Jelly Fizz update 1.1: Party Jugs, twists that bite, and seven tracks

Jelly Fizz 1.1 is out. It is the first real update to our soda sort puzzle, and almost all of it lands in the first forty levels — the part of the game we got most wrong.

Below is what changed, why, and where each new rule shows up. If you have never played it, the game page has the screenshots and the spec table, and the launch post from August covers what shipped in 1.0.

What changed and why

The first version had 170 players over thirty days, and their sessions all had the same shape. The board could not be lost — a warning caught the one move that would have ended a level, every time — so nothing was ever at stake. Meanwhile the levels that did have something new in them were where people stopped: the level that first hid a colour lost an order of magnitude more players than the ones around it.

So the game was simultaneously too easy to fail and too abrupt when it finally asked for something. We rebuilt the first forty levels around both halves of that: new elements arrive earlier and more often, each one on a level with room to breathe, and a board can now genuinely be lost — with the game telling you when, and offering a way out.

Rules that start at level 6: a bottle sort puzzle with twists

In 1.0 the first nine levels asked for nothing but pouring. Now the first rule lands at level 6, and another follows every few levels. Each one arrives on its own level — one new thing, a card explaining it, a spare bottle in hand.

Corked bottle — level 6. A cork sits on the neck and nothing goes in until you have sealed two other bottles. It costs you the bottle you would normally use as scratch space, so the board has to be solved in a different order rather than a harder one.

Recipe label — level 9. A labelled bottle accepts one flavour and refuses the rest. It is the first element that makes a legal-looking pour illegal, which is the point: you start reading the board before you tap it.

Frozen top — level 12. The top segment is iced over. Pour its own colour onto it and the ice thaws; pour anything else and nothing happens.

Funnel — level 15. A funnel takes pours and never gives them back. It is the only element in the game that can waste a colour permanently, and it is why the level it arrives on is a quiet one.

Fizzy flavour — level 18. A fizzy colour pours two segments at a time instead of one, which is help and hazard in the same move.

Foam and frost are the other half, and they are not rules — they are fog. From level 11 a board can arrive with a colour hidden: foam covers the top segment until the first pour, frosted glass shows only what is on top. They do not change what is legal, only what you can see, which is why a level with fog is worth one careful look before the first move.

The Party Jug

Every tenth level — 10, 20, 30 and on — ends at a Party Jug: one wide bottle in the middle of the board that holds eight segments of a single flavour and never pours back out. Fill it and the level is done, and the bar throws a small party about it.

A Party Jug level is not harder than its neighbours on purpose. It is a landmark. In a water sort puzzle game every board looks like the last one, and a run of forty is a long way to walk without a milestone; the jug is what makes level 30 feel like somewhere you arrived rather than a number that went up. It also gives the ten levels before it a shape, because the flavour the jug wants is decided from the first pour.

Harder from level 7, and how to beat a stuck level in a sort puzzle

From level 7 you get one spare bottle instead of two. That single change does most of the work: with two spares almost any order of pours eventually works, and with one, the order is the puzzle.

The other half is what happens when it goes wrong. A board can now reach a state that cannot be finished, and when it does, the game says so instead of letting you grind into it. The Stuck screen offers three things: Undo the last pours, Continue with one extra bottle, or Restart the board. Fail the same level three times and a fourth button appears — skip it and move on. Being stuck should cost you the level, not the evening.

One piece of general advice, since “how to beat level 13” is the thing people search for and level 13 is where the third tool unlocks. Do not start by emptying the bottle that is nearly done. Look at the tops instead: count which colour is sitting on top of the most bottles, and free a bottle for that colour first. A liquid sort game jams when the colour you have most of has nowhere to go, and almost every dead end in the first forty levels is that mistake, three moves earlier. The same rule is most of what water sort puzzle tips come down to anywhere else, and it is worth more than any booster.

Three tools instead of four

The dock used to carry five buttons: four boosters bought with coins, and the hint. It now carries four. Undo unlocks at level 4, Straw at 9 and Extra Bottle at 13, each with its own card when the slot opens and a few of them in hand for free. The hint is unchanged and still costs a short video rather than coins.

Bubble Lift is gone. It lifted one segment off a bottle, which sounds useful and, in practice, was the tool people spent coins on because it was there — it solved nothing a Straw did not solve better and it made the dock a wall of five icons on a screen that is mostly bottles. If you had Bubble Lifts, they came across as Straws, one for one.

A daily gift and two reminders

There is a seven-day calendar now: open the game on consecutive days and the reward grows, ending in a chest on day seven. Miss a day and it starts again at one. It works offline, like everything else that is not an ad or a purchase.

Two notifications go with it, and both are opt-in — the game asks properly, after you have played enough levels to know whether you want it. One is an evening reminder. The other says your lives have come back. That is the whole list; we are not going to invent a third.

Seven tracks for five bars

Every bar has its own track now — Cherry Pop Corner is quick and bright, Midnight Mix Club is not — plus one for the home screen and a party theme that only plays on a jug level. Seven in total, all written for the game, all looping.

Music and sound effects have separate switches in Settings, and a color sort puzzle on iOS is very often played with the sound off in a waiting room. That is a fine way to play it; the switch is one tap and the game does not ask again.

A new Bloop

Bloop, the jelly behind the counter, has been redrawn — pink instead of purple, and rounder. He has four moods and they are all reactions to something you did: he idles on the home screen, cheers a clean seal, slumps when you run out of lives, and scratches his head on the Stuck screen. He is the only part of the game that is purely decoration, and the only part that tells you how the board is going without a number.

Other games from the bar

The Games tab on the home screen now leads to the rest of what the studio makes, and the list updates without an app update. If you like this kind of thing, Jelly Belt is the same instinct on a moving conveyor and Jelly Pack is a candy factory with orders to fill. All six titles are on the studio page.

What’s next

This update is a set of bets, not a set of conclusions. We know what we expect it to do to the first session and we will know within a couple of weeks whether it did — the next post will be that, numbers included. Everything above is tunable without a release, so the first adjustments will land quietly.

Jelly Fizz 1.1 is free on the App Store for iPhone. If you already have it, the update is waiting. The rest of what the studio is writing is on the games blog.