An 11-metre giant and his shockwaves: a jumping minigame in Godot

East of Brumacosta, in a clearing ringed by seven standing stones with turquoise runes, walks Brum, guardian of the clearing: an eleven-metre giant who slowly paces around and turns to look at you when you get close. Talk to him and he offers you a dance: three stomps, and you jump when the golden wave reaches your feet. Accept, and a blue circle with an 18 m radius appears on the ground. Brum lifts his leg, stomps, and a golden wave spreads out from him. You have to jump it as it reaches you. Get clipped twice, or step out of the circle, and the attempt is over. No broom allowed.

In the screenshot Brum has his leg raised and the quest log warns "Pisotón 2/3 en 0.7 s · ¡prepara el salto!" (stomp 2 of 3 in 0.7 s, get ready to jump). Clear all three waves and you win his friendship, and from then on you can ask him for a boost into the sky: he throws you high enough to pull out the broom in mid-air.

How it's built

Brum is the same humanoid as the player, scaled 8.5 × 6.2 × 8.5, with different clothes and skin and a few extra pieces on his shoulders, head and forearms. A test checks that he's over ten metres tall. No new model was needed: the player's skeleton and procedural animation work as they are at that size.

The challenge is a small state machine: warning, wave, warning, wave… The first warning lasts 1.8 s, the second 1.45 and the third 1.1, so each stomp comes sooner than the last. The wave travels at 8 m/s, and whether it hit you is decided exactly once, at the moment the wave front passes your distance from the centre:

if not _wave_checked and distance >= previous - 0.6 and distance <= radius + 0.6:

And what counts as "jumping" is being at least 0.42 m above the ground beneath you:

static func clears_wave(p: Vector3) -> bool:
	return p.y - Island.height_at(p.x, p.z) >= JUMP_CLEARANCE

Because it measures height above the terrain rather than above a fixed level, the challenge works just as well when the clearing slopes. The wave ring follows the terrain too: it's 64 segments, each one hugging the ground 10 cm above it. To avoid rebuilding that mesh every frame, it's redrawn every 0.04 s.

The reward is a vertical velocity of 24 with a 6-second cooldown between boosts, and you can use it as often as you like. Brum himself drops the hint as he launches you: you can pull out the broom in mid-air with F.

Still unverified

The tests don't settle for calling functions. One drives the character with normal gravity and clears all three waves with real jumps, and others check that standing on the ground doesn't dodge the wave, that two hits end the attempt without another reward, and that the giant waits while a window is open. What I don't know is whether the rhythm is fun or frustrating with fingers on a phone, or whether the on-screen SALTAR (jump) button lets you time it as precisely as the space bar. That needs a play session with a real person. This screenshot cost 432 draw calls on PC.