Jen Looper for Cloudinary

Posted on Sep 30, 2025 • Edited on Apr 30 • Originally published at cloudinary.com

Clara Denari: Learn Cloudinary Image Transformations Through a Boston Mystery Game

#webdev #programming #ai #codenewbie

Excerpt: Clara Denari is a browser game for developers who want hands-on practice with Cloudinary image transforms, C2PA-style provenance, and multi-language support—set in a Boston mystery. It replaces long tutorials with short labs.

At a glance

Five challenges—each one forces you to use the transform pipeline, not just read about it.
Quizzes and a Holopin badge when you show you’ve learned the ropes.
Four languages (English, French, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese).
A free Cloudinary account for the embedded labs (add your cloud name and image public ID in the Lab to experiment).
Content Credentials (C2PA-style) so you can inspect an image’s history as it changes through its lifecycle.

Tired of plowing through long tutorials? Done with 🔥Tutorial Hell🔥? This is gamified, hands-on Cloudinary training—a mystery first, a lab second.

The gameplay loop

Clara Denari is a narrative game that teaches Cloudinary image transformations: you solve clues, clean string artifacts, brighten an image to reveal hidden text, and use image refiners in short embedded labs, with quizzes and a Holopin at the end. We built a narrative game you can play at claradenari.com—so you can explore the toolset without another passive screencast.

Introducing a new heroine for the ages: Clara Denari, Master Detective. Join her as she prowls through Boston, recovering stolen property by solving the mysteries left by the nefarious Dr. Chiaro Obscuro.

This villain, who is both a meticulous kleptomaniac and someone with considerable long-term memory issues, has done it again. His habit is to hide his ill-gotten gains in obscure places, leaving a trail of clues that only he will understand. This time he’s stolen something valuable and has hidden it—but where?

It’s up to Clara to save the day. By deciphering each clue, she may be able to find the stolen property—but it’s up to you to help her.

Start your adventure here.

Follow the trail in the story, picking up objects and storing them in your inventory.

What you practice (transformations, labs, Content Credentials)

You’ll use Cloudinary transformations to clean a piece of string, brighten an image to reveal hidden text, and apply refiners to tidy up lost keys, then discover the secret hiding place of the lost treasure. You’ll also dig into Content Credentials—a C2PA-aligned view of how an image’s provenance and edits appear over its lifecycle:

Content Credentials using C2PA standards.

You’ll need to get hands-on with these ideas to finish the case. Solve all 5 challenges and reach the end with the key. Try transforms yourself with a free Cloudinary account; in the Lab, plug in your cloud name and the image’s public ID and adjust transformations until the clue makes sense.

Here is one example of a Cloudinary delivery URL (public demo asset). You change the transformation chain right after upload/, before the public ID (here, sample).

https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/image/upload/c_scale,w_400/sample

c_scale,w_400 resizes the delivered image; in the game’s Lab you will swap in brightness, refiner, and other tokens that match each clue.

Clara’s Lab

Localization and setting

Préférez-vous le français ? ¿Qué tal el español? Português brasileiro? We have you covered: the app is fully localized in four languages. This first Clara Denari Adventure is set on the gritty underside of Boston, USA—cannoli and all. If you’d like Clara to come to your city to solve a mystery, say the word in the community discussion.

How to start

The app is built to teach: short embedded quizzes check what you’ve picked up, and you can earn a custom Holopin to show detective mastery on your social profiles.

Earn your limited edition Holopin.

Trench coat on, glass polished? Join the inaugural Clara Denari release from Developer Relations at Cloudinary. Start the game: claradenari.com.