Wheek! 0.3.0 is out. – Tiny Bit Adventures

Wheek! 0.3.0 is out. Play it in your browser now. See the game page for everything else.

Every zone has its own treat

Each of the eight zones around the park has a signature treat you can only find there, and a new place to forage it: rose hips under the snowdrifts on ❄️ Snowcap Peaks, raspberry leaves in 🌲 The Deep Wood's brambles, romaine from the market crates round 🏙️ Downtown's fountain, watermelon in 🏖️ Sandy Cove's picnic baskets, watercress in 🌊 Willow Creek's shallows (wade in to forage it), corn husks from 🐐 Critter Corner's feed troughs, apple slices under 🚜 Sunny Acres' new apple trees and sunflower seeds from the fallen heads in 🌻 Sunflower Fields.
The journal has 24 treats now (with the pet shop's pellets). One you haven't found yet shows which zone it grows in.
The humans in Downtown, Sandy Cove, Critter Corner and on the farm sometimes toss you their zone's treat.
The Deep Wood's brambles are thorny cover: the hawk can't reach you in one.

The sea cave

A rock headland sits at the waterline in 🏖️ Sandy Cove with a cave at its foot (sniff to find it). The sea floods it at high tide: the tide's out from 8 to 2, morning and night, and you can watch the water rise and fall in front of the mouth.
Inside, the tide is already turning: you have 50 seconds. Scoop up the shells and the sea glass scattered over the sand (a fresh lot every time), and dodge the crabs scuttling sideways across the cave: they pinch. When the water starts creeping in it slows you down, and if you're still inside when it arrives it washes you out onto the beach.
Right at the back by the rock pool waits a message in a bottle (after that, the tide brings starfish). Your herd waits on the beach.
New goals: Message in a Bottle and Tide Runner (every shell, and out in time). Sandy Cove's checklist includes the bottle.

The old windmill

An old tower mill stands on the highest hill in 🌻 Sunflower Fields, its sails turning. There's a mouse hole at the foot of its door (sniff to find it).
Inside, the millstones grind and a sweep arm goes round and round the floor, pushing you along if you get in its way. Hop up onto the ramp of planks that winds round the wall and climb to the loft. Your herd waits outside.
Under the hopper, catch the sunflower seeds that spill from its chute as it jiggles from side to side: scurry left and right for 25 seconds, grab the golden ones, and don't catch the pebbles. Every ten seeds is a cheekful for you.
Look out of the loft window and you can see the whole maze: the way through to the middle goes on your map as a golden line. A spilled sack on the floor is good for a forage.
New goals: Seed Catcher (30 seeds in one go) and Bird's Eye. Sunflower Fields' checklist includes catching seeds in the windmill.

The Hollow Oak

In a glade in 🌲 The Deep Wood stands an enormous ancient oak, three and a half metres across, with a knothole between its roots (sniff to find it). Squeeze in: the trunk is hollow all the way up.
Bracket fungi spiral up the inside of the trunk. Hop from one to the next (hops go higher in here) to climb to the window at the top; slip off the inside edge and you drop back down to the roots. The camera looks out at you from the middle of the trunk. Your herd waits outside.
An owl is asleep on a branch halfway up. Scurrying, hard landings, wheeking and rummaging wake her (watch the meter). If her eyes snap open, freeze: move before she nods off again and she flaps you all the way back down to the roots.
At the top, look out of the window over the whole wood: the burrows you haven't found yet go on your map, and you spot any wild guinea pigs down below. Rummage in the owl's stash of shiny things for rare treats, then slide back down the inside of the trunk.
New goals: Top of the Tree and Light Paws (climb to the lookout without waking the owl). The Deep Wood's checklist includes the lookout.

The agility tent

A striped marquee with a "Piggy Agility" sign stands by the visitor path in 🐐 Critter Corner. The door flaps don't quite meet the ground: duck under.
Inside, a little agility course in the sawdust, because guinea pig agility is a real thing. Step on the green start mat, wait for the judge's whistle, and run the hoop, the weave poles (in and out, first pole on your left), the tunnel, the jump (hop over the bar), the A-frame and the seesaw in order, then over the finish line. A floating number shows what's next, and the judge by the centre pole turns to watch you.
A knocked bar adds 5 seconds and each missed weave pole 2 (miss more than two and you weave again). Finish under 10 seconds for a gold rosette, under 15 for silver, and any clear run wins bronze. The scoreboard keeps your best time. Your herd follows you round.
New goals: Clear Round and Best in Show (gold). Critter Corner's checklist includes a rosette.

The leaf raft and Willow Island

A big leaf lies on the bank at the west end of Willow Creek, where it starts, beside a little "Leaf rides!" sign (sniff to find it). Hop on and the current carries you all the way down the creek: steer left and right, push forward to paddle, pull back to slow down.
The stepping-stone fords are rapids now: the water speeds up and you thread between the stones. Fallen branches reach out from the banks, ducks paddle in your way, and treats float by to scoop up. Three bumps and you tip off into the shallows and scramble ashore.
Make it to the end and the creek carries you round the bend to Willow Island: a hidden islet with a giant weeping willow. Curl up in its roots for a nap, forage the driftwood and the watercress, then ride the leaf back up the creek. Your herd waits on the bank, and the hawk and foxes leave you alone on the water.
New goals: Raft Rider and Not a Splash (the whole creek without a bump). Willow Creek's checklist includes the island.

The pet shop

One of Downtown's shops is a pet shop (look for its sign). After closing time, 6 PM to 7:30 AM, the cat flap in its back door lets a guinea pig in. Sniff to find it.
Inside, after hours: fish tanks glowing in the dark, shelves of supplies, guinea pig tubes all over the floor, and Duchess the shop cat asleep in her bed. Tiptoe: scurrying, rummaging, hopping and wheeking fill her noise meter, and if she wakes up she hunts you. Hide in the tubes and she loses you; if she catches you she boops you back out through the flap, and watches it for a while.
Crawl through the tube maze: pick a way at each junction and come out at the other ends. Treats are tucked inside the tubes every night.
Rummage in the spilled pellet bag and the treat bin for a new journal treat, Fortified Pellets (real guinea pig pellets are vitamin C enriched).
Butterscotch, a lonely golden Abyssinian, lives in the shop's pen. Chat with her through the glass and she hops right out to join your herd.
At 7:30 the shopkeeper comes to open up and you slip out. New goal: After Hours. Downtown's checklist includes sneaking into the pet shop.

The barn

The red barns at Sunny Acres Farm and Critter Corner have guinea-pig-sized holes at the foot of their walls (sniff to find them). Squeeze in to find a cosy barn: plank walls, rafters, a hay loft, sunbeams through the gaps, and a big hay pile.
Hold to munch the hay, or burrow into it and scurry about underneath as a wriggling bump in the straw. Four treats are hidden in the pile each day: find them all, then pop out in a shower of straw. Your herd comes in with you, and the hawk and foxes can't follow.
New goal: Hay Diver. The farm and Critter Corner's place checklists include getting into the barn.

Gnawing

Guinea pig teeth never stop growing, so a good gnaw keeps them tidy. Fallen twigs lie at the foot of trees in every place (apple twigs under the farm's apple trees). Walk up and gnaw one: the camera comes round for a close-up and you chomp when the marker is in the green. The green shrinks and the marker speeds up with every bite.
Five good chomps trims your teeth: munching and foraging go faster for 3 minutes. A clean gnaw with no misses earns a bonus; three misses and the twig snaps. A new twig falls a few minutes later.
New goal: Tidy Teeth.

Guinea pigs everywhere

12 more wild guinea pigs live out in the zones, one or two in each: Snowball on the peaks, Thistle and Fennel in the Deep Wood, Pretzel downtown, Sandy on the beach, Pebble and Willow by the creek, Cocoa at the petting zoo, Barley and Turnip on the farm, and Marigold and Honey in the sunflowers. That's 21 to meet, and your herd still holds six, so pick your favourites.
A guinea pig who scatters in fright in another zone now stays in that zone, and wild guinea pigs never wander into deep water.
Herd full? You can still chat. When a new friend is ready to join, pick who heads home to make room (they wait at home, so you can always swap them back), or say not now. A friend you've had before is welcomed back without the new-friend points, and the full-herd bonus comes once.

Goals and requests

35 goals to work through, from your first forage to finishing all nine places. The next one shows under your stats, the journal lists them all with their rewards, and each one cheers when you finish it. Saves from before keep the goals they'd already done, quietly.
Some humans have lost a little something, and it turned up in the warren under the park: Maya's blue marble, Leo's acorn cap, Ellie's coat button, Rosa wants a glow crystal for her shop window, Grandpa Joe's lucky penny, Sunny's snail shell, Keeper Amy's jay feather and Farmer Gus's tiny brass key. Chat to them to hear what they've lost, then bring it back for a thank-you, treats and points. The journal keeps a list of who wants what, and a curio you've given away says who has it now.

The journal

A Places page: the nine places laid out as they lie on the map, each with a checklist of burrows found, guinea pigs befriended, its signature treat, the animals to say hello to and, in most places, its big discovery (the warren's hidden chambers for the park). Finish everything in a place for a +300 bonus.

Maps and finding things

The minimap and the big map (M) are drawn at your screen's real resolution, so they're crisp on high-density screens instead of blurry, and the terrain behind them is twice as detailed.
The warren map's names keep out of each other's way, and the hidden chambers are labelled in gold.
Each place's big discovery has an icon on its map (the leaf raft, the agility tent, the hollow oak, the windmill, the sea cave, the pet shop and the barns), and the welcome when you first arrive somewhere says what to look for.

Music and settings

Wheek! has music: three gentle loops made for it. "Clover Meadow" by day (marimba, folk guitar, upright bass), "Moonlit Burrow" at night (a music-box glockenspiel, harp and vibraphone) and "Under the Roots" down in the warren (kalimba, pizzicato strings, bongos). They cross-fade as night falls, as the sun comes up and as you crawl underground, and loop without a seam. The game goes quiet when its tab is hidden.
A settings panel (⚙️ on the title screen and in the pause menu): volume, music and sound effects sliders, High or Low graphics (Low turns off shadows, thins the fur and draws less of the world far away, for slower computers and phones), screen flashes on or off, and the touch controls on Auto, Always or Never. Settings are saved in your browser.

Touch screens and gamepads

Play on a phone or tablet: a joystick appears wherever you put your thumb on the left of the screen, drag on the right to look around and pinch to zoom. Round buttons wheek, sniff, hop and scurry, with map, journal and pause buttons at the top.
Whatever you can do right now (eat, forage, chat, enter a tunnel, wheek at a human) pops up as a button on the right: tap it, or hold it to munch, forage and chat.
On a phone the screen makes room: no minimap (the map button opens the big one), smaller stats, and a shorter title screen when you hold the phone sideways.
Gamepads work everywhere, menus included: left stick to scurry, right stick to look, Ⓐ eat and enter, Ⓧ forage, Ⓨ chat, Ⓑ popcorn, RB sniff, LB wheek, RT scurry, Back for the map, d-pad up for the journal and Start to pause. The prompts and tips show whichever buttons you're using.

Fixes

The leaf raft's progress bar (and the agility, windmill and sea cave timers) only ever filled a sliver of its track.
When the humans head inside at dusk (and come back out at dawn) there's one toast for all of them, not one each.
Foxes only come out of the woods: there are none Downtown at night any more, where they used to appear out of nowhere.

Models

The barn's inside, a hay pile, the holes in the barn walls and a fallen twig, built in Blender like everything else.
The pet shop's inside, its back door with the cat flap, Duchess (awake and curled up asleep) and a pile of pellets.
A leaf raft and a giant weeping willow.
The striped agility tent, outside and in, and its course pieces: a hoop, weave poles, a tunnel, a jump, an A-frame and a seesaw.
The Hollow Oak, outside and in, the owl (eyes open and shut, wings that flap) and her nest of shiny things.
The old windmill with turning sails, its ground floor from inside, and its machinery: millstones in their tun, the drive shaft, the sweep arm, the hopper and sacks of grain.
The sea cave's rock headland and its inside, a shore crab, and beachcombing finds: a scallop shell, sea glass, a message in a bottle and a starfish.
16 new Blender-built models: rose hips, raspberry leaves, romaine, a watermelon slice, watercress, a corn husk, an apple slice and sunflower seeds, plus a snowdrift, a bramble, a market stall, a picnic basket, a watercress bed, a feed trough, an apple tree and a fallen sunflower head.