Botany

authors:

~deepend


table of contents

Botany is a tiny terminal game where you grow an ASCII plant that lives on your Tilde home. It thrives when you water it on time, and it sulks—then dies—if you forget.

Quick start §

  • In a shell, run: botany
  • Use the on-screen menu to Water, Look, Visit, Garden, Instructions, or Exit.
  • Your plant and stats live in ~/.botany/.

How it grows §

  • Time = score. The longer it lives (and the more generations), the more ticks you earn.

  • Stages: seed → seedling → stages 2–5.

    • Species appears at stage ≥2, rarity at ≥3, color at ≥4, “seed-bearing” at 5 (you can harvest then).

  • Miss watering too long and the plant dies. Typical rhythm:

    • Thirsty after ~18h, dead after ~72h without water.

Watering §

  • In the game: choose Water.

Seeing your plant on the web §

  • URL: https://tilde.club/~username/myplant
  • Shows status, last watered, and the current ASCII art (including fun holiday art on Oct 31).

Opt-out of the web view §

Don’t want your plant visible on the web? Create this file:

touch ~/.notrackbotany

The page will show “private” instead of details.

Visiting and the garden §

  • Garden: browse everyone’s plants from inside Botany.
  • Visit: see who stopped by and go say hi. Visiting is social.

Tips §

  • Water roughly every 18 hours; set a reminder.
  • Stage 5 lets you harvest to start a new generation with bonuses.
  • If a web page looks wrong, launch botany once—opening the game reconciles state.

Grow well, water often, to keep the garden alive.