Ynglet

Nifflas (Nicklas Nygren), a Swedish game developer, created the initial prototype for [i]Ynglet[/i] during the No More Sweden game jam on July, 19th 2013. This jam did not have a theme, allowing developers to openly explore their ideas. [i]Ynglet[/i]’s idea was about swimming and jumping between floating water bubbles, playing as a “space dolphin,” a “platformer without platforms,” and in general creating an abstract, joyful environment. The prototype consisted of five levels, all containing variously placed moving, rotating cube- and circle-shaped bubbles, and the player had to move between them and collect all the seeds in the level. Despite the simplicity, the game was already fun, with the final level being tricky due to the movement and rotation speed of the bubbles. The game was forgiving; the only way to die was to fall, and collected seeds didn’t reset on death. So, the game was all about atmosphere, and knew it was mostly about experiencing this strange, wonderful environment. Nifflas already knew the world in its prototype state: the hand-drawn bubble world was artistically flourished with fourfold symmetric mosaics in and around the bubbles, somehow giving the feeling of being a microorganism within it, with parallax space debris appearing like looking through a microscope. (This makes sense, as only on smaller scales would surface tension allow for water to glob together this way.) The design of the protagonist—a stylized jellyfish with long chainlike tentacles—and the water splashing sounds when going between bubbles, already made clear the water bubble concept. The nonsensical, cute story of the jellyfish creature was shown through incomprehensible and silly four-panel story comics between levels. The beginning of the game’s renowned dynamic music system was also there—audio changing depending on whether the player is inside a bubble, muffled as if underwater. So, the feeling was all there and defined, but the mechanics, with just jumping between bubbles, was limited. Was the sky-bubble dream too good to be true? It would take nearly 8 years for an answer for that question, with [i]Ynglet[/i] fully releasing on June 5, 2021. The commercial release very much stayed true to the original vision, improving on all aspects of the jam prototype. It’s biggest changes, though, were adding to the mechanics with new level objects/elements. The water bubbles now come in any kind of shape. But, for better or worse, the jellyfish would spend less time in bubbles and more time dashing around in the air, only returning to bubbles as a temporary safe-haven. To allow for air movement, a dash mechanic was added, where the jellyfish could instantly propel in a certain direction, with time slowing to get the aiming right. Then all sorts of new game elements were added around this. A red dash line in the level allows the jellyfish to use its dash to reflect off of it, also instantly recharging the dash ability. A blue line allows dashing through, but if the jellyfish falls into it, it will bounce them off in the opposite direction. A gold line, when dashed through, recharges the dash ability. These line types—and dashing acrobatically through them—make up much of the final level composition. Certain types of bubbles swap between activated and deactivated with each dash, while other bubbles can only be stayed in for a limited amount of time before they explode, propelling the jellyfish out of them. An intense, fun pattern of gameplay was often utilized: certain types of seeds require for a set of other prerequisite seeds to be collected first, but these prerequisite seeds reset upon the jellyfish falling into a safe bubble, requiring dashing and staying airborne. It’s like Nifflas realized the bubbles in his original vision were too stagnant, too idealized and safe to give a game challenge, and moved the challenge outside of the bubbles, into the indifferent and uncaring air. Besides the added level elements, the rest of the improvements was simply expanding on the artistic elements. The visuals and sounds of the strange world have been further enhanced. The same jellyfish creature design remains, while small, swimming creatures similar to the jellyfish joined the world, coexisting alongside plant tendrils and living, pulsing mosaics as an ecosystem. An expanded dynamic music system deftly knits in musical elements with the art pulsing to the beat as the player moves around—when the player rides a train line, enters certain bubbles, sits still in a bubble creating a checkpoint, dashes, or bounces, the sound effects are woven in to make the actions a part of the music. The procedural beats of [i]Ynglet[/i] are described by Nifflas himself as, “needlessly complicated music software.” This quality translates to the visuals as well; many of the vector graphics have a visual flourish where they trace themselves out, often drawing into impressive, visually pleasing patterns. The changing shades of colors are beautiful. And many other small details, like how when the jellyfish falls off the map, it seamlessly appears to land back in the starting bubble/checkpoint, add up to a highly polished experience. The game remains forgiving, and also allows for creating checkpoints in any regular bubble just by staying still in it for a second. This isn’t to say the game is easy—it just makes the player not have to replay long segments. Gameplay tends to be broken into intense spurts of flying and dashing through the air, followed by landing safely into regular bubbles. The game offers quality-of-life improvements with menu options for difficulty, accessibility, save slots, sound, etc. The four-panel comics between sections have been replaced with short cutscenes. The intro scene starts with the jellyfish in its home bubble with some other friend creatures, watching a television displaying an incoming meteor. The meteor crashes into the home—a perfect call to action—causing it to explode and fragment into a huge, abstract mosaic world, and this presumably makes up the world of the game, since it forms into the hub world. The hub world allows the player to enter the different levels, which have Swedish names like “Botanisk Have” and “Valby”—an interesting artistic choice, perhaps showing pride in the innovative game scene in Sweden. As the player completes levels, the jellyfish finds and rescues other jellyfish-looking creatures. In the end cutscene, all the creatures have assembled a small village of bubbles, and they huddle around a television, watching a final demonstration of Nifflas’s generative art systems: an evolving mosaic of shapes and lines shifting in time with the music. Overall, the jam prototype seemed to start as a fantasy: what would it be like to be a space dolphin? Then, by developing the system and playing it, Nifflas found that life as a space dolphin would be easy. He leaned into this calm and ease with developing beautiful abstract art and music systems. But he found that in order for there to be tension—and something to contrast and enhance that floating feeling of security—more difficulty was needed. For this, he looked outside the bubbles, placing challenge where the dolphin had no control—into space, where the dolphin helplessly couldn’t swim or even change its direction. It was there, he found, that the “game” took place—with its difficulty, strategy, and risk. The dolphin would return to its safe bubbles for brief respite, happy to swim around in its celestial space bubbles, only to leap back into the uncertain air. The development changes of [i]Ynglet[/i] between prototype and release shows the balance between difficulty and ease, safety and danger, stress and calm, that games need to strike to give a feeling of flow—and to give players the feeling of flowing through water and space, flowing like a space dolphin.

Idk how or when i found and bought this game, but it's so beautiful. 100% recommended

psychedelia forever

Absolute artistic genius of a game, music is phenomenal, the atmosphere is deeply comforting and replenishing

It's a cool minimalistic stylised light puzzle game that could entertain you for an hour or 2 but really lacks content and is at times pretty boring. If you're expecting something more look else where. I saw someone with 30+ hrs, and I just don't understand that. Still fun though. Probably better on the steamdeck

Ynglet is a unique 2d platformer with a good art style and polished controls. I would recommend it for it's price tag.

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