[UNRAVEL] General Tips & Tricks

Introduction

This post contains some general tips & tricks you can try in the game and tries to answer some basic questions that might arise. This post doesn’t contain any spoilers about actual puzzles but if you want to go into the game completely unbiased, it’s best not to read it.

General Tips about the game

• Yarny is a fragile little guy and he needs a lot of love. He will die many death while you are playing. There’s lots of traps and vicious animals that try to eat him. Don’t worry though. Even though he dies, he will always come back to you and as far as I’ve seen, there’s no way to mess up the game that bad that you have to go back to the start of the game to do a level (unless you haven’t reached any checkpoints)
• The controls need practice. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t do it on the first try. I lost count on how many times my Yarny died. You can use level 1 to practice the most common interactions. There’s also a little tutorial that tells you what to do at the beginning. Using a gamepad is much easier than a keyboard.
• Checkpoints are points in the game where you will start from if Yarny dies or if you choose to go back to by holding down the down arrow for an extended time or pressing the [END] Key.
  The game has two kinds of those
  • The small ones: Yarn. Each time you come across yarn, you have reached a small checkpoint. If Yarny dies, you’ll start over from here. If you quit the game, you will be transported back to the last big checkpoint.
  • The big ones: These are marked by whirling light around the extra yarn. If you make it to these checkpoints, you can safely quit the game and start from here next time you play.
    
• Each level is started by finding the picture in the main section. You will need to move around to find them all. You will have to jump, swing and climb but you will not run out of yarn.
  The picture will tell you what you have already achieved in that level.
  
  • Silver star: You have finished that level
  • Gold Crown: You have finished that level without dying
  • Flowery Buttons: Number of secrets you have found.
• If you have severe motion sickness like me, be warned that level 5: Off the Rail and level 11: The last Leaf may trigger that (especially level 5). You can ask someone else to do those passages for you because the game is well worth playing. You can learn how to share your save game in this FAQ. I also recommend doing the game in small doses if a level is bad for you. Go from checkpoint to checkpoint and take long breaks in between. The game will last longer that way anyways.

General Tips for Puzzles

• Lots of puzzles depend on objects that you need to pull and push around to go to where you want to go. Keep an eye out for those
• Many puzzles can be done in different ways. It can happen that you have no use for a certain hook simply because you did it another way or were lucky enough to jump much further. Sometimes these points are used to get to a secret though.
• Be careful not to waste your yarn.
• Keep in mind that the height at which you swing affect how far you can reach… and keep in mind that the height from which you fall can decide if you survive or die.
• If you are swinging and you run out of yarn when trying to get lower, tie the yarn to the hook. Of course this not applies if you run out of yarn because Yarny doesn’t have more.
• There are puzzles though were you run out of yarn IF you tie it.

General Tips for Secrets

• There’s 5 secrets in each level. Some are a bit hidden, some are easy to see and get and others are hiding in plain sight (aka, you see them but you have no idea how to get to them).
• Level 11 is a bit special as it contains of two parts. The first bit does not have any secrets. The second one does.
• Sometimes you have to go back for a secret, even if you passed a checkpoint
• Check out hooks that make no sense.
• Sometimes you even have to ‘open’ an object
• Once you found a secret, it’s marked as found for that save game. If you replay that level, it will no longer be there. A little sparkle will show you that this is were you have already found a secret.
• Same goes if you die. If you were able to get to a secret and Yarny dies in the process, you will still have uncovered the secret and won’t need to do it again.
• Some of the secrets are well hidden and really hard to see.

Tips for those who don’t mind spoilers