Two ways to move items
Harder levels have up to eight shelves, so the items get small. Besides dragging, you can tap an item and then tap a shelf. Even when a drawing is small, the touch area stays comfortable for a finger.
Puzzle game with a cat
Trixie
A ginger cat knocks things onto the shelves. You sort them into threes of a kind until the shelves are empty.
- Platform
- iPhone (iOS 15 or later), Android 7 or later
- Price
- Free, with ads and in-app purchases
- Languages
- English, Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian
One level on film
A recording of the real game: the cat makes a mess of the shelves, the triples clear one by one, and the level ends with a three-star window.
How to play
Trixie makes a mess
At the start of a level the cat knocks things onto the shelves. Each shelf has three spots at the front, and there can be more rows behind them.
Sort in threes
You drag an item to another shelf, or tap it and then tap the shelf. Three of a kind side by side disappear, and the items behind them come forward.
Collect stars
A level ends when the shelves are empty. The faster you are, the more stars you get, and every new star earns you 10 fish.
Rooms
Five rooms with 20 levels each. Every room adds a new obstacle and mixes it with the earlier ones. The next room opens when you finish every level of the previous one and collect 40 of its 60 stars.
Kitchen
Here you learn the basics: dragging, tapping and the items hidden at the back. The clock only measures your time and never ends the level.
Playroom
Some items are tangled in yarn and cannot be moved. The counter on the ball of yarn drops by one with every triple you make. From this room on, the clock counts down to zero.
Bathroom
Foam covers items, so you cannot see what is underneath. It pops when you make a triple on the same shelf or the one next to it.
Garden
A shelf in a crate is locked. A key dragged onto the crate opens it, and the key is often buried at the back of another shelf.
Bedroom
Trixie falls asleep on a shelf and takes up one spot. She gets up after a few moves, and until then the items at the back of that shelf stay put.
What I did
I wanted to make a puzzle game with a mascot. I picked shelf sorting, a kind of game people play a lot on their phones, and added a ginger cat to it. I made the game on my own, from the rules to the App Store and Google Play release.
- Rules and levels
- 100 levels in five rooms, five obstacles and star times for every level.
- Art
- The rooms, 60 items to sort, 23 pets and 60 wardrobe items, all drawn in one flat style.
- Development
- The whole game for iPhone and Android: shelves, obstacles, clocks, detecting when no moves are left and saving progress to an Apple or Google account.
- Texts
- The game in six languages. Every pet has its own speech bubble lines, and the cat has a different name in each language.
- Sound and vibration
- 17 original sounds, separate music for the menu and the game, vibration for triples and mistakes.
- Store
- Fish, the wardrobe, in-app purchases, ads and the App Store and Google Play release.
Decisions
Trixie has flat drawings with one dark outline and pastel colours. Each room has its own colour for the walls and shelves. Below are a few things I settled for short levels on a phone.
The game knows when you are stuck
When no move can lead to a triple any more, the game shows the “No more moves” window straight away. It offers a shuffle for an ad only if the shuffle lets you keep playing.
Each new obstacle comes with a guide
A card explains each new obstacle, and a hand on the screen guides your first move. The first level with a new obstacle gets 30 extra seconds.
Ads only after a win
A full-screen ad appears after every third level you win, and only after the results window. Without internet the game keeps working, just without ads.
Progress without an account
The game saves your progress on the phone from the first level. If you want, you link it to an Apple or Google account and get your stars, fish and purchases back on a new phone.
- levels
- 100
- items to sort
- 60
- pets to choose from
- 23
Screens
Trixie