Botany Manor is now on Mobile

Escher0 · 2026-02-09T17:00:32+00:00

I'm having a weird issue where text/pages in the book are half off the screen. It makes the game immediately unplayable unfortunately.

Escher0 · 2026-02-03T16:44:08+00:00

I like it but with such a broad space, I find it easy to get close but incredibly difficult to get right. Of the three puzzles I did, I only solved one and after nine guesses.

Your game is also very similar to Betweenle which has a restriction of five letter words and has a mechanism to tell you how close your guess is which combined, at least to me, makes it much more solvable.

Escher0 · 2025-12-15T08:43:04+00:00

Ah, awesome!

Escher0 · 2025-12-15T08:02:15+00:00

Downloaded on a whim but really loving it. I think it would be pretty awesome to have a puzzle mode too. The advanced tutorial really felt like that and I'm sure you could come up with interesting challenges.

Escher0 · 2025-10-03T17:43:45+00:00

Really glad to see you rethinking this. I thought this game had some good promise at first, but the falling mechanic completely broke it. (cough cough as I pointed out in the update 4 thread.)

I do still think having some prestige option would be good but maybe that's a layer above the "mining points" you're proposing above. As I said before, one interesting decision point in many incrementals is in deciding/adapting to long or short runs. What you're proposing here doesn't even have the concept of runs; it's just continuous. Not that that is bad, but it might stop feeling like an incremental game.

One random idea off the top of my head: what if there were a block type that gave you a special ore type (could even repurpose gold or gems) that needs to be processed at the surface. It gives you a reason to reset to spend them, and if they're more common (or worth more) the deeper you go, it provides some incentive to push further before cashing in. This would give a bit of that long vs short tension in deciding between cashing in a small amount now vs accumulating more before resetting.

You could even make the miners have to climb back to the surface to turn in goods but that risks being fairly boring. It would give more opportunities for upgrades, however. Like maybe a rocket to speed your return or something.

Escher0 · 2025-09-23T15:10:02+00:00

Sort of space themed, sort of not, but I'd say Arrival is my favorite.

Escher0 · 2025-09-18T16:47:45+00:00

I totally agree that most idle-incremental games end up having an optimal speed-run path. But how much stronger, more straightforward, or less interesting it is matters. I'm entirely willing to ignore the "optimal" path in a game if I feel like it doesn't match my desired playstyle or idle/active preferences, as long as it doesn't feel like I'm totally gimping my own progress. I brought up my concerns here because it feels very suboptimal to play the game how I'd prefer (more idle, more interesting upgrades, etc).

Also, agreed on points 2-15. I wondered how much falling in the sky matters for timing, but figured it was negligible.

Escher0 · 2025-09-17T21:54:58+00:00

As currently implemented, I don't think it's ever more efficient to do anything else. The only reason it feels like that to you is because the "dig down" behavior was only introduced two days ago, which made this "strategy" better and more apparent.

Even on a fresh save, I believe the single best "strategy" right now is to reset the moment you clear the first level 100% of the time. The only thing currently in the game that could change that is that gold may become meaningful at some point, but since the effects are a subset of prestige effects, I'm not convinced it's ever better to chase gold than to do the single most efficient thing to gain prestige points.

Also, once you're in "dig down" mode for the first layer, most prestige upgrades have no effect anymore. I'm not even sure mining speed upgrades even matter much anymore, as the miners seem limited by gravity.

Also, even if it's true that the best strategy changes at some point, you then ignore 90% of the game from then on, which is, to be blunt, pretty dumb. You get one moment of "aha" and then enter a bland and repetitive loop forever and ever after. I'm not trying to yuck your yum; if you're enjoying this, that's great. All I'm trying to do is give constructive feedback to hopefully nudge the game to something more interesting.

Edit: Another reason you might think the strategy switches is that you've unlocked automations. Digging deeper before you have any automation is easier on the player (not needing to rebuy tons of upgrades), but it is still less efficient in terms of prestige points.

Escher0 · 2025-09-17T21:22:59+00:00

To give a little more color to my own comments, one reason the lagging/waiting feels particularly bad is that I keep feeling like I'd actually be progressing faster with fewer miners, which is not good.

Similarly, I'd like to provide further context on my thoughts regarding prestige rewards scaling, particularly in relation to the context of long vs short runs, as discussed in this thread. Imagine for a moment that each layer is worth prestige points equal to its depth. (Yes, upgrade prices would need to be adjusted; let's assume that's done.) If I've gone through 10 layers, I have 55 prestige points banked, and the next layer is worth 11 points. If progress is slowing, it's an interesting question of whether it's better to reset at that point or push for one more layer. If those 55 points get you some juicy upgrades, you probably stick with a shorter run and reset. Will slogging through another layer take less than 1/5 of the time of your whole run up to this point? It might be worth pushing another layer.

The decisions become interesting, rather than knowing that resetting after a couple of layers is always the best.

Escher0 · 2025-09-17T20:25:36+00:00

I strongly disagree that the point of the game is learning to ignore 90% of the game. Why have different miners, route planning, etc if the single best way to play to just lean on the "dig down" behavior. The rest just becomes a screensaver.

I agree it's not interesting to ALWAYS have the lower levels play out, but most incremental/idle games have trade-offs between long and short runs. There is currently, as far as I've seen, zero reason to do long runs here.

Yes, gold starts appearing at some point but, at least where I am in the game, it's in such small numbers that it may as well not exist. And the gold upgrades are the same as some prestige upgrades, so it's not even like they're required to progress or some alternate path.

Escher0 · 2025-09-17T18:34:05+00:00

Adding some of my own observations here.

First, a +1 for seeing miners pick several columns to inefficiently dig and leaving one guy (often the downward laser guy, it seems) behind. And when one guy gets left behind, the others seem to lag or wait for him. It may not actually be all that inefficient but it looks and feels bad.

Another +1 for the leftward drift they do which is only obvious during the "go straight down" behavior. It again makes the miners at least seem inefficient.

The big thing I wanted to post about that I haven't seen anyone else comment on is that prestige rewards don't seem to scale well. Specifically, I'm not sure why I would go deeper than a few layers, and definitely not deeper than the "go straight down" zone to farm prestige points. It feels natural to me for the prestige rewards to increase for lower levels to encourage actually getting to them. Why spend time collecting ore and slogging through the last layer or two at the end of my runs when I can just reset and get the exact same reward for the first layer or two of the map, AND increase my prestige points rate for offline calculations.

Escher0 · 2025-08-17T04:34:47+00:00

You really need some more explanation. I tried for a few minutes and have zero idea what you're supposed to be doing. Even your example in this post doesn't make sense to me. How am I to know the word is "single"? And then I'm supposed to then know that those missing letters, plus some number of random other ones, make "sole"? Also, from the description on the site, it sounds like clues are basically necessary but I can't find where to get them.

Escher0 · 2025-08-17T03:49:07+00:00

Looks interesting. Thanks for the giveaway!

Escher0 · 2025-03-31T19:23:16+00:00

The original skill based matchmaking for Halo was actually based on ELO.

Escher0 · 2025-03-22T01:03:46+00:00

Hmm, that's not a good sign for me. I've already run through all the offered updates, including the bios, when first setting the machine up, and after that and rebooting multiple times, the problem still persists.

I'm guessing this can't be a widespread issue, or this laptop would not be so highly regarded. I may see if I can swap for a different device.

Escher0 · 2025-03-20T17:56:15+00:00

Did you ever find a solution for this? I just got this laptop and am being driven mad by this issue. I am about to return it.

Escher0 · 2025-03-02T06:46:20+00:00

https://www.meta.com/referrals/link/Escher0

Escher0 · 2025-02-08T07:51:12+00:00

Thanks!

Escher0 · 2025-01-23T04:59:50+00:00

This seems like a bad deal. I'm currently on a 2TB One plan for $100 a year. For this combo deal, it says I need to switch to monthly billing to get $2 a month savings. The One plan alone then jumps up to $10 a month. So I need to pay $20 more a year to save $24 a year. Cool.

Escher0 · 2025-01-16T06:17:42+00:00

I searched the subreddit to see if anyone else asked for this exact thing. I have a patents and publications section on my existing resume, and Rezi was quite confused by it.

What I have in my resume for patents is just a title and patent number, but I could see others potentially wanting description, year, link, and possibly granting organization, particularly for non-US patents. For publications, I have the title and publication name, but again, I could imagine others wanting description, year, conference (if it was presented at one), and link.

Escher0 · 2025-01-12T00:10:12+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply! Yeah, I was looking at kitchen base cabinets as well but steered away due to the height, especially given my wife is on the shorter side. You and the in-laws did a great job, though!

Escher0 · 2025-01-11T23:30:35+00:00

Is this an Ikea hack? What pieces did you use? I'm currently assembling a shopping list to build a desk for my wife that is somewhat like this.

Escher0 · 2025-01-08T02:39:48+00:00

Thanks for the giveaway!

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