🎯 Objective

The valley is degrading: desert is spreading from the west, loggers are cutting the last mature trees, and wildlife is disappearing as habitat is lost. Restore forest cover and biodiversity to the targets shown for your chosen level (see the HUD and level-select screen) to bring the ecosystem back from the brink. Easier levels ask for less and give you more room to make mistakes — harder ones push both numbers higher.

🕹️ Controls

🌱 How the land works

Every patch of ground has a health value from bare desert to mature forest. Land with a tree on it slowly heals; untended bare ground slowly degrades on its own. Desert patches can erode the health of neighboring cells over time, so left unchecked, the desert genuinely spreads.

🌲 Planting & irrigating

Walk up to degraded-but-not-desert ground and press E to plant — it costs one seed and grows over time. Ground that's too far gone to plant on needs a drink first: press Q to irrigate it, which raises its health enough to plant, and speeds up growth for anything already planted nearby. Seeds regenerate slowly from your nursery; water refills from your canteen — both are limited, so pace yourself.

🌿 Trees vs. shrubs

Press Tab to switch what E plants. Trees grow slowly but become real forest cover — they count toward your forest-cover target and unlock animal habitat. Shrubs grow fast and cheaply and hold land above desert level, but they cap out below "mature forest" and never count toward your win condition or attract wildlife on their own. Use shrubs to firewall the desert edge quickly, and trees to build the forest you actually need to win.

🪓 Loggers

Loggers walk in from the map edge toward your healthiest trees and start chopping, shown by a health bar over their head. Aim your crosshair at one — while they're on their way in or already chopping — and Click or press F to fire a seed-pod from your slingshot. A solid hit scares them off instantly; no need to get close. Let the chop bar fill and the tree — and a chunk of that cell's health — is lost. Shrubs aren't worth their time, so they only ever target real trees.

🕸️ Poachers

Once you have wildlife, poachers can show up too — they chase down a live animal and try to net it, shown by the same kind of progress bar. Your slingshot works on them exactly like it does on loggers: aim and fire to scare them off before the net closes. Losing an animal to a poacher hurts your biodiversity stat directly.

🔥 Wildfires

Dry, mature trees can catch fire on their own, and much more often during a drought. A burning cell damages its own health, can kill the tree outright, and may spread to flammable neighbors. Aim your irrigation at a burning cell and press Q to douse it — the same canteen that waters land puts out fires.

🌿 Invasive weeds

Weed patches can take root on land that's recovering but not yet mature forest, choking its health down toward a floor instead of killing it outright, and spreading to nearby land the way fire spreads to flammable neighbors. Your slingshot clears them the same way it scares off loggers and poachers — aim and fire with Click or F.

⛰️ Mudslides (Wetland Marshes)

The Wetland Marshes level barely desertifies on its own, but its mountain-adjacent slopes can suddenly slide during rain, damaging a whole cluster of cells at once. Patrol the high ground and irrigate/replant fast after a slide instead of trying to prevent it.

🌿 Ranger Skills

Every achievement you unlock also grants a skill point, spendable on permanent, cross-playthrough upgrades — bigger seed pouch, bigger canteen, wider irrigation, faster movement, quicker regen. Open the skill tree from the start screen or the pause menu; upgrades apply immediately and carry into every future run.

🏆 Leaderboard & ⚙️ Settings

Every level clear and Endless survival is logged to a local leaderboard (no server involved) — export it to a JSON file or copy it to your clipboard to compare with someone else's, and import theirs back in. Settings offers a colorblind-safe terrain/threat palette and a high-contrast HUD mode, both reachable from the start screen.

🌦️ Weather & seasons

Short-term weather (clear, rain, or drought) and the long-term season both shift growth, decay, desertification speed, and fire risk — shown together in your HUD. Rain speeds up growth and refills your canteen faster with zero fire risk; drought does the opposite and makes wildfires much more likely. Spring and summer favor growth, autumn is neutral to mildly harsh, and winter slows everything — good and bad — right down.

⛰️ Mountains, lakes & rivers

The valley isn't just a health grid — a mountain range, a lake, and the rivers connecting them are permanent features of the map. Mountains and water block movement (you can't plant on them either), and land near a river or lakeshore heals faster and decays slower than land out in the open, so riverbank plots are some of the best ground you'll find.

🗺️ Minimap

The panel in the top-right corner mirrors the terrain from above — including the blue lakes/rivers and grey mountains — with your position and facing as a white arrow. Red dots are active loggers, orange dots are poachers, and yellow dots are current wildfires — a quick glance tells you where to run.

🦌 Wildlife & biodiversity

Animals only move in once there's enough mature forest to support them, and they wander near their home grove. If the land around them degrades, a logger gets too close, or a poacher catches one, they flee (or are lost) and the biodiversity stat drops. It's a direct read of how much wildlife is currently thriving.

🏆 Winning & achievements

Reach your level's forest cover target and its biodiversity target at the same time to restore the ecosystem. Both numbers move independently, so a healthy forest with no wildlife — or wildlife without enough forest to sustain it — won't be enough on its own. Clearing a level unlocks the next, harder one, and your fastest clear (in in-game days) is remembered per level. Separately, achievements track your progress across every playthrough — planting totals, threats stopped, fires put out, and more — and pop up as toasts the moment you earn them.

♾️ Endless mode

Clearing every numbered level unlocks Endless Vigil: there's no forest/biodiversity target, just the land getting harder to hold the longer you survive — decay and desertification both escalate every in-game day. It ends when desert overtakes most of the map; your best survival time (in days) is saved and shown on the level-select screen.

💡 Tips

• Irrigate before you plant if the ground reads too degraded — it's usually faster than waiting.
• Cluster your planting near cells you've already restored; healthy ground helps its neighbors.
• Patrol your best groves — that's exactly where loggers (and fire) show up.
• Your slingshot has range — you don't have to be close, just aimed and lined up.
• Use shrubs to quickly stabilize a desert front, then come back and replace them with real trees.
• Rain is a good time to plant aggressively; drought is a good time to patrol for fires instead.