A physics puzzle a five-year-old can aim

ScaleSling is a physics-demolition puzzle: trolls hide in wooden forts, you have five dragons and a slingshot, and the level ends when every troll is gone. The slingshot is the same control every game in this genre has — pull back, judge the arc, release.

A slingshot is a poor control for a five-year-old. The arc is invisible until you have released, the power depends on a drag distance you can't see, and a miss costs you a dragon with nothing learned. So there is a second control, on by default: tap where you want the dragon to go, and it flies there.

The version that was wrong

The first take on tap-to-aim made the dragon fly to the point, explode, and disappear. It worked, mechanically. It was also wrong, and the reason is worth stating because it is a general design point.

A dragon that flies straight to a spot and vanishes is ammunition. The whole purpose of this control is for a child to point at a tower and watch a dragon arrive at it — the dragon is a character, and a character that teleports-and-deletes is not one. The fix, in the words it was given to us in: "they shouldn't explode, they should be thrown."

What happens now, in order

1. Tap. The dragon leaves the sling and flies toward the point, guided, ignoring gravity.
2. Just before it arrives — a fixed lead distance — it breathes fire. The blast is what pushes blocks over and knocks out trolls.
3. That same frame, gravity comes back and the guidance ends. Its speed is untouched, so it flies through its own fire and tumbles down the far side exactly like a dragon you slung by hand.
4. The turn ends when everything has come to rest — the normal rule, no timer holding a body in place.

The dragon is thrown, it acts, and then it is a physics object again. A kid sees a dragon fly at a tower and knock it down. An adult using the slingshot sees the same dragons behave the same way.

The general point

When you add an "easy mode" control, the temptation is to make it a different system — auto-aim, invincibility, a slower clock. That tends to produce a game that feels like a demo. The better move is to keep the same system and change only what the player has to perceive and time: here, the aim is given but the flight, the impact and the physics are all still real and still visible. Nobody is playing a lesser game; one of them just doesn't have to read an invisible arc.

The choice is saved per player and lives in the pause menu. Play it here.