The penguins build what you say. Not what you mean.

Waddlecraft is a game where you poke a tiny app until it gives up its words, then hand those words to a crew of penguins and find out what you actually asked for.
Tell me when the ladybug's ready
Hard-hat penguins stacking colored blocks into a small pixel-art app window.

You said red, blue, and green. You got one red button.

The target: How do you feel? with three buttons, Red, Blue and Green.
The build: Tap for a mood, with one red button labelled Tap me.

The target was a mood lamp with three colored buttons. You tapped around, collected the words, and sent them to the crew. They came back with one button, because nobody told them how many.

"How many buttons? You never said, so the penguins made just one."
The missing pebble, in red: three buttons.
- Pip, your foreman

So you fix your words and send them again. That's the game.

Four steps. One of them is being wrong.

  1. A pebble card over the ladybug toy, holding the words: a big ladybug button.

    1. Poke it.

    Every isle holds a tiny working app. Tap its parts and each one gives up the words that describe it: "a big ladybug button", "count my taps at the top".

  2. The bench, with five yellow word pebbles snapped into one run-on instruction.

    2. Snap it.

    Your words are pebbles. Snap them together on your bench. It doesn't have to be good grammar.

  3. Two hard-hat penguins above the colony log, which is typing out what they are reading.

    3. Send the crew.

    Press Build it! and watch the colony log while they work. "Peck-peck on the page foundation" is a real status update.

  4. A lone red button above Pip's card, which names the missing pebble: three buttons.

    4. Fix your words.

    Check what they built. Find what you forgot to say. Send them again.

Keep playing. The last word is hiding.

Roll a snowball ten times and it stops being a snowball. Tap the big 10 before you press START, because it won't wait for you. Lose at Echo Isle on purpose. Dress the penguin, then tap the hat.

The words you can't find are usually what happens if you keep playing.

A pinhead snowball on a night sky, with the counter at 0.
The snowball a little bigger, with the counter at 3.
At 10, a huge snowball over the words SNOW BOULDER!

Twenty-one isles. Earn your way down the path.

Each isle is a tiny app to match with your words, for up to three stars. One star opens the road ahead. Stars open whole new waters.

Hatchling Hills, Glacier Grove and Deepwater Drift hold a bug tapper, a mood lamp, a rocket countdown, a belly drum, a paint mixer, a memory game of hatching eggs, a maze with a fish at the end, a frost painter, and a whack-a-fish on four ice holes with fifteen seconds on the clock.

They start with one button. Near the end, your penguins have to learn a recipe.

The first stretch of the map: Bug Tapper with three stars, then a small penguin in a hard hat at START on Mood Lamp, then Blast Off, locked.Further down the path: the Glacier Grove sign, Snowball Roller and Ice Mixer.Deeper still: Frost Painter, Ice Fishing, Sled Run and Echo Isle along a dotted path.

The last isle won't let you start over.

By the end, you aren't writing orders. You're correcting them.

"Your crew got it ALMOST right! Send one small nudge to steer it - don't start over."

The bench is gone. You get one box and a pouch of nudges. Say the one thing they missed.

The Nudge the Builder screen. Under Steer your crew, red text starts Still off: a button that feeds them.
Three gold stars and a red stamp that reads PERFECT MATCH!

Earn six stars. Then say your own thing.

No target. No nest. No word pebbles. Just a box that says Make a game where...

One order we sent: a very tired penguin falls asleep unless I keep tapping it. It worked well enough to end the game while we were still reading it. Snoozed! Your score: 0.

Then one small nudge: make the penguin get more and more sleepy. The penguin was replaced by a sleeping face. We asked for sleepy, and sleepy is what came back.

Another order was a tiny fish market with prices that move. Your builds wait on a shelf, labelled with the words you used.

The build: a penguin and Score: 0.
The game already over: Snoozed! Your score: 0, with an orange Try Again button.
After the nudge: the penguin is gone, and a sleeping yellow face has taken its place.
The shelf: two saved builds, each labelled with the start of its own order, with Keep building and Play buttons.

Want bigger builds? Send the Elite Colony.

The Colony Crew are reliable builders, and they're great for most apps. The Elite Colony are your most skilled penguins, for bigger, more complex apps. They come with Waddle Plus.

The Colony Crew card: Reliable builders. Great for most apps.
The Elite Colony card: Your most skilled penguins. Bigger, more complex apps.

Plain answers

Are they really penguins?

No. There's an AI model under the hard hat. It builds from your words, which is why your words matter.

Are the apps real?

They run, and you tap them. A counter counts. A market's prices move. Your builds stay on your shelf to play again.

Do I need a profile?

Not for your first build. The next isle asks for one, so the penguins remember you and your builds. You can use an email code, a password, Google or Apple.

Does the crew ever get it wrong?

Constantly. That's the game.

Pip, a pixel penguin in a yellow hard hat.
The first toy: a ladybug on a sunny yellow background, with a tap counter at 0.

Save me a ladybug.

Then tell someone what to build, and be specific.