Skullerful - Caterpillar

Skullerful - Caterpillar
The Woodpecker Outdoors puzzle in Itty Bitty Woodland
Map information
Reward	18 FFA Points
Difficulty	Very Hard
Location	FFA
Mapcode	skfc
Creator	rmanimal
Publication	November 22, 2025
Progress Saver	Each puzzle

Skullerful - Caterpillar is a mixed puzzle map with search by rmanimal that rewards 18 FFA Points when completed. Use "/join skf" to join its hub map, Skullerful, and navigate to the Caterpillar section. Caterpillar is only accessible after beating the three tutorial puzzles.

General

Gameplay

All Skullerful maps use the same puzzle base: you must put skulls, each with different rules, on a grid. Skulls can face only the cardinal four directions. The board can also have other objects, such as numbers that need a set amount of skulls to look at them. If all the skulls the player has are placed on the board and all requirements are fulfilled, the level is complete.

When joining a puzzle, the player is also given a guidebook which contains general puzzle information and describes each of the different puzzle elements, such as different skull colors, in detail. The guidebook changes to have different pages depending on what is relevant to the player's current puzzle. Each puzzle also has a computer monitor head that can be clicked. These will give the player several options, some which relate to the current puzzle like clearing the board of skulls, and allows the player to warp back to the hub.

Unlike other Skullerful maps, Caterpillar is split into seven different islands. The first six have six puzzles that need to be beaten in any order to move to the next island, and the last island has three puzzles the player must complete to beat the map. Once all puzzles on an island have been completed, the player can use the button on a teleporter (an object with torches on the sides and a structure block inside) to progress. Players can track their island progress via the computers near each puzzle.

Another exception Caterpillar has compared to the previous Skullerful campaigns is a search element for finding the puzzles. While most of the puzzles in Caterpillar are out in the open, there are a specific few the player must find for themselves, especially in the Raspberry Cake with Eyeseeing section.

Marker Skulls

Marker skulls are a gameplay addition that takes more of a sideline than other mechanics. They allow the player to place gray skull markers on the board that do not impact the puzzle and are mainly there to let the player mark down skulls on the physical board. The main way to enable these is through the Settings head in the Skullerful hub, though the skeleton NPC in Tutorial Level 1 also allows the player to select them.

Island Collectibles

Each island in Caterpillar has its own set of optional collectables that can be tracked in the player's inventory. Instead of clicking heads or item frames, players walk over the block where the block display is to collect each item. The NPC next to each island's teleporter will also keep track of how many of a collectible the player is missing on the island. Finding all of the collectibles on an island will reward the player with a skull set. The distribution is as follows:

Island Name	NPC	Collectible Name	Collectible Total	Skull Set
Itty Bitty Woodland	wavelyte	Woodland Toonie	30	Butterfly Set
Chessipelago	AverageIPA	Chess ELO	64	Chalice Set
Skullcano Eruption	swifph	Volcanic Treat	55	Dragon Set
Photosynthesis Power Plant	MaxLovesFrogs	Chlorophyll Charger	45	Frog Set
Esoterrane	swimmy1212	Cherry Petal	25	Duck Set
Raspberry Cake with Eyeseeing	Alphaesia	Raspberry	30	Eye Set
Primary Temple	rmanimal	Tricolor Coin	3	Tricolor Set

Progress Saver

Skullerful features a robust progress saver, accessed by clicking the computer monitor head in the hub. This progress saver can bring the player to any puzzle of any campaign in Skullerful. Using the progress saver will nullify the player's time. This will still award the player a completion, but they will have a blank time for that completion.

Aesthetics

The first island area, Itty Bitty Woodland, has underground and above ground areas. The underground sections have overgrown grass floors littered with moss, weeds, poppies, mushrooms, and frogs. The walls have a gradient that goes from brown mushroom blocks to cyan terracotta near the ceiling, and the ceiling itself is made of mangrove wood with hanging roots and cave vines coming out. Underwater areas, including behind the waterfall, have blue tinted blocks. The surface is covered with mushrooms and large Christmas looking trees with cherries in them.

The second area, Chessipelago, is loosely shaped like a chessboard and is mainly about navigation a large set of smaller islands. Half of the islands are made of dark gray blocks (like smooth basalt, gray concrete, and reinforced deepslate), and the other half are made of white blocks (like calcite, white concrete, and quartz pillars). The color of the larger islands mainly depend on its approximate location on the chessboard. For extra natural lighting, there are floating lampposts made of mud bricks.

The third area, Skullcano Eruption, has a more standard tropical island theme with two major land formations on the main island: a volcano and skull rock. The sand making up the islands have two types, those being birch (with torchflowers and stone buttons on them) and sandstone (with orange tulips, cherry buttons, and nautilus shells on them). The volcano has a gradient ranging from acacia wood to smooth basalt, with the lava reaching the sand portions of the island having obsidian around it. There are palm trees that dot all of the islands in this area that litter coconuts on the ground. One of the secondary islands, palette island, has the teleporter on it and a unique island design.

Area four, Photosynthesis Power Plant, has above ground and below ground sections. The above ground half has warped nylium grass with twisting vines, blue orchids, cornflowers, and other blue tinted plants dotting the surface. Some of the grassy areas have been mined into, exposing deepslate emerald geodes in the ground that the player can fall into. The sides to each of the islands is made of waxed weathered copper frames that dip into the water, and they have magenta gradient walls. There are also large sized copper-ified versions of tulips and oxeye daisies that dot the surface.

The underground section of the power plant islands is much darker, taking place in a large drill tunnel lit by oxidized copper bulbs. The floor and ceiling have the same magenta wall gradient as the above ground islands, and the tube forming the rest of the tunnels is made of weathered copper and green stained glass that exposes more emerald geodes. There are some exposed sections of rock that are made of blackstone and blackstone bricks as well.

Esoterrane, the fifth area, is made of purple tinted islands with cherry trees and haunted ancient structures. The islands are made of a gradient that transitions from obsidian to mycelium, with pink petals, brain coral fans, and pink tulips. Cherry trees with pink glazed terracotta and lanterns hanging from them are scattered across the islands. There are several large structures made of ancient debris and mangrove planks built on the center of some islands, and the ocean near the area is full of lit up obelisks with redstone lamps in them.

Raspberry Cake with Eyeseeing has cake themed islands. The sides of the cakes have a dark red to snow gradient. The top of the islands have 2 block large raspberries spread across the snow. There are two buildings, called Eyerises, in the area, with one of the eye tops rolling over and resting partially buried in the snow. Dark oak bridges connect the cake islands, and the cultist gift shop houses the teleporter.

The Primary Temple is the final area, and it is unique for being the only island area in the clouds instead of water. The temple is split into three sections, each referring to a primary color. The south side is red, the middle area is yellow, and the northern part is blue. Each part of the temple is designed similarly with plank frames and glazed terracotta filling large portions of the walls. The clouds the temple rests on are made of snow blocks, diorite, and white wool.

When the player has beaten all of the puzzles and use the final teleporter, they are taken to a glass enclosed section at the top of Primary Temple. The player runs through each of the island aesthetics in miniature, with the teleporter NPCs congradulating them along the way, before reaching the end sign.

Challenges

This map is featured in 0 challenges.

History

"Unlike Skullerful - Bee Canyon, I waited much longer before beginning any work with Skullerful - Caterpillar. It allowed me to get quite a few people's opinions on what the next bug theme should be, where I received some cool ideas like Cricket Cove and Czechoslovakia. I eventually settled on the idea Caterpillar Cosmos, which would be set up similar to Bejeweled 2's puzzle mode where the player is given 5 options and only needs to beat four to progress. The areas were also going to be themed as different planets, with the first one being a high tech asteroid area that would change drastically when transitioning to the next one. Even in this state, funnily enough, I expected needing to separate puzzles into their own distinct sections to prevent issues with using the puzzle boards.

The first area's puzzles weren't too hard to create, as it was meant to be a refresher area using garbage tiles, but after that the puzzle difficulty and design was all over the place. Because of the inherent scope creep that came with trying to make so many puzzles, I tried to wedge a lot of different ideas into the same area. At one point, Caterpillar was intended to have red skulls, purple skulls, adhesive, and arrow heads in one long guantlet. It became too saturated to work with properly, and some of the early renditions of red skull puzzles were also pretty bad. Too many puzzle systems competing, a not so great basis for the difficulty curve, less time to work on the project, and even other competing projects that I got bursts of inspiration to work on all killed Caterpillar from ever progressing beyond the concept phase in early 2023. For a long time, the closest I got to working on it was when I was making a similarly scripted tile based map with Ice Supride.

In early 2025, I suddenly had time to work on projects. After working on Sugar Shire, an ancient map that's never getting done in a state I'd like, I spent some time trying to create more puzzles for Caterpillar. I made it up to around 30 puzzles before culling nearly half of the puzzles that had been designed due to being poorly constructed or using arrows which I eventually got rid of. It was around this time that I also reigned in the scope creep and decided to do sky islands instead of planets, as making planet surfaces was not worth the hassle and would need large volumes of land cleared (and the idea of a void world with Epsilon was unannounced, even in staff circles).

Once I reached around 30 puzzles and scripted the adhesive mechanic, it was time to make the aesthetics. Even though I got some practice since the last Skullerful with Ice Supride and Frogtopia, I was not confident in my ability to improve from Bee Canyon and got wavelyte's help with making the palette for the first underground area. With that, I set off on making the first area, Itty Bitty Woodland. It took around three weeks for me to finalize the island area itself and one more to build the trees and mushrooms dotting the island. Even though I built the area way to close to Ice Supride (and changed the sky islands to just normal islands), I was really happy with how the area turned out. For the first time, Caterpillar felt like it was possible to complete.

I knew the second area would be chess related nearly immediately, but I had some trouble deciding how to build the islands. I decided at first to make the area a city block, inspired by New Donk City in Mario Odyssey, and looked up a vague guide on how to make Minecraft house palettes. After building two houses, one for each color, I was going to set up the city to have buildings on the squares and Venice style boat transport between them with water canals. After looking at Chess Game and Checkmate more, I decided instead that the board should not be a grid or even necessarily have square-shaped areas, which I think paid off in making the area much more interesting.

Skullcano Eruption would not have been possible without wavelyte. I was unable to create a satisfying looking volcano (considering it looked much more like a hill), so I had to rely on her while she made a much better volcano. I also wanted something vaguely resembling the skull Bokoblin outpost from Breath of the Wild, so she made skull rock as well. Funnily enough, this was initially going to go close to where the Raspberry area ended up, but for some reason I didn't like that and wanted the place to be close to the first island area. After a bit more help with trees, I started decorating the area and shaping the place into cohesive tropical islands, adding a few points of interest like the rock spires and palette island.

Photosynthesis Power Plant was the first area where I really wanted to realize the entire island myself from conception to the finishing touches. The first idea for this location was that it would function like P.I.T.M.O.N. with traps inside that would require the player to search for the puzzles. The issue, though, is that the most recent area was already very orange, so I changed the block colors from orange to blue. I considered having Survivor style water tunnels and making it a water temple, but I instead opted to mesh the place with the mining island idea that had existed since the beginning. A few uses of HueBlocks and a Deep Rock Galactic reference later, the area was completed!

The Raspberry Cake area (slightly inspired by me wanting to make a better rendition of The Great Cake) was built fifth, despite me knowing it would be the sixth area. The giant cake island and a few surrounding islands were made first, and the buildings were added on later. I had the bizarre idea to make it a cult based island based off of the Eyeseeing pun, which informed both the Eyerises being built and draconic cult-like members scattered everywhere. I also committed hard to making this the search island, so none of the puzzles were out in the open in this area. Another odd facet about the island is that it initially only had five puzzles, and the sixth was not added until after all of the areas were built.

The final normal area, Esoterrane, I had difficulty creating. While I wanted to have cherry trees on top of mycelium style islands, I felt like making Japanese style pagoda buildings on them has been done several times before. To give the buildings an otherworldly vibe, I went with using ancient debris as the base block and made some odd looking structures from there. These were also not intended to be open air buildings, but I could not get the exteriors for the early versions of closed buildings to look right. One of the areas was initially going to be a library as well for swimmy, but I couldn't get the shelving to look right.

I didn't know for a while what the final area would be. My first plan was to have a partially submerged Marina Bay Sands type of building, but even with the right shape for the glass supports it felt too strange to be used. Only after I started building the area in the clouds did Primary Temple come to be. I built the middle section first with yellow since none of the other island areas had mainly yellow theming. I knew that this section would have three final puzzles, so I eventually settled on making the building use primary color sections to separate them. The hardest part of this area was honestly making the clouds, and I initially built it between Chessipelago and Raspberry, which cast a giant shadow over everything. I spent more time fixing cut off clouds caused by moving the temple than time building the temple itself.

Once I was able to script levels being joinable while in any other level, I improved the secrets system by having players be able to stumble into the puzzles naturally rather than needing to scout weird pink computer monitors. To improve the skull set unlocking system, I made each area have its own skull set with GIMP and decided on leaning into island exploration more by having collectibles be what unlocks these sets. The system itself was made by porting over the Sugar Shire system of collectibles I had and editing that to use block displays. I then made seven more heads based off of the island colors to collect, with the notable standouts being the ones for Chessipelago and Primary Temple. Around this time was when I properly named each of the puzzles, and it was humorous to change everything from electrical-sounding names into island relevant ones.

While on Board, the main updates the map received were better menus and far more islands. It took about a month to build all of the extra islands, and I didn't know about the WorldEdit /fill command at the time which would have sped up their creation greatly for some of the harder areas to build. wavelyte and N700M also both helped to build more islands for the Woodland and Power Plant areas, which shortened the time to make everything. While the numerous new islands were the roughest part of the map to build, they improved the aesthetic of the map considerably."

- rmanimal

Trivia

• There are secrets hidden throughout Skullerful. Completing these secrets unlocks more skull sets.
• The NPC closest to the teleporter for each island also holds one of the heads used in that island's skull set unlockable.
• The Grounded Clearing puzzle was made during a DND session in the middle of downtime.
• The first Caterpillar secret re-uses the first version of puzzle 8 that got removed from Skullerful - Ant Hill. The second secret also has unused content from Ant Hill, namely the geode-themed room that could have been used instead of the bee theming for Skullerful - Bee Canyon.
• An usused fishing hut in the north-west of the map was initially going to be used for an island theme of traversing a network of houses on stilts.
• Chessipelago was being finalized around the same time that Ant Farm was completed and submitted to Board. Because of that, N700M added a reference in his map to the xylophone islands used in Chessipelago.

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