Jelly Jump

Jelly Jump is a soft-body platformer about a small raspberry jelly with big plans. It is not a ball and it is not a box: it is a ring of springs with pressure inside, so it squashes when it lands, stretches when it flies and keeps wobbling long after it stops. Hold the button and it flattens against whatever it is standing on, a squash meter filling as it goes; let go and all that stored spring throws it wherever you aimed.

The jelly is sticky, which is the whole trick. Touch a wall or a ceiling and it hangs there, so a room is less a floor plan than a climbing frame: cling, aim, spring, cling again. Honey holds it fast, butter and ice give it nothing to grip, spoons fire it halfway up the room, and biscuits, wafers and toast make the shelves in between. Gaps a tile wide look impossible until you remember a jelly can be squeezed through anything if you hit it hard enough. Hot pans and upturned forks end the run on the spot, but there are no lives and no waiting: you pop and you are back at the start of the room a heartbeat later.

Eighteen rooms run across three kitchens, the warm Pantry, the sunlit Counter and the frosted Freezer, unlocked one at a time. Each room hides three sugar cubes and keeps a par time, and how quickly you reach the cake door decides whether you walk away with one star or three. Stars unlock new flavours to wear, from lime to blueberry to mint, and everything you collect is kept in your browser. Play it with the keyboard, with a mouse, or with a thumb: on a touch screen you drag anywhere on the room to pull the jelly back like a slingshot and watch the dotted arc show you where you are about to land.