Minigames

Five little 2D pop-up games, drawn on a flat canvas over the 3D school. Jerry the gym teacher forces one of the first three on you; Meredith the lunch lady runs the fourth herself; the fifth is yours to start, whenever you carry a hurt toddler into the nurse's office. While one is open you cannot move, nothing hunts you, and (playing alone) the rest of the school waits — in co-op it keeps running for everyone else.

Dumbbells

Triggered by Jerry. Goal: get the weight bar to the top 4 times (4 reps) within 60 seconds.

• Controls: spam click, Space, or E to lift.
• How it works: each press adds 0.062 to a 0–1 lift meter; the meter constantly sinks back down at 0.1 + 0.18 × lift per second — so it gets harder to hold up the higher it is. Hitting 1.0 counts as a rep and resets the meter to 0.3 (not 0), so consecutive reps come faster than the first.
• Tip: keep a steady rapid click rate rather than bursts — the meter's sink rate scales with how high it already is, so bursts followed by pauses waste presses fighting the same decay repeatedly.
• Reward: pass → "fit" status (150s of half-rate stamina drain), full stamina refill, +60 score. Fail → −8 food.

Laps

Triggered by Jerry. Goal: complete 3 laps of an oval track within 75 seconds, passing four checkpoints (bottom/finish, right, top, left) in order each lap.

• Controls: W / ↑ accelerate · S / ↓ brake/reverse · A D / ← → steer.
• How the physics work: real car-ish model — forward speed and sideways slip are tracked separately; steering "bites" harder the faster you're going (turn rate scales with speed, capped); grip lets sideways velocity bleed off gradually rather than snapping straight, so there's a little drift; going off-track onto the grass roughly triples rolling drag and caps your top speed at 95 (versus 250 on the track).
• Tip: the on-screen flag shows your next checkpoint in yellow; staying near the painted centre line avoids clipping the grass on tight turns, which is the single biggest speed loss in the game.
• Reward: pass → "fit" status, full stamina refill, +60 score. Fail (out of time) → −8 food.

Jump Rope

Triggered by Jerry. Goal: land 6 jumps in a row within 60 seconds. A miss resets your streak to 0.

• Controls: press Space, click, or E when the rope reaches your feet.
• How the timing works: the rope swings on a repeating 0–1 phase; feet-contact is phase 0.5, and a press within ±0.16 of that phase (a window of about 0.32 out of the full swing) counts as a clean jump. The rope's period starts at 1.25 seconds and speeds up by 0.03s per point of your current streak, so it's easiest at streak 0 and hardest right before your 6th jump. Missing the window when the rope passes your feet without a press also breaks your streak.
• Tip: the timing ring around your feet lights up green exactly inside the hit window — watch the ring, not the rope's height, since the ring's brightness gives more warning than the rope's swing does.
• Reward: pass → "fit" status, full stamina refill, +60 score. Fail (out of time) → −8 food.

Meredith's Lunch Line

Triggered by talking to Meredith. Goal: hit as many of 16 notes as you can within a ~30-second, 104 BPM tune, across 3 lanes.

• Controls: A S D (or ← ↓ →) for the left/middle/right lane as each food item reaches the plate line.
• How it works: a note counts as hit if you press its lane within ±0.16 seconds of its exact beat; hits within ±0.06 seconds show "YUM!" instead of "OK" (cosmetic only — both count the same). A note you never press for is marked MISS once it's 0.16 seconds past due.
• Scoring → tray: your score is hits / 16 notes.

Score	Tray	Contents
≥ 90%	Gold tray	Sandwich, apple, milk, snack
≥ 60%	Nice tray	Sandwich, apple, milk
< 60%	Soggy tray	Snack, milk

• Score below 60% still counts as a "fail" for the win/lose flag, but you're never sent away empty-handed — Meredith always gives you the Soggy tray at minimum.
• Reward: the tray's items (dropped on the floor near you if your bag is full), plus round(20 + score × 40) score — 20 at 0% up to 60 at a perfect run.
• One tray per player, per day; closes for the day once fewer than 50 seconds of daylight remain.

The Nurse's Office

Triggered by carrying a hurt toddler into a nurse's office (or walking up to one already sitting there) and starting the plaster minigame. Goal: clean the scrape, then stick 2 plasters on, within 30 seconds. Two stages, back to back.

• Stage 1 — wipe it clean. Tap A and D (or ← →) alternately — the same side twice in a row doesn't count. 8 alternating taps clears the dirt and moves you to stage 2.
• Stage 2 — stick the plaster on. A plaster slides back and forth above the knee, which is itself wriggling side to side. Press Space, click, or E the instant it's over the scrape — a hit window of about ±38 pixels. A hit sticks a plaster down and speeds the slide up for the next one (2 plasters needed to finish); a miss doesn't cost you the attempt, but it does make the toddler cry.
• Win: "ALL BETTER!" — the toddler is bandaged (see The Toddlers), +60 score, and you can carry them home as normal.
• Lose (time runs out): "THEY WRIGGLED FREE" — nothing is lost except time; try the minigame again whenever you're ready.
• Tip: the wipe stage is pure rhythm — settle into a steady A-D-A-D beat rather than mashing, since a repeated side doesn't register at all. On the plaster stage, watch the knee's wriggle rather than the plaster's straight-line slide; the hit window follows the knee, not a fixed spot on screen.