Door 3 · Catcher
Mango Madness: Day 3 of Sunburnt Santa
Slide the crate to catch ripe mangoes falling from the tree, and let the green ones fall. Catch them in a row to build a multiplier, and hang on for the gold ones.
How to play Mango Madness
- Slide your finger to move the crate.
- Catch the ripe mangoes. Green ones cost a life, and so does letting a ripe one drop.
- Catches in a row build a multiplier. Gold mangoes are worth 5x.
- Blue mangoes are rare. Catch one for an extra life.
Scoring
| What | Points |
|---|---|
| Ripe mango | 50 |
| Gold mango | 250 |
| Blue mango | an extra life |
| Green mango caught | costs a life |
| Ripe mango dropped | costs a life |
Catches in a row build a multiplier: x2 from 5, up to x5 from 20. Losing a life resets it. You have 3 lives; every 10 catches the fruit falls 4% faster.
Stars: the three targets
Stars don't lock anything; they show how you're going, and doors with at least one star count towards the bonus games.
Tips for three stars
- Three stars needs the multiplier. At x5 a ripe mango is worth 250, five times its face value, so protecting the streak matters more than chasing a far-off gold one.
- Green mangoes get more common as you go, from about 15% of the fruit at the start to 30% by 80 catches. From 30 catches, two can fall at once, and from 60 three, so read the whole screen before you move.
- The crate chases your finger at a fixed top speed, so move early rather than flicking at the last moment. Blue mangoes only show up once you've made 20 catches and are down to one or two lives; catch one and you get a life back.
The real story: why mangoes mean Christmas in Australia
In Australia, a tray of mangoes is as much a part of Christmas as the tree, because the harvest lands right in December. The harvest moves across the north: the Northern Territory picks first, then the baton passes to Bowen and the Burdekin in Queensland in time for Christmas [2]. In the 2017/18 season the country picked more than 10 million trays for the first time, nearly all of them from the Northern Territory and Queensland [3].
The mango has a long history here. Bowen, on the north Queensland coast, grew Australia's first mangoes in the 1860s, from seeds believed to have come from India [1]. By 1881 Brisbane wholesalers were paying high prices for Bowen fruit and reselling it at a shilling each [1]. In the early 1900s Henry Bankhead Lott became the first to grow the Bowen Special, also called the Kensington Pride, commercially, on his farm named Kensington [1]. Newer varieties such as R2E2, Honey Gold and Calypso passed half of national production for the first time in 2017/18 [3], but for plenty of families the Bowen is still the smell of Christmas morning.
In the game, ripe means orange and gold means bonus. Leave the green ones on the tree.
Read more: Christmas in Australia: the complete guide.
When it opens
Door 3 opens on day 3 of your own calendar (your Day 1 is the day you first play), and for everyone by 3 December. Play the door before it to open it. Once it's open you can replay it as often as you like, and after Christmas Eve all 24 doors stay open. How the calendar works.
Play now
Same kind of game: Backyard Cricket, Prawn Rain, Present Drop.