple bluebell that swings and rings. Every critter in the room turns into cake, and every empty bubble pops. It’s also the rarest gift: about three times in a hundred.

Lee, a round lilac fledgling with a curl on top, a long tail feather rolled into a curl, sleepy half-closed eyes and a yellow beak, stands at the left end of a grassy ledge in the woods, looking along a row of seven glowing gifts: a long dark swift feather with a white tip, a mint-green dewdrop with a leaf, a little nutshell drum with two green drumsticks, a gray feather with a purple music note, a red heart-shaped berry with two leaves, a purple bluebell with a yellow clapper and a golden drop of amber, with round green fir trees on the hill behind them
Searched “platformer power-ups.” Got a drum made from a nutshell.

Treats get better in a chain

Catch a critter in a bubble, pop it, and its song comes back. The critter spins off and lands as a treat. Which treat depends on the chain. Bubbles that touch each other burst one after another, and each next catch in the chain drops something better.

The ladder goes berry, bun, rice ball, cake, pie, tea and mochi, worth from 50 points up to 5,000. Each one is just two or three shapes. The berry is a red ball with a leaf. The cake is a yellow slice with cream and a pink berry on top. The tea is a pale cup of green with a white handle. When a treat lands, it squashes a little, then pops back into shape.

Three in one chain shakes the screen. Four earns an extra gift. Seven gets you mochi.

Tirra, a round apricot fledgling with a crest of three feathers, big shiny eyes and an orange beak, stands on a gray stone ledge in the rain at the bottom of a staircase of stone pillars, each step a little higher than the last, with one treat on each step going up: a red berry with a leaf, a golden bun, a white rice ball with a dark band, a yellow slice of cake with cream and a pink berry, a round pie with a pale filling, a cup of green tea with a white handle and a pink ball of mochi at the very top, under a soft blue sky with slanted drizzle
Search: “bubble game treats.” Climb the chain all the way to mochi.

Two colors of bubble

A bubble is mostly see-through: clear in the middle, with color gathering at the rim, a thin white ring, a long shine at the top left and one small dot of light at the bottom right. It wobbles as it floats. Tirra’s bubbles are tinted apricot and Lee’s lilac, so even in a busy room you can tell whose is whose.

A bubble with a critter inside keeps time for you. After five seconds, the critter starts to wriggle and the bubble turns gold. After seven, it goes red and flashes. At nine, the critter breaks free, angrier than before, and its colors cloud over toward a stormy gray.

Some bubbles come with something inside. A firefly bubble holds a sleepy firefly with a glowing tail. Pop it, and two fireflies wake up and go after critters nearby. Each can free up to three, every one a better treat. A rain cloud bubble lets out a little cloud with a sleepy face that rains for four seconds. Critters under it slow to half speed, and once they’re soaked through, they’re free too.

On a ledge of soft pink and white cloud tiles, Tirra, the apricot fledgling, blows a small apricot-tinted bubble with an open round beak on the left, and Lee, the lilac fledgling, stands on the right next to a bigger lilac-tinted bubble, while above them float a red, flashing bubble with a green grasshopper caught inside, a golden bubble with a little firefly in it and a blue bubble with a tiny rain cloud and falling drops, against a pink sky with white clouds
People also ask: why is my bubble turning red?

A clock on its wings

Stay in a room too long and dusk falls, and with it comes the Duskmoth. We drew it big and soft, with two glowing lantern eyes and pale spots on its wings: six on each side in a half ring, twelve in all, like the face of a clock. Fitting, for a story that starts when an old cuckoo clock strikes thirteen.

When the Duskmoth bumps a fledgling, it flies up under the ceiling and dozes for five seconds, with little z’s drifting off it. And Mama’s lullaby works on it, too: while the critters stand frozen, the Duskmoth waits in the air.

At night on a ledge of lavender tiles, Lee and Tirra stand side by side on the left looking right, next to a glowing gray feather with a purple music note, while a big soft gray-violet moth with two glowing yellow lantern eyes, long curled feelers and a half ring of six pale spots on each wing hovers in the starry sky above, a crescent moon behind it, and a chubby white cloud critter with a gray face and half-closed eyes waits at the right end of the ledge under a small gray scribble of a cloud
Typed “cute game night moth.” It has a clock on its wings.

Come pick a gift

The first two levels, the whole meadow, are free to play in your browser at tirralee.com. The full game is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Tirralee page.

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