Dr Jelly and Mr Slime

Dr Jelly and Mr Slime is a line-drawing puzzle game about a scientist who transforms into a creature that turns barriers into paths, and pathways into barriers. The main mechanic of the game involves turning into Mr Slime in order to create a pathway to the exit of each puzzle chamber, while keeping his own trail of slime in check. The game was a collaborative effort; as production changed hands from one participant to the next, unexpected mechanics were introduced, eventually creating a set of challenging puzzles.

Dr Jelly is a scientist who takes unlicensed drugs to become Mr Slime. To navigate the grid-based lab chambers (displayed in typical PuzzleScript pixel art), the player will find pill bottles that turn either character into the alternate version. Dr Jelly is unable to move through slime, but Mr Slime can, leaving a slime trail behind him. The path that Mr Slime takes will remove slime that he passes through and add slime to anywhere that did not have slime. From there, it’s all about visualizing which path could be carved out for Dr Jelly, while making sure not to create a dead end in the process.

At the beginning of the game, the goal is simply to bring Dr Jelly to the green trapdoor leading to the next room. But additional conditions are quickly introduced. When coins appear (research funding!), Dr Jelly must collect all of them to open up the exit. Later on, there are slime scanners, which look like boxes with a number on them. In order for Dr Jelly to leave the room, every box should be lined up with the right amount of slimy tiles, effectively turning the level into a nonogram puzzle. The scanners can sometimes be pushed around, changing which rows and columns should meet the slime requirements.

This unusual blend of mechanics exists mainly because of the way the game was created. Dr Jelly and Mr Slime actually took the “exquisite corpse” concept as a game production model: 37 participants worked as a disjointed team, each person adding on a little bit to the game and then passing it on to someone else.

This description was written by Cay Macres and edited by Oriane Tury.