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Perfect Crack · the World
The world of Perfect Crack
In this world, no creature that lays an egg is ever truly lost. The farmyard hen, the jungle crocodile, the dinosaurs, the great auk and the dragons of story all share one world. Every egg-laying creature that ever lived, or was ever imagined, still lays eggs somewhere in the Five Kingdoms. Nobody knows why. It's simply how this world is.
The shells and the heartbeat
Eggs in this world are strong, and they never open on their own. Every egg holds a baby whose heartbeat runs through the shell, and a shell only gives way when it's struck while the beat is running through it.
The beat isn't a single instant. It swells, peaks and fades, like a ripple, and the closer to the peak you strike, the deeper the crack. Strike when there's no beat at all and the shell is as hard as stone. That's how mallets break, and that's what Keepers are for.
- GOOD lands on the faint edge of the beat and makes one small crack.
- GREAT is stronger and makes two.
- PERFECT lands on the gold peak of the heartbeat and makes all three at once: a PERFECT CRACK.
Three cracks free the baby, so three Goods, or a Good and a Great, still get there. They just take more taps. Some eggs fight back: restless babies wriggle (moving targets), shy ones go quiet (shrinking targets), faint hearts fade away (vanishing targets), armoured eggs have a second shell that a Good can't get through, cold hearts on the Frozen Coast rush and linger (the icy pointer), and the magical eggs of the Mythical Isles protect themselves with a false purple heartbeat (illusions). The Game Guide explains how to beat each one.
The Five Kingdoms
The world itself has no name. Its lands are the Five Kingdoms, and the island at their heart is home to the Hatchery Guild.
FarmyardThe Guild's training ground
Jungle RiverWhere the river carries everything
Dinosaur ValleyThe valley that time forgot
Frozen CoastThe edge of the world
Mythical IslesThe islands in the clouds
The Hardening
This season, shells across all Five Kingdoms are tougher than anyone can remember. The Guild calls it the Hardening, and it has called on every Keeper, new ones included, to help. Madam Hatchwell, the Guild's Head Keeper, was the first to notice.
Nobody knows why it's happening. But the old records in the Great Hatchery Hall mention a hardening once before, long ago, and the same thing happened then: rare eggs began to appear. Shells sparkled, a rainbow egg was seen, and creatures thought lost laid again.
Keepers learn a little more each time they rise in rank. The whole answer is given only to a Grand Master.
The answer: The shells weren't hardening against the Keepers. They were guarding the rarest generation of eggs in an age, waiting for a Keeper steady enough to free every one.
The Great Events
Long ago, four great events swept across all Five Kingdoms at once. Each one left its mark on the world, and ever since, now and then, an egg is laid carrying that mark. It sparkles, and only a clean crack keeps the mark, so the baby comes out in that event's colours. The eggs are laid fresh, in front of the Keeper: it's the mark that is old, not the egg.
One winter, every kingdom froze at once. Even the Steaming Springs of Dinosaur Valley iced over, and the Jungle River stood still.
The moon covered the sun and stayed there for three whole days. The Five Kingdoms lay in a soft, starlit dark.
The sunrise after the Great Eclipse was so bright that every kingdom glowed gold from end to end for a whole day.
A rainbow so vast that it arched over all Five Kingdoms and could be seen from every one of them.
Sparkly eggs carry the mark of the Frost, the Eclipse or the Dawn, and which one is only revealed at the crack. A sloppy crack lets the sparkle slip away, and the baby comes out in its everyday colours. Golden-marked eggs have the fastest heartbeat of all, so the Guild only trusts them to Junior Keepers and above.
Rainbow eggs carry the mark of the Great Rainbow, the rarest of all. Only a beat struck perfectly every time holds it. A near miss still frees a rare colour, but the rainbow fades. The Guild only trusts Rainbow eggs to full Hatchery Keepers, and they're laid from the Jungle River onwards, where the first Rainbow egg in living memory was seen.
Marked eggs are being laid more often this season than at any time since the Great Events. Nobody thinks that's a coincidence.
The Hatchery Show
Every day, the Guild holds the Hatchery Show in the theatre of the Great Hatchery Hall, with curtains, spotlights and a velvet cushion. Keepers crack the day's ten eggs in front of a crowd. One egg wears the laurel and rosette, and a clean crack wins that baby a place in the Keeper's Hatchery as the day's Champion. In the game, the Hatchery Show is the Daily Challenge.
The Hidden Five
Some creatures the rest of the world thinks are lost, or never existed at all. They are the Hidden Five, one in each kingdom, and each tests a Keeper in its own way before it lays. Their eggs are purple with gold spots: the Guild's sign for “something nobody has seen in an age”. The clues are in the game's Collection Book, under Rare finds, and on each kingdom page.
The Golden Hammer
The Guild forges the Golden Hammer from hammer pieces: scraps of old Guild mallets found in the bonus rounds. It always strikes on the beat, but the Guild only awards ★★ for a crack the Keeper didn't hear for themselves.
Your Hatchery
When a Keeper joins the Guild, they're given a Hatchery: five habitats, one in each kingdom. Babies the Keeper frees come to live there for good. Nothing ever leaves. Day and night follow the Keeper's own clock, and the babies sleep from nine at night until seven in the morning. The Field Guide in the game is the Keeper's own journal of every baby, and the kingdom pages here hold the same stories.