Turbo Pudding

Tomorrow AgoDev diary

How we make sure you never get stuck in Tomorrow Ago

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

On snowy Brenna Bridge in stopped time, Mira, a girl in a teal coat with a rust scarf and brass goggles on her auburn hair, smiles with her eyes closed at old Ottilie, a small woman in a red knitted hat, round glasses and a purple and mustard shawl who sits knitting on a stool with a basket of yarn at her feet, while Tik, a little brass robot shaped like a pocket watch, stands behind Mira; beside them is Ottilie’s shop with a striped awning hung with icicles, cords on nails labelled NAME, PLACE and TIME, a glowing red ball of thread on the counter and a sign reading OTTILIE, Thread, Wool, Knots read, under a lit street lamp and falling snow

The worst moment in a puzzle adventure isn’t a hard puzzle. It’s realizing, an hour in, that the game can’t be finished anymore, because you used something in the wrong place or walked past a door that won’t open again. In Tomorrow Ago, Mira and Tik have one frozen night to cross the town of Glimmerau, and we didn’t want anyone to spend it stuck.

It’s Wednesday, so here is how chapter 1 keeps that promise.

Nothing gets wasted

Rule one: nothing can be used up in the wrong place.

Take the lift at the foot of the clock tower. Its gearbox has four pegs, and every gear for them is right there in the tower. You can put gears on and take them off as often as you like, and every try gets an answer. Too far apart, and Mira notices: “They don’t even touch. The teeth are waving at each other across the gap.” Too close, and one gear rides up on the other’s teeth: “Too big together. They’re fighting. Grandpa would wince.” Get close but not quite there, and the needle on the dial stops in yellow: “Yellow. Better. Not enough. I’ve got clockmaker’s arms, not a blacksmith’s.”

A close-up of the lift’s gearbox at the foot of the clock tower: a wooden board with four pegs marked A to D, a 36-tooth brass gear with a crank handle on peg A and a bigger 48-tooth gear on peg B jammed against it, a chain running to a small gear on peg C, the distances 60 and 54 marked above the pegs, a paper strip at the top reading Mind the distances, small drives great, A.H., a round dial labelled Load on the arm with red, yellow and green zones, a lever between CLOCK and HAND, and two spare gears with 12 and 18 teeth on green cloth below
Searched “gear puzzle game”. Found two gears in a fight.

The same goes for people. On Brenna Bridge, old Ottilie reads time in thread, and to get her help Mira has to tie three knots on her cord in the right order. Get it wrong three times, and Ottilie offers to take over: “Give it here. My fingers are older than your patience.” If you’d rather keep trying, you can always try again.

Clues before you need them

Rule two: before any spot where you could get stuck, the world gives you at least two clues. Over the lift’s gearbox there is a strip of paper signed A.H., Grandpa’s initials: “Mind the distances.” An old engraving of the lift hangs on the tower wall. And the missing gear glints in the dark under the stair.

If the clues aren’t enough, you can always ask. Talk to Tik and pick “What now, Tik?” He answers in his short, happy words, and the answer depends on where you are and what you’ve done. In the tower, before you’ve found the missing gear, it’s “Shiny. Under. Round.” Later, when the needle keeps stopping in yellow, it’s “Small. Pushes. Big.”

At the foot of the clock tower, in the gray-blue light of stopped time, Mira, a girl in a teal coat with a rust scarf, brass goggles on her auburn hair and a leather satchel, stands by a stone staircase and looks into the dark space under it, where a small gear lies glinting on the floor, while Tik, a little brass robot shaped like a pocket watch with one round lens eye, stands behind her; on the right a lamp glows inside the open lift cage with its folding lattice gate, and a single drop of water hangs in midair under a pipe
Search: “where is the missing gear”. Shiny. Under. Round.

There is also a hint button, and every goal has a ladder of three hints: first a nudge, then a place or a thing, then the exact move. Players often solve things out of order, so a hint always looks at the furthest step you haven’t done yet. Near the start, with an oil can too thick to pour, the ladder goes: “The oil is too thick to pour.” Then: “Something in the shop is warm.” And only if you ask a third time: “Use the oil can on the stove.”

Grandpa’s workshop in stopped time, drained to soft grays: Mira in her teal coat stands between the long workbench and the potbelly stove, whose fire hangs still and white behind the grate, while Tik sits asleep on the workbench, still in warm brass color, next to a folded note, a few small gears, a bent desk lamp and a pegboard of tools, with a tall clock and the shop door at the right
Typed “cozy puzzle game”. The stove is the cozy part. Also the answer.

A tester that never gets tired

Rules are easy to write down and easy to break by accident, so we also built a checker. It’s a small program that knows how to finish the chapter from any point. It starts a new game and finds its way to the end. Then it does the same from every step along the way, after a few random taps off the path. Then it plays a hundred long games full of random taps, checking every so often that a way to the end still exists.

In chapter 1, that’s 1,934 different states of the game, and every one has a way forward. It has caught real mistakes, too. Once, offering the Guild keyring to Provost Crane broke the scene. And the first version of the lift puzzle had 41 states with no way forward, partly because a gear already sitting on one peg couldn’t be moved straight to another. Now each peg offers all four gears, and picking one moves it from wherever it was.

Your speed, your story

The same checker can play the game for you. There are three speeds, ×1, ×2 and ×3, for everything that moves, a Skip button for scenes, and an Autoplay button that works out the way on from wherever you are and walks Mira there. The spot it’s heading for glows. Your first tap, click or key press hands the game straight back to you. Our own test run uses Autoplay at ×3 and gets through all of chapter 1 in about eleven minutes.

And then we play it ourselves

Before a release, we also play the chapter by hand. Last time, that turned up something no test could see: on a computer, the item tray at the bottom of the screen covered a spare gear in the gearbox and a small clue in one of the last rooms. Now, with a mouse, the tray tucks down to a thin lip. It slides up when you hover over it, pick something up or press the inventory key, and it gets out of the way while you drag an item.

Spend the night in Glimmerau

Tomorrow Ago is free to play in your browser at tomorrowago.com. More about the game is on its Tomorrow Ago page.

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