Ynglet
I’m a space dolphin. You’re a space dolphin. We’re all space dolphins, floating through the globs. The globs are Copenhagen. And Copenhagen exploded into existence when an asteroid hit our space dolphin house, scattering our little space buddies all over the place.
Ynglet, my friends, is a world all its own.
It doesn’t create a world in the same narrative-heavy way as Danish developer Triple Topping’s 2020 Welcome to Elk, though it has some mechanics that closely mirror those of Spitkiss, the studio’s polyamorous puzzle platformer. I was reminded more of Swedish developer Nifflas’s classic Knytt series, in which there are always little creatures in the background doing their own thing, making the world feel alive. It’s almost as if somebody made a platformer that combined the flare and physics of Spitkiss with the whimsy and adventure of Knytt… Which makes sense, because Triple Topping and Nifflas collaborated to make Ynglet.
Is there such a thing as a Scandanavian video game? A game that, you know, embraces nature and minimalism and whimsy all at once? Go play Ynglet and tell me what you think. It’s a floaty platformer where instead of jumping and landing on solid ground, you drift from blob to blob, eventually gaining the ability to dash and bounce around. If you go too fast, you’ll exceed the ability of the blob’s viscosity to catch you, and you’ll fall. If you go too slow, you won’t get up enough momentum to get from one blob to the next. These simple mechanics get combined in all kinds of innovative ways, from rails that mimic public transit by sucking you in and shooting you across the level to blocks that disappear and reappear every time you dash.
It’s all about flow and rhythm, which makes its dynamic soundtrack perfect (the press kit hilariously describes the game’s sound engine as “way too complicated”). In other words, it’s a colorfully minimalist game that has a bunch of water and efficient public transport. Sounds pretty Scandinavian to me. And I’m not kidding about the Copenhagen thing—the levels are named after the city’s districts, and the “world map” looks like a city guide you’d find in the back of a brochure.
Now, the million-dollar question: is it fun? Yes! Ynglet is really fun. The game’s hand-drawn feel is reminiscent of a student’s notebook full of doodles come to life. It’s bright and abstract, and the levels have an understated brilliance to them. For example, you might get to the “end” of a level and activate some colorful switchy thing that suddenly repurposes the blocks that you’ve already jumped through, making for a whole new return journey to the real finish, which is back where you started. Also, any time you land in a blob, you can wait for a couple of seconds to set it as a respawn point, which takes the pressure off after you manage to navigate around a tricky part. The fact that a platformer can give you such endless power to save and remain challenging is a big accomplishment in and of itself.
Okay, so it’s fun. Is it long? No! Ynglet will probably take you two hours to play. Is it emotionally arresting? No! It’s a swoopy space dolphin good time. Personally, I like a reminder that not all indie games have to have the weightiness of What Remains of Edith Finch (or, for that matter, Welcome to Elk). Will it make you rethink everything you thought you knew about platformers? Maybe! It bills itself as “a platformer without platforms,” which is pretty cool, although there are a couple of flat, solid things that you can bounce off of, which I would argue might constitute a platform, just not one that you can stand on. Do you have to be able to stand on something before it counts as a platform? I’ll just choose not to be nitpicky about it. I definitely prefer the way Ynglet manages physics to the way other platformers like Alex Kidd in Miracle World make you slide for miles. Any time you fall off in Ynglet, it’s your own damn fault, although if you were patient and hung out in the blob for a second, you won’t have to worry about losing much progress.
There are times when the game’s minimalism gets ever so slightly in the way of playability. For example, I did not realize that bouncing off of certain things gave me the ability to dash again after I hit them because that wasn’t clear when the dash mechanic was introduced. There’s also a certain amount of learning-by-dying, which may not be everybody’s bag of chips. Perhaps a more hardcore platforming expert would prefer a game that punishes you more for falling off, which is, you know, fine. For me, Ynglet strikes a delightful balance between whimsy and challenge, reminding me of games like Knytt that made me fall in love with the indies a long time ago. I mean, obviously, everybody wants to be a Copenhagen space dolphin.
For more about the studio and publisher Triple Topping, check out our interview with them, here.
