Game Projects

Time system

The game uses a time system, separated into three parts of the day. When that part of the day ends you have to be in the Void or you'll contract a disease.

You can use tokens of the appropriate time of the day at an appropriate Statue to wind the clock back. These tokens have other uses, however.

You can also sleep in the Voidbed to skip to the next part of the day.

Sanguine

This time of day is basically night but lit by a dying red star.

This is the time of day where all gardening takes place. You can plant things, harvest them, water plants, prune them and build new areas to the Astra.

Solus

This is the time of the day where the primary star is overhead and plants grow -- your Astra is too far up in the sky though so you can't go out there without contracting a Solar disease.

Instead, this is the one time of day where you can explore the Mundus -- a gridlike world where you can find Lunar Altars and interact in other ways. More on this in the Mundus section.

Lune

This is also night but lit by the moon. During this time of day you can use the Lunar Dais to buy or sell things for the three tokens, replenish tools and water fountains, etc.

This is also the time where you can use Lunar Automatons to process items usefully (or fail completely).

Lunar gameplay takes place in the expandable Observatory.

Penumbra

Occasionally, you'll get an eclipse of two of the lunar bodies, during which time you can do either of those stages or both.

Astra Building System

Rooms are bought at the Lunar Dais for some amount of the three tokens. They can then be placed during Sanguine (or other times if you don't mind gaining diseases).

The building system is somewhat like a game of dominoes -- each room has a few connection types, you have to match those to place your new room. Better rooms will sometimes require more than one connection point -- there's a way of using other room connections however. Occasionally they'll also require that there be a specific fixture in one of the rooms they're connecting to.

Rooms can't ever be connected to their own type of room.

Rooms contain Plots for one of the plant types. Usually only one, allowing a single plant to be grown there -- but sometimes more than one. They can also contain fixtures:

Fountains -- used as a water source, and can also contain Koi.

Storehouse -- allow you to store seeds, items and other things -- granted plant harvests will rot. Limited capacity.

Coolstone -- A storage exclusively for plant harvests, to keep them from rotting. Limited capacity.

Mulchpit -- allows you to turn organic matter of any kind into Fertilizer, which improves plant growth or yield in some way.

Clockwork -- a device that will auto-water, auto-prune or auto-harvest/etc plants. These can be moved around and aren't stuck in the room they're created in.

Sangual Statue -- feeding it Solus tokens will wind back the hours of the day.

Passageway Rooms

Rooms have a 50% chance of containing something:

Solar Rune -- for Solus tokens, you can purchase what's basically a shop node with a single item.

Item -- more rarely you'll get an item altogether. Could be a tool, weapon, seed, etc. Single use obviously, but free.

Swans

Each body of water has a 50% chance of generating Swans. Swans are homogeneous -- the koi you feed them is what dictates their properties. Additionally there's an unlimited number available, and since koi are also unlimited the whole thing is renewable and doesn't require further exploring.

In any case if you have Swans available you can feed them one of the Koi you have with you. You'll then gain a Swan with those properties.

Swans are basically scanners -- they'll fly around or in passageways and map things out or see what's actually in passageway rooms, what koi are in ponds (and what they do), etc. They do take some amount of game time to do this though. Specialized ones will also hunt around for some specific item or pendant or whatever, though there's a cap on the amount of time they can spend away.

I'll detail all the properties here when these systems are fully fleshed out. Should be pretty easy to document though.

The Atlas

The Atlas is a kind of usable map for Mundus. You can always use it for free in The Void during Lune -- everything you've discovered already in Mundus is in there, as well as anything that's been explored via Swans.

((NOTE))

The below feature should apply to library books/etc more generally. Will need one for fish as well.

Every Lune, you can pay Lunar Tokens to create a Map. This will be usable until you exit Mundus. The Map allows you to have Atlas functionality inside Mundus itself. The downside is the cost, but also the cost rises the more information there is in the Atlas.

Token Obtaining and Spread

As mentioned, there are Sangual, Solar and Lunar tokens which form the currency of the game.

Tokens are gained by placing plant harvests or their extracts on a Lunar Dais during Lune. Each plant (and extract) has a variable amount of tokens of each kind that this action gives you. Some fertilizers can improve this, which is basically what there is in lieu of a Genetics system.

You can also sell items bought or otherwise gained for half of their value. Pendants can't be sold and in fact are just automatically equipped for simplicity.

It's worth pointing out that Rooms can be scrapped and sold, but lose value if you don't sell their Clockwork as well. So you can't just exploit this to get Clockwork easily (it's still possible but it takes more capital)

The Lunar Dais allows you to buy things for one of the three tokens:

Sangual Tokens -- Anything whatsoever related to Astra. Seeds, Astra tools, rooms. Rooms can be removed and sold back for half their Sangual value. Sangual Tokens can also be used for Astra services such as refilling Fountains (exists by default) or modifying Weather (these have to be found in Solar Runes) and Astra-based Disease (not plant-based ones though, that's the province of Fertilizer).

Lunar Tokens -- Buying Lunar Automata that process plants. These also have a variety of uses in The Void itself (the Codex, the Atlas, etc).

Solar Tokens -- Anything in use in Mundus. Weapons, Armor, Mundus Tools (Fishing Rods, Mattocks, Shovels), etc. Obviously they have use *in* Mundus as well.

Inventory Stipulations

You don't have a limited inventory thankfully, however there are a few caveats to this:

You can only equip one Tool/Weapon/Armor per slot. Extras are stored in the infinite-spaced Tool Rack, Weapon Rack and Closet. The Tool Rack should be separated by Tool type to make this easier.

You can't enter Mundus if you have Astra tools on you. These need to either be Stored or Sold.

Item Durability

All items have Durability in addition to whatever else they have (like Buckets have a limited water capacity). Without durability, they can't be used. Heterogeneous ones will have varying amounts of maximum durability.

Tools can be Repaired at the Smithy during Lune for Lunar Tokens. Alternately they can just be sold -- durability doesnt hurt their value. With heterogeneous items, the repair cost is random.

Diseases

You can gain Diseases in a variety of ways:

Plants might have a chance of you contracting a disease when you harvest them. This can be mitigated with that kind of Fertilizer or a compound one.

More rarely, there are Diseases associated with Pruning, Planting or Mulching (removing dead plants).

Being in Astra or Mundus at the wrong time of day will give you a handcrafted disease.

Weather can cause disease in Astra -- either directly or by affecting an Astra action.

Weather can affect Mundus as well. You won't get a disease directly, but various actions might be impacted.

Guardians can cause Disease.

Koi and Swans can give disease when you obtain them. This is rare, but more likely with better variants.

Items found in Passageways can be Cursed, in which case there's a chance they'll give you a disease. Swans can identify cursed items (and their chance), and that particular type of Swan and its koi will never themselves be cursed.

Having a Wound will worsen whatever diseases you have.

Gaining a disease on top of another disease will worsen both. This continues too.

Disease Effects

Diseases affect your various actions in some way -- making them less effective or making them take more time. A movement-affecting Disease is *particularly* nasty.

Diseases take some amount of time to heal. This can't be sped up, but you can sleep in the Void Bed to increase the passage of time -- granted there's plant consequences to this if you sleep during Sanguine. Skipping Lune or Solus makes more sense.

While Diseases are procedural, their various effects are handcrafted, and this is the list that Pendants target. Diseases associated with the wrong time of day are handcrafted however.

Outside of the handcrafted ones, you don't know what a particular Disease is until you gain it. This information gets stored in The Asclepius, and like Codex information, it can be scanned via Lunar Tokens once encountered in some way rather than you acquiring it. You can't scan diseases you haven't encountered because there's way too many of them.

If you gain a pendant and you currently have that effect, it'll get removed instantly.

Weather

Weather happens occasionally. It acts somewhat as a global disease, except it can cause diseases or increase their chance. There are other effects as well, like refilling or draining fountains, making plants need to be pruned more often, lowering harvest yields, etc.

All of this is fully random.

The Almanack

The Almanack can be used in Lune for Lunar Tokens and lets you see into the future.

You can identify when Penumbras will occur, as well as Weather (and its duration, as well as what it actually *does*) so you can plan accordingly.

With Lunar Tokens what you're unlocking are blocks of time. Exiting the Almanack and returning (or returning on subsequent Lunes) will still let you see the blocks you've unlocked. You can advance as much as you want since only an integer is stored.

While rare, there are Lunar Dais services that let you modify weather with Sangual tokens. These can be found via Solar Runes. Weather modification ranges from altering properties to turning off a weather pattern altogether (or extending its duration). If you know what you're doing you can kind of break the game this way. Granted it takes a lot of Sangual tokens and Solar Rune sourcing.

(( neglected pruning still requires pruning, it just has wilting added ))

Gardening Mechanics

This is a pretty big part of the game.

Plants take time to grow, and they need to be maintained or they'll quit growing and eventually die. What complicates that in this game is the twisty skein Astra eventually becomes + the weird storage mechanic + the time system obviously. Finding good routes in your Gardens and getting better tools is pretty essential to a profitable Astral Garden. But same deal with getting more viable plants over time, learning to use the Fertilizer mechanic, and automating with Clockwork wherever possible.

Plant Genetics

Plants are fully randomized and have the following properties:

Type -- dictates the type of plot they can be placed in and dictates what they produce and some archetypes of their stats as well. Trees are obviously going to take longer to grow than Grasses for example.

Grow time -- how long it takes a planted seed to grow to maturity. Fixed value.

Yield -- how many products you get per yield. Typically a range or a pyramid, sometimes a fixed value.

Harvests -- how many times the plant is harvestable before it dies. It's a fixed value for planning simplicity.

Harvest separation -- the time in between harvests. Also a fixed value for planning simplicity.

Product -- what the plant actually produces. Generally dictated by plant type, but not always. This really only affects Lunar Automata. Categories should be pulled from shatterloop and beefed up a bit.

Value -- how many of each token you get for selling the product. Can be a range or pyramid.

Shelf life -- how long the product can sit away from a Coolstone before it turns into Mulch. Fixed value.

Product mulch -- how much Mulch you get from a product. Can be a range or pyramid.

Plant Mulch -- how much Mulch you get from a dead or killed plant. Can be a range or pyramid.

Water needs -- how often you have to water it before it Wilts. Once wilted you have exactly one day cycle to water it or it'll die. Fixed value.

Pruning -- how often you have to prune it. Failing to Prune will also cause Wilting. Fixed value.

((Disease mechanics)) -- diseases can affect harvesting most often but can also affect pruning, planting or mulching. These can all be different diseases as well if you get particularly unlucky.

((Weather resistance)) -- for handcrafted weather effects (not Weather itself which draws from them) that target plants, plants can have resistance to them. This can sometimes be a bad thing, like if it has resistance to Weather that increases Yields.

((Lunar Automaton mechanics)) -- these are definitely stored by the plant but you don't know them from the outset, they're discovered as you work with Automata.

Remote Plant Management

To simplify things a bit, a fixture known as The Oracle lets you track all of your plants and their status, when it's time to harvest them, if they're dead, etc. This doesn't cost anything and you can look at it at any time. The downside is that you can't bring it with you, and also you have to remember where all your plants are, which is a big part of the gameplay. Kind of essential in a text-based farming game.

Plant Maintenance

Maintenance of plants involves the following things:

Obviously, planting them in the first place.

Pruning when they need to be pruned.

Watering them when they need to be watered or when they've Wilted.

Harvesting them when they're ready to be harvested. Failing to do this makes that Harvest wasted.

Mulching the plant once it's dead. This frees up the plot for a new plant.

You can optionally add Fertilizer at any time -- it'll start working on the next day cycle, assuming it'll actually do something (fertilizer that affects growing plants is wasted on mature ones).

Outside of planting and harvesting, Tools are required:

A bucket filled with water to water the plant.

A Watering Can is a buyable that's more efficient time-wise.

Shears to prune a plant.

A Trowel to Mulch a dead plant.

Buckets can distribute fertilizer.

A Fertilizer Tube is more efficient than a bucket.

These tools are all heterogeneous, but they do have durability. Buckets are also multipurpose, while Fertilizer Tubes and Watering Cans are specialized. Given this it's best to keep some extras around if the durability runs out without warning.

Water mechanics

Water is pulled from a Fountain and fills the container (bucket or watering can), assuming there's enough capacity for that.

The starting Astra room has a fountain, but it's pretty small. You do also start with a bucket, shears and a trowel. It's possible to softlock if you dont know what you're doing, but Mundus exploration for Astra tools to sell for Sangual tokens can at least potentially get you back on your feet again.

Fountains usually have to be refilled manually with Sangual tokens, however they can refill during rainy weather events.

If you place enough Koi in a fountain (depends solely on the fountain capacity), water will refill automatically at the start of Sanguine. There are some Weather events that affect this however.

Bucket Mechanics

Buckets are multipurpose, as mentioned. They can store exactly one type of material -- water, Mulch, or some type of Fertilizer or compound fertilizer.

If you don't have a free bucket and you have Mulch in your inventory you can dump it and lose it forever before heading to Mundus.

Fertilizer Mechanics

Fertilizer targets one of the various plant properties and improves it in some way for that particular plant during its lifespan. The fertilizer is then used up.

Fertilizer is created in a Mulchpit -- you add mulch to it or can compost organic material more generally, turning it into Mulch accordingly at instant speed. Having a dedicated composter or taking game time seems like it would overcomplicate things, particularly management. As mentioned, Koi are probably the best thing to turn into Mulch.

Fertilizer targets one of the plant properties and improves it. The type of fertilizer you get is determined by the Mulchseed, a Lunar Automaton that processes regular seeds in a procgen way that's available in the Lunar Dais from the outset.

Fertilizer does take time to process from Mulch once the Mulchpit reaches its capacity -- this time is also based on the Mulchseed, somewhere in the 2-5 day range.

Fertilizer can then be stored in a usable format with Buckets or Fertilizer Tubes.

Compound Fertilizers

To make a compound fertilizer, you add half the Mulchpit's mulch value as a single type of Fertilizer before the composting process takes place. While Fertilizer stats in some area don't compound (they take the highest value), they do take on traits of the old fertilizer as well as the new. If you're patient you can make some pretty powerful Fertilizers, though that time could also have been spent just growing more crops, so there's a natural balance there.

Lunar Automatons

Lunar Automatons are machines purchased for Lunar Tokens during Lune that process plant products into more valuable forms.

Each product type has a variety of ways of refining it, for example turning Bark into Paper. These forms don't always work, there's a set number per plant and you have to stick it in the Automaton and see what comes out the other side -- if it fails you'll at least get Mulch.

Each transformation is paired to a single Lunar Automaton. The value change runs additive or multipliers on one or more of the currencies -- like everything else, it's randomized. It also takes time to process, whether it's successful or not -- this time also depends on the Automaton.

Transformations draw from extrapolated real-world material science and there should potentially be levels to it.

Mana System

Spells use Mana. Your maximum Mana is dictated by how many living plants you have that have had Manalizer added to them. When the plant dies, you lose the Mana there. Thankfully there are ways of making plants functionally immortal.

Mana recharges at the start of every Sanguine.

Spell System

Spells allow you to place permanent enchantments on everything whatsoever in the game -- items, rooms, plants, etc. These spells alter the various properties therein.

The overall Spell system targets every single possible function and there's no cap on anything (other than things like Swans that use browser processing power -- a maximized stat here would instead just give you a map to work with or something to get around that).

Spell upgrading (The Altar)

The altar allows you to upgrade Spells, which generally targets their magnitude and Mana cost. Spells can become free if you go far enough.

Ramping

Using the Spell system, you can completely break the game, which actually ties into the end goal. However, getting there takes a lot of work:

You'll need a steady supply of keys. Enchanting weapons to guarantee a quick win is a good path forwards, as is upping the amount of keys Guardians give on victory (represented in 25% chance increments, not integers). Or reviving defeated Guardians.

Teleportation like spells will make getting around Halls to find crystals easier. Upping Crystal yields and lowering Mattock cost (or upping Mattock durability) will help immensely. Same deal with reviving Crystal outcrops. You can alter which crystals are generated and their chance as well.

You should be able to chain spells/actions together in some capacity to automate the grinding associated with this.

Mana costs are a problem for sure but upping the amount of Manalizer you get, making plants immortal and increasing the amount of plants that can be planted helps a lot. Same deal with making money near infinite via some mechanism (high yields + high product values + daily yields would definitely do it).

Crystal Golem

Passing the golem's challenges is how you win the game:

It needs some absurdly high number of Penumbra tokens, so making money very easily is essential here.

You need to spend a good bit of mana, so ramping that up is also essential (more plants + more Mana per plant would do it).

You need to beat it in a fight. It has a lot of health and high speed and strength, also there's a cap on the total number of turns possible to prevent recursive nonsense. Heavily enchanted weapons/armor are your friend. It has maybe 4 Nomina so you would need to know how to work with the nomina system for ideal battle conditions.

Automation

Automation allows you to bind spells and actions together, cutting out a lot of grinding and also providing a path for reaching an infinite amount of something.

There are two fixtures associated with it, both of which cost a higher tier of Penumbra tokens than other things, requiring that you use the rest of the magic mechanics to increase money supply first:

Spellmaker -- turns actions of any type whatsoever (probably not movement) into Spells. Spells made in this way have a Mana cost but don't consume time or wait when performed. These spells then act like any other spell -- they can be upgraded or used in automation. Like Spell Stations, you have to unlock each action with a pgcs of crystals.

Aether Lens -- Allows you to combine together spells of either kind into automated spells. Mana costs are summed. Costs crystals, with an increasing amount with each piece applied to a chain. This applies when combining together automated spells as well -- comboing a 3-spell and a 2-spell is equivalent to making a 5-spell.

Before you use one of these spells, you get a readout of what it'll actually do and if there are any caps on going infinite (like tool durability or mana cost) it'll indicate it. You can still use these spells up to the cap.

If you're free and clear to turn something infinite, you can. Infinite stats/item amts will be indicated with the infinity symbol and act the way you'd expect infinity to.

For balance reasons, there are some actions you can't turn into spells -- for example the action of improving a spell's Mana cost.