Nifflas, the Swedish developer behind indie classics like Knytt, NightSky and Uurnog, has a forthcoming puzzle platformer called Rhythm Doggo. It’s a neon platform adventure in which you play as a human turned into a dog, jumping through a rhythm-driven world where you modify the music in order to solve puzzles. It sounds amazing! It also has an entire network of shared rooms that players will never see or reach, occupied only by previous levels’ dog avatars, because Nifflas cannot bear to leave them trapped in a void.
Lets been clear from the start: Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren doesn’t think the dogs are real. But when you’ve coded, designed, and animated a central character, it’s going to mean something to you, and even more so when that character is a Good Boy.
In a thread on Bluesky, Nifflas raises the fact that he built a network of small rooms, connected by doors, that “exist outside the map” of Rhythm Doggo. When telling followers why, the developer begins by explaining that “for code simplicity I don’t remove or create entities too much.” That means when a quest is complete and a dog leaves the scene, “it’s simpler to move it out of the map than unloading the entity.” But, he adds, “I felt bad for the dog to end up in an empty void outside the map.”
The resulting connected rooms are a space where the dogs “can hang out with each other.” Acknowledging that he’s not gone mad, he adds, “but somehow it feels like I’m nicer to them if I do it this way.” So what do the dogs get up to in this backrooms space? “There’s no code that makes them interact in this state,” Nifflas adds, “but how can I be sure they don’t go all ‘Toy Story‘ when nobody is watching?” Which is a very fair point.
If you haven’t previously played any of Nifflas’ games, you have a treasure trove awaiting. Starting with 2006’s Within a Deep Forest, through the Knytt series, and titles like Saira, NightSky and Uurnog, he’s created a wealth of unique approaches to platform gaming, most recently releasing the astonishing Ynglet in 2021. There’s no release date yet for Rhythm Doggo, but it’s now on my Wishlist.