Rock Hard Fluffy Thing: the guide
How the game works, what every tile does, how the monsters think, and how to build and share your own levels.
The story
Squidgy was just an ordinary Fluffy Thing, until one day all the Nasty Things and their robot drones stole all of the Fluffy Things' diamonds! Not only was this devastating to their economy, but diamonds are the only things Fluffy Things can eat. Squidgy decided to go out, as all good heroes do, and collect all the diamonds back from the Nasty Things deep down in their caves, thus saving his race from certain DOOM.
That is the 1996 manual, and it still covers the rules: get every diamond on the level, then get to the exit before the clock runs out. Every 500 points earns an extra life.
Playing
Each level opens with its title and, if it has one, a password that takes you straight back to that level from the main menu. Press a key to start; the "Ready!" screen can be skipped with another key press. The play area is the big window; score, time left and lives are down the side.
| Keys | |
|---|---|
| Z X | left and right |
| ; / | up and down |
| ↑ ↓ ← → | the arrow keys do the same thing on this version |
| Enter Space | choose a menu item, start a level |
| Esc | jumps the menu pointer to "Return to desktop"; "Define keys" in the menu lets you pick your own |
On a phone, tapping "Insert coin" switches to a handheld layout with a thumb-pad; slide your thumb across it rather than tapping, and use the ⌨ button when a level asks for a password.
The tiles
Levels are a 15 by 18 grid. Every cell is one of these tiles; the pictures are from the game itself. Numbers are the tile's type in the editor's palette.
Gems, the exit, and monsters
What stops a monster
Monsters will not step onto a hole, lava, water or a high tile; they treat those like walls and turn instead (that is also how you fence them in). The edge of the map stops them too. They die if the tile under them becomes a hole, lava, water or live electricity, and a bomb under a monster blows up, killing it and leaving a plain tile. Arrow tiles work on monsters: a force or push arrow under a monster turns it to that direction, and if the arrow points it into a high tile it is crushed. Monsters ignore gems, teleports, slippy tiles and switches, and they do not crack cracked tiles. Touching one costs you a life.
Switches and teleports
Buttons (switches)
A button changes one other tile, anywhere on the map. Each button has a list of up to four tile types; the tile starts as whatever you drew on the map, and every press moves it on to the next type in the list, wrapping round after the last one that is filled in. The manual's example: a tile starts as a bomb and the button's list is Plain, Bomb, Fire, (empty). The first press shows nothing, because the second entry is still a bomb; the second press makes lava; the third press goes back to plain. In the author's words, "it is up to the designer of a level to make sure the switches do exactly what they are designed to do", and some of the original levels deliberately need two presses.
A button's target can be any tile, but the list can only contain ordinary tiles: not another button, a teleport, electricity, a rotating push arrow or a disappearing tile. A level can have 16 buttons.
Teleports
Stepping on a teleport puts Squidgy on the destination tile and he carries on in the direction you are pressing. Destinations are usually another teleport (so the pair works both ways) or a plain tile. Make sure the tile after the destination, in the direction he will be walking, is somewhere he can stand.
Timed tiles
Electricity, rotating push arrows and the disappearing tile each take a timing value in hundredths of a second (1 to 255). For electricity it is how long it stays on or off; for a rotating arrow it is the time between one quarter turn and the next; for a disappearing tile it is the time between each stage of fading. The original levels mostly use values between 30 and 80.
Building a level
- Open the map editor. It starts with one empty map: everything is a hole except a small plain block with Squidgy on it. "Load the original 35" instead gives you Mike's levels to pull apart.
- Draw the floor. Pick Normal in the tile palette and click or drag across the map. Everything you leave as Hole is a drop into the dark, so a level is really a path through a void. Remember Squidgy cannot stop mid-tile, so every junction needs somewhere safe to go.
- Place the start. Choose the Squidgy tool, pick a facing direction, click a floor tile.
- Add diamonds and an exit. The diamond tool toggles a gem on a tile. Put down an Exit tile somewhere reachable. A level is only finished once all the diamonds are collected and Squidgy stands on the exit.
- Make it interesting. Lava and water to walk around, slippy ice that keeps him sliding, force arrows that lock his direction, cracked tiles that only take two or three crossings, a bomb he has to jump over with a jump tile, a button that bridges a gap.
- Set the clock and the name. On the left, give the map a title (shown at the start of the level) and a time limit in seconds. The file name is what the pack lists; keep it to ten letters.
- Test it. "Play this pack" opens the game with your pack as the level list. Come back with the browser's back button; the editor keeps your work in its link.
Placing a button or a teleport
Both take two clicks. Click once to put the tile down, then click the tile it affects (for a button) or where it leads (for a teleport). The Inspect tool shows the link afterwards and lets you change it; for a button it also lets you set the four types it cycles through. Timed tiles get a timing field in the same panel when you inspect them.
Monsters
Pick the monster tool, choose the kind and the direction it starts walking, and click a tile. Clicking a monster removes it. Because drones turn anticlockwise at every obstacle, a drone on a plain rectangle circles its edge forever; a Nasty Thing in the same room keeps turning towards you and ends up pacing the wall closest to you.
Sharing a pack
A pack is an ordered list of maps, each with a name, an optional password and the level itself. The editor keeps the whole pack in the page's address, so there is nothing to save or upload: press "Copy link" and send that link. Anyone who opens it in the editor sees your maps and can change their own copy; anyone who opens the matching game link plays them in order. The game link is simply index.html#p=… with the same code, which is what "Play this pack" produces.
Passwords are optional and are typed at the game's "Password" menu item to jump straight to that map. They are stored in upper case, letters and digits only. Links are long but harmless: all 35 original levels fit in about 9,000 characters, and a hand-made pack of a few levels is far smaller. If a messaging app mangles a long link, paste it into a note first.
Tips from the manual
- Once you have started in a direction you are committed to moving that way, so plan ahead by pressing the key for the direction you want to go next before you need to.
- Ice is tricky. Try to remember where you need to go, or else you panic and die horribly. If you do panic, try to get to solid ground.
- Some exceptionally tricky switches need to be pressed twice (maybe more) before they have any effect, and even then you may not see the result.
- The robot drones have very predictable behaviour, as would be expected from drones, but the Nasty Things are less predictable: their movements when they come to turn depend on where you are on the map relative to them.
- Don't give up. Practice. Have fun. Don't cry. Don't pull your hair out. Enjoy.
Rock Hard Fluffy Thing © 1996 Mike Goatly, released as public domain. Tile descriptions are from the game's own StrongHelp manual; monster behaviour was read from the game code.