Habitat — a card game about the board, not the draw

How a run works

Your score is one multiplication, and it runs away from you.

Every Season, your habitat resolves and pays you Vitality × Bloom. Vitality is easy to find. Bloom is scarce, and it multiplies — which is why a fine run and a great one are not ten percent apart, they are multiples apart.

Each Season has a target, and the targets double. Miss one and the run ends there.

51Vitality × 25Bloom = 1,275Score

The creatures

A creature is only worth what it is standing beside.

Almost nothing scores on its own. Creatures pay for neighbours, for family, for position, for what has already died, and for how much of your deck is left. The habitat is a sentence and the order of the words changes what it means.

Pyrelark +4 Vitality. If rightmost, Bloom ×2.

Pyrelark, a Ember creature. +4 Vitality. If rightmost, Bloom ×2.

Thornmother +3 Vitality. Each creature beside it gives +1 Bloom.

Thornmother, a Bog creature. +3 Vitality. Each creature beside it gives +1 Bloom.

Tallykeeper +1 Vitality for every 4 cards still left in your deck.

Tallykeeper, a Stone creature. +1 Vitality for every 4 cards still left in your deck.

Marshshade +2 Vitality, and +2 more for every creature the habitat has lost this run.

Marshshade, a Bog creature. +2 Vitality, and +2 more for every creature the habitat has lost this run.

Duskcoil +4 Vitality, and +2 more for each Dusk creature beside it.

Duskcoil, a Dusk creature. +4 Vitality, and +2 more for each Dusk creature beside it.

Cinderbloom +2 Vitality. At the end of each Season, permanently +1 Vitality.

Cinderbloom, a Ember creature. +2 Vitality. At the end of each Season, permanently +1 Vitality.

Twelve places to play

Every board is somewhere, and most of them are earned.

A run is played on a painted place. You start in the Bog; the rest open behind things you actually did.

Sunlit BogYours from the start

Dawn FenReach Season 3

Turquoise ShallowsReach Season 5

Misty CragsClear a run

Violet MeadowScore 5,000

Ashen PlainClear on a hard Tier

The Frostwood

The Glimmering Hollow

The High Canopy

The Salt Pan

The Blossom Orchard

The Drowned Hall

The Glade

Between Seasons, the keeper works on what you brought.

Survive a Season and you earn Sap. Nothing new is for sale — the keeper changes the creatures you already have. Feed one, take a cutting from it, or graft it so it thickens a little at the end of every Season. There are buffs that last the run, and a ward against the Omen you can see coming.

Or spend nothing and save for the thing on the top shelf. You will not be told which was right. You find that out at the end.

The Story

Five chapters. Thirty stages. Every one of them a fight.

The Story is not the endless game with a plot bolted on. A stage boss has hit points, your Season score is damage, and there is no target to clear — everything you grow, you spend. It hits back every Season it survives, and takes a creature off your board when it does.

5Chapters

30Stages

25Minions

5Bosses

Each chapter is five minion fights and then the thing they were leading to. The minions are drawn from their boss’s own lore — chapter one is the tide going out, so its five are what the tide left stranded. Beat the boss and you win its card: the tamed half of the thing you just fought, and the one printing in the game that cannot be bought.

Chapter 1The Shallows

Chapter 2The Long Winter

Chapter 3The Thicket

Chapter 4The Mirror Pool

Chapter 5What Fell

Set Pieces

Seventy boards with exactly one right answer.

A Set Piece is a run with the luck taken out. The board is fixed, the hand is fixed and nothing is drawn — so there is no bad beat to blame and no good one to thank. Somewhere in the position is a line that scores higher than every other, and finding it is the whole game.

Par is not a designer’s guess. Every piece is solved exhaustively against the real engine before it ships, so the number you are chasing is the best the board can actually do.

70Set Pieces

7Sets

10Per set

1Best line

0Luck

0Hidden cards

Seven sets, ten pieces each, and every set teaches one thing the run will ask of you later — what the ends of a row are worth, what a copier copies, when the right move is not to spend a Play at all.

Daily & Ranked

One board a day, and a ladder worth the climb.

The Daily Run deals the same seed, the same shelf and the same eight Seasons to every player until midnight. Nobody has a better deck and nobody got a kinder draw — the only thing separating two players is what they did with an identical position.

Ranked is the opposite arrangement: your own deck, built from what you own, against a rating that only moves when it counts. Six metals, three divisions each, and a floor you cannot fall back through once you have reached it.

BronzeThree divisions

SilverThree divisions

GoldThree divisions

PlatinumThree divisions

DiamondThree divisions

MasterThree divisions

Rating resets with each Harvest, but the highest metal you ever held does not — the emblem you finished on is yours to keep, and the climb starts again from the floor it earned you.

Omens

The weather arrives whether you planned for it or not.

An Omen changes the rules for a whole Season. You always see the next one coming — that is the whole design: an Omen you cannot see decides the run for you, and one you can see is something to build around.

Mirror PoolThis Season your habitat resolves right to left.

DeadfallA creature you remove passes all of its grown Vitality and Bloom to whatever replaces it.

Long ShadowYour leftmost creature's ability triggers twice.

RootboundYour habitat is locked — nothing placed, nothing swapped. Every creature gains +1 Vitality, permanently.

Ember WindBloom multipliers apply twice, and you have one fewer Play.

TidewrackDiscards are unlimited, but each one costs 2 Vitality.

Four seconds each

This is what it looks like
to actually play it.

No cuts, no edit, no interface mocked up for a trailer — a real run, recorded as it was played.

Placing a creatureOrder is the whole game. Every creature reads its neighbours.

The Season resolvesVitality times Bloom, against a target that doubles.

The GladeBetween Seasons, spend your Sap — or save it.

Screenshots

Every board is a painting
you are playing on top of.

Click any of them for a closer look.

What is in it

Built to be replayed, not completed.

Every run is a fresh deal from a shared seed: new creatures, new Omens, new order. You lose runs. That is the game — a roguelike, where what carries forward is what you worked out, not what you unlocked.

312Creatures

8Families

12Habitats

6Omens

18Buffs

8Difficulties

Earned, never bought

Your whole deck wears what you have done.

Frames are the loudest thing you can wear, so they cost more than a run that went well. Every one of them is a deed done at the table.

The Angelic card frame — **Angelic**Clear all eight Seasons without a single Discard

The Demonic card frame — **Demonic**Clear a run on Tier 6 or above

The Floral card frame — **Floral**Reach 30 Bloom in a single Season

The Shadowbeast card frame — **Shadowbeast**Clear a run with every creature of one family

You have to lose to learn.

No tutorial hand-holding, no telling you which creature was the right one. The game states what happened. What it means is yours to work out.

Free to play · coming soon

App StoreiPhone & iPad
Google PlayAndroid
SteamPC

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