Cornelius & Uni
One day, Cornelius woke up in a jail cell. Unbeknownst to him, his pet, Uni, was tied up to a tree outside. Settings her free might not be the easiest task but surely not impossible. But finding a way out of this puzzling island is no easy feat.
Help Cornelius explore the island solving different puzzles, most of which revolve around these weird machines accepting lettered tiles as command input. Use arrow keys or WASD to move and space to interact.
Made for js13k game jam where the point as the name suggests is to make a game fully in JavaScript and make it fit in the tiny space of 13 kilobytes. That's 100 games per a floppy disk! No space for fancy engines or whatnot here.
Comments
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Cool art style. I either have a brain the size of a peanut or this game is really confusing. It's probably both...
It is hard. Many spoilers in below thread here.
Also on https://js13kgames.com/games/cornelius-uni there are spoilers.
It is an awesome game.
Did I maybe break something or am I just going to facepalm again?
Bit of a facepalm. Not exactly how it works. That module is a bit different but if you play around with different things very nearby, I'm sure you'll figure it out.
A quick complaint, a ton of spoilers though, so don't open the following if you haven't at least completed the base game
FLIP confuses me to no end. the required flip for the trophy has you flipping a W to an M, which would seem to indicate "oh, it turns the letter upside down" but then you try flipping a number and.... 2 turns to Z? you'll then think, "oh, it's probably just similar looking symbols then?" (and some like 6 to G REALLY stretch that definition) but THEN, TWO ENTIRE DAYS OF EXPERIMENTS LATER, you try to flip U, running out of things to try, and then suddenly, oh, that's a letter that is unobtainable otherwise, then letter A.
antti, does ꓵ look like A to you? THERE'S EVEN AN ENTIRE EXTRA STROKE IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S SMOOTH, A IS SHARP HELL, I WOULD'VE EVEN EXPECTED 4 TO WORK CUZ OF LEETSPEAK, BUT NOPE, U FLIPS TO A, I GUESS
and you wanna know what DOESN'T work? 0, one of the most commonly misread symbols for O, does not flip to O. how about 8? looks a bit like B, it could work- does not flip to B. how about 1? maybe he's looking at ascii to see similarities, does. not. flip. to. I. how about 7? DOESN'T FLIP TO L. BUT YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT DOES FLIP TO L THO????
T.
T FLIPS TO GOD DAMN L.
I AM LOSING MY MIIIIIIIIIIND
TL;DR, please make the flip command at least somewhat consistent.... it's hard to solve logic puzzles if it isn't logically consistent
also, do you think you could add D E L or K I L L to the word list and let me delete things? I may or may not have thought dupe was broken and tried to duplicate L about 20 times...
Haha, yeah. It kinda makes no sense. It's basically just to gain an M. So it is kinda just flip it upside down and kinda what it resembles. But sure, some of them don't really make sense. And even actually acquiring an A doesn't do anything since there are no recipes with it. 😐
An ability to remove unwanted pieces would indeed be pretty nice. But would also need some safeguards so you couldn't brick up the game with it.
I think I will end up needing a walkthrough. So far I have the below
(I also have some random boxes, not sure if they do anything. I read a sign behind a building but I have no idea where it is now or what it says),
This is really fascinating but a little difficult for me, so I have no idea what to do next. Aldo, I don't actually see this on the js13k game page list of entries... is that intentional ?
Yup, it's there: https://js13kgames.com/games/cornelius-uni
Haven't you been able to free the Unicorn yet? That should be your first priority and it will allow you to access different areas including one with a house that has a bunch of hints in it.
I have not and am a little lost on that. No idea what I am missing.
You only need 3/4 of the first letters you find to do it.
*Face Palm*. Thank you :)
This looks like such a clever little puzzle game! I really like the idea of exploring the island while figuring out those strange machines and letter-based commands. And fitting a whole game into just 13KB is honestly impressive.
By the way, are you currently looking to hire any developers, animators, or artists for this project or your future games? I’d love to know if you’re planning to expand the team.
Thanks! Not really, no. I make game purely as a hobby and don't make any money off them so hiring is really out of the question.
wow this is one of the funniest games I ever played in 2026
idk if its bc its like 4am and I should be asleep, or if im just genuinely not good at this, but I am so stuck lmao
I've solved the code but I can't figure out how to answer it bc I only have 1 of the numbers and idk how to get the others :(
Haha, that's already something at least! But there are a couple of different ways to get numbers. Kinda depends on which number you have too. Probably the easiest way is to find the plus sign and do some arithmetics.
ahh so does that mean I need the letter P? Bc I haven't figured that out yet lmao
Not necessarily for that, there is an actual plus sign tile lying around the world (though it's not very easy to find either). But you will need the P anyway for other things. And the path to accessing P requires another thing that is hidden behind a bit of a puzzle too starting off from the smaller house on the southern island.
anttihaavikko, I just wanted to say that I am humbled by your genius. Another 13kb masterpiece! If you ever write a book about your thought process how you come up with this ideas, I would read it.
Some non-breaking bugs: interactions at the edges of buildings can be wonky.
Haha, thankfully nothing too horribly game breaking. I've already had to do some major bit wrangling to get it to fit. 😅
Good to hear and see that the game has some legs and the puzzles are at least somewhat solvable. Did you carry those boxes from the southwest house all the way back home? Did you realize they are actually a bit of a puzzle too?
I carried them with my trusty unicorn caravan in two travels!
edit: well it reminded me of something but my first thought was that since they are moveable objects they need to be moved or rearranged. Thanks for the tip. Now I have 2 more trophies and a fox.
Stuck again. Help please.
I want to bring some letters to a house across the river, but there is no raft to there. I can't jump with Uni while carrying a letter and I can't jump without Uni. How do I move those letters? I have a spare fox if that helps...
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Also, maybe unrelated, but I might have been cheating
Use the teleport to get there. And I'm not even sure what you're trying to solve but I wouldn't consider that cheating. Use all the tools at your disposal. Oh I see, there was two blanks there. The language is probably a tough thing to crack. There are multiple clues for it though and as we can see, even external tools help. 😉
So which all trophies do you have now?
Oh! I misunderstood how the teleporter works. OK, got it now. Umm ... is there a way to clone letters? Nothing is happening to confirm that I am on the right track.
My home:
I had a typo in the numbers puzzle so I thought that maybe I need to have that number in a single cell.
Very spoiler heavy image:
Yes there is! I'll answer with something that you've most likely seen but maybe forgotten or not fully understood...
For merging, you need all five (so 1-5 or 6-10) of them. Is there some bug or did you dye that 9 trophy yourself?
I have many questions but I don't what to spoil too much.
Let me try with the easiest one. Expand the comment to see.
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How do you jump to that circle in the bottom right? It appears to be not connected to any island.
Well, it's a super secret! The other spot for that jump is absolutely invisible (but you're very close to it). There is also another way to access that island.
Hmmm.
Let me try another one. I think this one deserves its own column of signs in the hints house.
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I have generated so many things, yet I don't have a use for any of them at all. What do I do with all the words in boxes anyway?
Nothing really. They're just filler.
Cute game, very cool