Where things stand: two games, one rule each
Flipfall is getting its look, Nudgeberg has 300 proven levels and three playtests behind it. A first look at both.
Brackwater is one person making small mobile games. Each one is built around a single rule you understand in a second, flat shapes, and no ending in sight. Two of them are in the works right now. This is where they stand.
Flipfall
One tap flips gravity. Your character runs on its own, falls up to the ceiling, keeps running there, and the next tap drops it back to the floor. Obstacles reach in from above and below, and the corridor never ends.
Flipfall started at the end of July. The game itself has been playable for a while: the endless corridor made of prefabricated sections, coins, upgrades in the workshop, skins, daily missions and a chest. Shields and sprints are items you keep in stock and switch on before a run.
The last few days were all about the look. The world is now a night palette with sand coloured obstacles and one clean outline around them, coins are turquoise, and every screen was rebuilt in Nunito. Then came the part that makes it feel good:
- a puff of dust on every flip and a short buzz on the phone
- coins that fly to you instead of just vanishing
- a crash in slow motion that shatters the runner
- speed lines from 1000 m on
Next up are sound and settings, the Brackwater splash with the blinking eyes, a first run that teaches itself, and 40 more sections including swinging pendulums and lock gates.
Nudgeberg
Penguins stand on an ice floe, each facing a direction. Tap one and it slides until it plops into the sea or bumps into another penguin, which then slides on. The order is everything: one wrong nudge strands a penguin on the ice.
Nudgeberg started a week ago and moved fast. There are 300 levels and a new puzzle every day. None of them were drawn by hand: a generator builds the boards and a solver plays every single one to the end before it goes in. If a level is in the game, it can be solved.
Three playtests changed a lot:
- It got harder. Early levels had penguins that could simply slide off the edge, which is not a decision. The generator now points most of them at something. Every chapter has one properly hard level with a banner.
- New pieces arrive over time: ice blocks from level 4, ice walls from 16, a walrus from 76 and brittle ice from 106, which holds while a penguin stands on it and breaks the moment it leaves.
- The board sits lower, closer to your thumb, and the colony on the start screen got a new iceberg with fixed spots for everything you unlock.
Your progress can be kept in your Google Play Games account, so a new phone does not mean starting over. The game still plays from the copy on your phone, offline included.
About ads
Both games will be free. Ads never show up in the middle of a level or a run. Flipfall shows one at most after every third run, never in your first three. Nudgeberg shows one at most after a solved level, with at least three minutes and three levels in between, and none before level 12. Anything that gives you something for watching a video is optional, and both games will offer a small purchase that switches the ads between runs and levels off.
What comes next
Nudgeberg is close to a closed test on Google Play. Flipfall follows once its visual pass is done. No dates yet: I would rather tell you when something is actually ready.
If you want to hear about it first, the newsletter opens with the first build.