A troll platformer for iPhone and iPad

The floor is lying. Ask the skulls.

Every level is one small room in a haunted dollhouse, and every room lies to you at least once. When a trap gets you, you see the pile of everyone it got before you.

How it works Meet the House

Not on the App Store yet. It's still being tested.

Level 1-1 a moment after the first death. A card reads 62% The Honest Floor, trusted it: these are everyone else's. Below it, a trapdoor full of skulls is outlined in yellow, with a tag that says times 1.3K. — Level 1-1, Welcome Mat. You just walked onto The Honest Floor. The skulls under it belong to other people.

The Hall

You die. Then you find out you weren't the first.

The first time a trap gets you, the game pauses for under a second, shows you what tricked you and drops the crowd's skulls where they landed. One number comes with it: how many of the players who got that far fell for the same thing.

Fall for it

Rooms take 5 to 20 seconds. Three buttons: left, right, jump. One floor that looks perfectly honest.
Meet the crowd

Skulls from real players pile up where they died. You only see skulls for traps you've already watched go off, so the crowd never spoils what's ahead.
Go again

Die at a trap you already know and you're back in under half a second, no text. Clear the room and all your attempts replay at once.

Small crowds get words, not percentages. Until enough people have played a level, the game says "Most players…" or "Victim #4" instead of pretending to know a share. The skulls I placed for testing are drawn as labelled crash-test dummies, never counted as players.

The Owner's Study

The House is watching you play.

The dollhouse has a voice. It talks between attempts, it keeps count, and on some levels it learns. Die at the old trap and it nails that one shut, then moves the hole to exactly where you were about to land. There's wet paint where it worked overnight, if you look.

Outlast it and it sulks.

It teases. It never makes fun of you for asking for help.

"Mind the floor. It has opinions."Your first fall
"Hinges. We did mention hinges."The trapdoor had a tell
"Wet paint. That's new. Suspicious, isn't it?"The House redecorated
"Five! The skulls are starting a club."Five deaths at one trap
"Fine. Be that way."You outlasted it
"First try?! The house needs to speak to its traps."A clean clear

The Gallery

Pictures from inside

Captures from the current development build and the earlier web prototype. Any crowd number you see in them is test data.

Level 1-2: a blue nightcap doll at the left of a dark panelled hall, a candle chandelier hanging from a string, cracked tiles on the floor and a small gold skull on a ledge near the exit door. — **1-2 Don't Wait**A chandelier on a string, cracked tiles, a gold skull up on the ledge.

The clear card for level 1-1 reading CLEARED, 3 deaths, time 0:13, with Replay, House and Next buttons, while a mint ghost and a skull in a blue cap replay the earlier attempts. — **Cleared**After a clear, every one of your attempts replays together.

X-ray view of level 1-2: two skull piles under a hanging sign, a mint heat haze over them and a label reading 61% died here. — **X-ray**Clear a level and its whole skull map opens. Free, every time. (Prototype, test numbers.)

Theater view: mint ghosts drifting down toward a golden flag on the floor, with a caption saying 20 players falling for The Golden Flag, simulated from mock data. — **Theater**Other players' ghosts falling for the same trap, one after another.

The House map: a dollhouse cross-section of rooms from the Hall at the bottom up to the Owner's Study, most of them locked, with Tell Book and Bone Count buttons. — **The house map**Rooms open one after another, from the Hall upward.

Weekly Troll screen in the prototype with a mock death counter, a friends list and a Play button. — **Weekly Troll**One new level every Monday. Your first run is the ranked one.

House rules

Frustrating on purpose. Fair on principle.

Never an ad when you die.Ads only come once you've tapped Next at the end of a level, with a short "Ad break" label first. Nothing interrupts play.
No lives, no waiting.Die as often as you like. The game never makes you wait to try again.
Every trap has a tell.A hinge, a crack, a puff of dust, a click. Once you know the language, the house plays fair.
Help is your choice.Stuck on one trap? A Help button shows up. If help costs a video, you confirm it twice. Nothing plays by itself.
It asks before it shares.Your death spots are only sent if you say yes. Say no and you still see everyone else's skulls.
No account.No sign-up, no name, no email. Game Center is optional and run by Apple.

The Cellar

Two reasons to come back down

Weekly Troll

Every Monday there's one new level for everybody. Your first run is ranked by fewest deaths, then time, on a Game Center board that shows your friends first. Use Help and the run still counts for you, just not for the board.

Pass the phone

Hand your phone to someone who thinks they'd do better. A guest doll plays a level you've cleared, and the result card puts both your skulls in one room: "Dad: 23 deaths · You: 4."