In Once Up, you accompany Cliff Hanger, a small elephant who, after a deep fall, gets separated from his parents on his journey. Along the way, he discovers a huge, delicious-looking peanut, which, after eating it, grants him an incredible ability: Whenever he latches onto surfaces, he becomes weightless and can sling himself through the air.
Draw magical sketches from your book to shape your path through each level.
Collect peanuts to unlock hidden areas – who knows what secrets they hold?
Try out the procedural level generator – no two runs are the same!
Climb seemingly unreachable towers – with skill, timing, and a pinch of magic.
Play in different game modes and find your own rhythm.
Step into a variety of fairy tales and listen to their unique songs – each one tells its own story.
No fairy tales here... well, not those kind of fairy tales. ^-^
A Fairy Tale Book as the Game World
The game unfolds across the pages of an old-fashioned fairy tale book, which you explore page by page. But these are not your usual fairy tales! Instead of old drawings, you’ll find silly, cartoon-like, hand-drawn illustrations.
Build Your Own Climbing Paths
Using the drawings from the fairy tale book, you can create your own climbing paths, which you then climb to collect peanuts. These are necessary to unlock new areas of the book and discover new challenges.
Climb the Tower
The main goal in Once Up is to climb a giant tower made from the collected drawings in order to return to your family.
Music from Old Fairy Tales
The music was inspired by reading old, well-known fairy tales, which I have rewritten and summarized in verse. With the help of AI (partly through singing and refining with AI) and post-production in Audacity, I was able to develop new songs from them.