The basics
You're the caretaker of Grandpa's farm. You don't farm or fight yourself. You program P.O.N.C.H.O., a little salvaged drone, in a small Python-like language called G-Script. Write a program, press Run, and watch him work. Then make him better so he can run bigger, faster programs.
The loop in one minute
- Farm. Poncho tills, plants, waters and harvests potatoes. Potatoes are your money.
-
Shop (
I). Buy seeds, fertilizer, Syntax Manuals and a couple of starter parts. - Ride to the Ruins (Bike button). Poncho fights glitch drones and opens crates for hardware parts, crafting materials and manuals.
-
Upgrade on the Workbench (
B). Better parts = more lines of code, faster CPU, more cooling. -
Level up and pick perks (
P). Craft and enchant parts (C). - Go deeper. Repeat. Grind.
You start with 10 potato seeds, 3 radish seeds, a Rusted CPU, a Salvaged Motherboard and a ready-made program that plants a row of 3 radishes. Press F5 to run it.
You program Poncho with blocks at first: click a block on the left of the code panel to add it, drag blocks to move them (drop on the lower half of a loop or if to put it inside), and use the little arrows to move and indent them. Typing programs (the Text tab) unlocks at the end of Grandpa's first chapter: the goal Loops and choices (run a program with an if inside a loop) gives you Grandpa's Typing Manual. Read it in the bag and the Text tab opens. Blocks and text are the same program, so you can switch back and forth after that.
The story so far
Decades ago a farm-management AI got stuck in a loop and spread to every connected machine. The Great Loop wrecked the harvest network, and people have feared robots ever since. Grandpa found Poncho in a crate marked DO NOT POWER ON and hid him in the shed. Now he's yours.
Grandpa's Notebook (N)
Not sure what to do? Open the notebook. It's split into chapters. One or two goals are active at a time, and they also show in the strip under the status bar (click it to open the notebook). Each goal has a note from Grandpa, what to actually do, and a reward: seeds, potatoes, XP, or new things in the shop. Some shop items (the Hobbyist Board, Tin Heat Sink and three of the manuals) stay locked until a notebook goal unlocks them.
| Chapter | What it teaches |
|---|---|
| 1. Grandpa's Shed | your first radishes, the mailbox and Waystone, selling in Mendwell, then harvesting, while loops, managing heat |
| 2. Roots | saving potatoes, upgrading the motherboard, reading manuals, buying and clearing your first plot |
| 3. Old Tech | the ruins, crates, sensors, better parts, clearing a depth |
| 4. Tired Soil | radishes, selling, reading the soil, beans and corn, crop rotation |
| 5. Homestead | storage, wells, bees, the charging dock, the greenhouse |
| 6. Into Town | the waystone, Mendwell, requests, the market, trust, the bank |
| 7. The Deep Relay | deeper ruins, the Loop Warden boss (reading a pattern, dodging, timing) |
| 8. Memory | Duskberry bushes, dictionaries, remember() / recall() |
| 9. Bloom | the Aether Lily: everything at once (water, soil, crop neighbors, a program that tends it) |
Poncho's limits (why upgrades matter)
| Stat | From | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Lines | Motherboard | Max lines of code. Blank lines and # comments are free. Too many and it won't start (the first line that doesn't fit is marked). Starter: 8. |
| CPU (lines/sec) | CPU | How fast he thinks. Every executed line costs 1; every loop check (while/for going round) costs 1 too. Starter: 2/sec. |
| Heat | Heat sink | Every line and action adds heat. At 100% he overheats and does a 4-second emergency reboot. wait() cools him 3× faster. |
| Move speed | Servos | How fast he rolls between tiles. |
| Sensor range | Sensor | How many tiles around him he can see (the sensor grid, scan() etc.). |
| Bag slots | Cargo | How much he can carry. |
| Power | Servos / affixes | Attack damage. |
An endless loop never freezes the game. Poncho just stays busy and gets hot.
Mood
Poncho has feelings: Terrified < Anxious < Calm < Content < Joyful. Getting hit in the ruins scares him. When he's Anxious and an enemy gets close, he abandons your program and runs back to you at the entrance. He calms down there and then carries on. Courage perks and affixes help, and the Unshakeable Gyro legendary stops him fleeing at all.
Tips
- Keep programs short at first. You only have 8 lines and 2 lines a second.
-
Watch the Heat bar. Sprinkle
wait()into long loops so he cools off instead of rebooting. -
Your first priority in the ruins is the Sensors manual (first crate). It unlocks
scan_crates(). - Buy the Hobbyist Board early (more lines = smarter programs).
- Salvage parts you don't need; materials turn junk into upgrades.
-
print()is your debugger. Its output shows in the chat log.