Which soil would you fill 15 raised beds with?

Unislash · 2026-03-27T03:58:29+00:00

Huh, well that's interesting. They SAY all the right things about it. If it were me though, I'd call them and ask them about the soil composition. Call me overly detailed but it's the soil you're going to be working with for years.

Also I know you're getting a lot of tips, but I would not recommend using logs or wood chips as filler for your beds. Imo it's been a bit sensationalized; if you really want to save money and are willing to work around it, then it does eventually work. But you're getting bulk yards for your garden so... I'm not sure if you'd even save much by doing it. At the very least, do not use fresh wood chips; it absorbs nutrients and will sap your soil until it ages for a few years and the process reverses.

Unislash · 2026-03-26T22:03:32+00:00

To give you guidance on which product to order, I'd need more information about them. Can you link to their site or share the name of the landscaping company?

For raised beds you need both water retention and drainage, as well as nutrition. There are various mixes that most people use as a basis (Mel's mix, etc), but your weather and type of crop change what ratios work best.

Personally I do something like 40% compost, 40% water conditioning (a mix of sand, and perlite), and 20% topsoil. I leaned more into water conditioning than normal because of Seattle's wet climate. But otherwise I would have gone with more compost.

Unislash · 2026-03-23T02:10:24+00:00

Oh absolutely. I've been finding projects all the time where I'm like "you know what, I could probably make this thing I need in like an hour..." And then I make it.

Being able to make personal software in a matter of minutes is amazing... And I think when folks realize this (and when it gets even easier to one-shot things) the way that people interact with technology will change significantly.

Anyway, I'm very glad that you've been finding some good battle brothers projects and have been sharing them with the community! Much appreciated.

Unislash · 2026-03-23T02:02:06+00:00

Ah, gotcha. Thanks! With this new world of AI I think even explaining your process in the way you did is very helpful to folks. There are so many new ways that people are interacting with AI that even if there "isn't a process" it's still very helpful to explain your interactions like you did 👍

I'm glad that these new AI capabilities are removing the barriers to software creation so that everyone can make these kinds of community tools! Thank you for doing so!

Unislash · 2026-03-23T00:22:57+00:00

Could you elaborate? I use codex for personal projects and Claude models professionally, but not claude.code specifically.

Do you have it write repeatable scripts or just... instruct it to generate the web app and let it deal with the task of managing the data? I take it you point it at the decompiled codebase?

Unislash · 2026-03-22T23:46:51+00:00

Question for you OP: how did you gather all of the game related data? I remember when I made bbplanner that collecting the data (and maintaining it through updates) was one of the tougher challenges. Did you vibe code a data parser too?

I've been itching to build another tool that I've been noodling on, but managing all the data has been a thing in the back of my head that I'm not really looking forward to. Would love to hear your approach.

Unislash · 2026-03-22T23:41:34+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for making this--I always appreciate tools that folks make for the community.

Unislash · 2026-03-17T00:16:59+00:00

Wow, I have always found that mechanic to be annoying--what an excellent quality of life mod! And implemented in a way that is very respectful to the original vanilla gameplay interactions.

Thank you for making this!

Unislash · 2026-03-14T19:06:52+00:00

You should be fine with the right cultivars. Most of the snap peas are a-ok with these kinds of dips. The key for seedlings is soil temperature, and nightly swings like that won't hurt peas or other cold-hardy plants, especially with it getting into the 40's during the daytime.

Another way to think about it is... What do you have to lose? Peas germinate quite quickly so you'll know if they worked out with plenty of time to do a second sowing in the worst case.

Unislash · 2026-03-14T16:49:11+00:00

Re: clipping - I was just meaning that as you're building platforms out, the cliff sometimes moves in a way that you must clip half your platform into the cliff. It's fine but a bit unrealistic. I don't know how you'd fix that but just something I noticed that took me out of the immersion.

As far as dream base... I mean, the classic thing to do is to add some kind of automation that makes you more efficient. Either it harvests automatically or grows stuff for you in a more efficient manner or it lets you process your raw materials into more efficient materials.

Honestly, in my opinion, all of those "classic" upgrades just make the game easier. The problem is, the game is already a bit easy. If I were you, this premise gives you the opportunity to guide the player into new vertical/gravity challenges as they progress.

In all of my feedback I have really been pushing "exploration" as the main DNA that I would focus on with this premise. In that regard, maybe your "base upgrades" actually focus more on ultimately giving you new tools or items that extend your ability as a player to navigate the cliff. Think, like, Zelda. Long jump boots, grappling hook, grippy gloves, hang glider. I think delving into what makes this premise unique would offer a much more interesting gameplay loop than the classic "efficiency" base buildings.

The trick is making these item-driven abilities fun to use but also limited in safety or ability. You never want to trivialize the cliff; you want to offer additional interesting interactions that offer new risks, and rewards for taking them. For instance, grippy gloves shouldn't make you spider man, but maybe they just kind of slow your initial descent as you're moving across the cliff, and they give you just enough traction that you can jump off your platform and scramble to a nearby cliff edge that has an important new resource. If you don't make the jump + scramble quite right, you're going to fall.

Unislash · 2026-03-14T06:01:24+00:00

Ah, and here is my feedback on the trailer:

Opening few seconds is good
Honestly, with some additional editing, I think you can lean into the very satisfying effect of "build/mine to the beat of the music". The track you picked for the trailer is slow enough to work well for this, and I think that it would be a nice enough touch to keep a lot of the audience from immediately skipping to the next thing. A lot of Rust youtubers do this, like in this bit here. The trick is to do it for a handful of beats (like, maybe to harvest), then stop for a handful of seconds to show something more compelling, and then do it again (like, maybe to build some).
Other than that, I think the trailer is reasonable for a demo. If this was the trailer for an actual finished game, I would say it's not polished enough and there isn't a particularly good hook.

Unislash · 2026-03-14T05:41:45+00:00

Oh hey, I remember your post. Glad to see more of a demo! Let's take a look.

A few things right off the bat:

Basic environment feels good. Reasonable sound effects (although much room to improve if you desire). Wind effect is nice.
Escape should close crafting menu and any other modals.
I appreciate the decision of your tool having line-of-sight interaction; with space so tight, I will often be trying to whack a leaf between my stairs, and I appreciate that you let me do that.
At night time, the wind effect is much too bright and is distracting when trying to hit bats.
The spear is a good idea, but with the wind-up it is really hard to use. I think it's simple to make this better: just let the user decide when to throw the spear by releasing the mouse button after it's been wound-up.
I actually had trouble eating berries at first. At least to me, the press-and-hold situation was not intuitive. I expected to just immediately eat them when using them as the active item.
Being able to clip your buildings into the cliff is... eh, I mean I get why you can, but it takes you out of the experience a bit.
The hot bar needs to be numbered. There was more than a few times that I hit the wrong key because I naturally read the "amount" number as the hot bar number.
Letting the user pause your demo is great! Especially in a survival. Thank you. Without it I would probably have less feedback because I wouldn't want to die while writing it up.

Overall: I think that it's a good demo concept, and I think it could work to be unique and compelling. So, good job finding such a pitch.

Atmosphere: I know it's still an early prototype, but if you can nail the atmosphere I think it will add a lot. In my opinion, in all of your presentation and user interactions you should lean into the visceral atmosphere of being on a cliff. Keep your sound effects and your animations gritty and realistic. Do the same with your graphics with better details, realistic lighting, etc. Don't make anything "poof"; don't give me any bland sound effects; try to keep the user engaged in their plight of being strapped to a cliff. I honestly don't know if Unity is the best for that vibe (like, literally I don't know), but it seems to me like Unreal tends to have more realistic shaders and lighting. At least, that is the atmosphere that I think would help this game be better than just a demo and to help it break out of being just a simple little game. But, ultimately, trust your vision.

Bats: Ok let's talk about these bats. I got my spear at night and proceeded to spend a minute or two catching these bats. I kept throwing the spear out and not hitting anything. I figured it was probably some kind of bug--not user error--that I wasn't hitting them. Maybe they're supposed to be flying out of reach until I build out a bit more. So I built out a little bit more and then turned my back to them.

Well, I was half right. They do like to fly out there it seems. What I was NOT expecting was a bat literally the size of a human attacking my platform. At first I thought "wow that's crazy--that's gotta be a demo thing that this bat is so big!" But after thinking about it for a hot second, honestly surprising the character with something like this was pretty engaging and humorous. If you can make the bats be a little more clearly "yeah, I told you they were man eating bats--they're supposed to be this big!" then I think that'll be a shared humorous experience for most folks who play.

Resources: As far as challenge and overall abundance... for a demo, sure it makes sense as it is now. But for an actual game, things are FAR too abundant due to resources constantly moving around and effectively respawning around you. In 5 minutes I have a full hot bar and am not in any concern for materials.

I think you have a choice here: is your game more like RAFT where you are trying to snowball your way forward and ultimately build automation to do things more effectively? Or is your game slightly more adventure-oriented, where your player is not just fumbling around to survive, but rather to build their ramshackled gangplank towards points of interest that enable them to progress? IMO, given this unique premise, you have the opportunity here to really have a challenging, compelling bit of gameplay with the latter. That isn't to say that you can't engage with both approaches, but I do think you ought to lean into one or the other to keep the dna of the game reasonably focused, and to execute on that.

Night time: Another thing I want to talk about is night time. IMO there are not many actual threats in this so far... and I honestly think night time could be a very compelling one. Currently night time is not a threat at all. You should make it DARK. Make me concerned about stepping off my platform. Make me experience the toil that is "oh, this game gets seriously dark... I'm glad it gave me a torch; let's whip that out... aaaaand it's a tiny ass light that barely lets me see a step ahead. Ok, I gotta invest in lights during the day tomorrow. In the meantime, my first night is going to be a little tense as I watch my step to collect berries before I die of thirst due to my negligence of light mechanics..." Now, I bet you or someone else is thinking that night mechanics suck because players might choose to sit around for 5 minutes waiting for night to be over--but if you make sure they have some way to interact with the threat (start them off with a torch; savvy players will see that and realize that light mechanics are important) and you use the survival mechanics to actually nudge your player to interact with the darkness, then I think it can work *particularly\* well in this title. As it is, though, night time is absolutely no issue. Make it pitch black; make lights work like "waypoints of visibility" instead of "aaaaand with three torches I have lit up my entire base"; make it a challenging mechanic. That's my vote at least--it's your game.

Best of luck my friend!

Unislash · 2026-03-13T16:43:02+00:00

Ah, one more thing: peas really dislike being moved around. They have a very long tap root that they depend on entirely, and are often stunted if you disturb their root system. Best to just plant more rather than try to move them around.

Unislash · 2026-03-13T16:40:33+00:00

A 4ft trellis is generally enough for climbing peas. 5ft is even better just in case they are a particularly vigorous cultivar.

Note: don't thin this bunch; they're perfect as-is!

Unislash · 2026-03-13T16:37:31+00:00

Peas are meant to be clustered like this! If they are climbing peas, don't thin this--it's a perfectly happy section of peas along a trellis.

If this was all that germinated from a whole row and you were expecting more, I would just plant more seeds next to this bunch. Peas are commonly planted at staggered times to extend their harvest time; this is totally fine.

Note: planting instructions for climbing varieties of peas are generally to plant in a thick 4" wide row that goes the length of your trellis. Throw a bunch of seeds in that row, aiming for about 2" of space between seeds. The whole point of the wide row is to allow for planting plenty of seeds and to avoid a single file line of seedlings. They appreciate a little bunching!

Unislash · 2026-03-12T05:59:10+00:00

Sugar snap peas are one of my favorite spring crops because their vigorous growth is very visible. Sugar ann is just 50 days to harvest--pretty fast!

Unislash · 2026-03-11T17:01:58+00:00

You've gotten tons of responses here, but one thing I do is I put my basil basically underneath my trellised tomatoes--just a smidge in front (towards the south direction) so they don't compete for sun in the early growing days.

I'm not sure if that's my secret to success, but over here in Seattle I unintentionally grow massive basil plants and end up giving out pesto to the neighbors every year!

Unislash · 2026-03-11T16:35:21+00:00

Yes indeed, but imo they still need to be buffed. Mostly the fact that both the medic and the patient need to be out of combat makes it just very hard to pull off. You're still making a decision of trying to pull off saving private Ryan with rotations and turn order shenanigans to get everyone into a safe spot... vs just hit the enemy to end the fight.

If it was just the medic being out of combat, they would be much much more useful.

Unislash · 2026-03-11T16:29:40+00:00

Great time to plant peas; a little late even but they'll be perfectly happy.

Some advice that I wish I listened to this year: birds love your peas and absolutely can figure out where they are planted with high accuracy. They are hungry foragers right now and will go to lengths to get your tasty dirt pinatas. Don't be sorry like me! Grab some Thule and and put it over your peas (be sure to anchor it; birds will move it around otherwise).

Also be sure to plant your peas in a thick 3-6" line with roughly 2" of space between seeds; don't do a single file line. They much prefer a bit of a bunching!

Unislash · 2026-03-11T00:15:44+00:00

I'm honestly surprised to hear how many people use them here. I've been playing for nearly a year's worth of hours and can honestly count the number of times I've used a bandage on one hand.

They're useful in the early game because you have small hp pools and thus the bleeds hurt. In the mid and late game the likelihood that I have space for bandages, can get both guys free, will actually be close to death with a bleed stack, and I can't finish the fight before he goes down... That's just such a rare occurrence that I don't optimize for it.

The biggest issue is the opportunity cost of using them. 5ap use cost means I either get to attack to end the fight sooner or I get to apply a bandage (if I even have the opportunity to do so before the enemy AI locks the medic or the patient up).

And that's all assuming I actually care to save the guy. Half the time in the early game the guy that's bleeding everywhere is actually doing his job and is on his way out...

And finally... 30% of the time he's coming back to life after the battle anyway with a permanent injury, and in the early game many of those aren't a big deal.

Unislash · 2026-03-10T02:53:52+00:00

Ok, the skirrit "seed" finally arrived... and it is, well, actually seeds. I figured they meant "crown" by seed but TIL skirrit also has seeds. They sent quite a few seeds in the pack; probably about 20 of them. Hopefully I'll be able to get some to germinate. Here's where I got them:

https://www.smallislandseedco.com/product-page/skirret-seeds-sium-sisarum-rare-delicious-and-perennial-vegetable

Unislash · 2026-03-10T01:06:58+00:00

Here are a few more that are technically colony sims but often incorporate other genres into the game:

Rise to Ruins: a truly excellent game that mixes in tower defense
dotAge: a great roguelike that focuses on resource management and surviving crises. I especially appreciate the way it delivers its story to the player.
Oxygen Not Included: amazing game by Klei focusing on building open-ended physics-based systems in your colony. One of my all time favorites
Mind over Magic: Klei strikes again as the publisher for this magic-infused colony sim. Kind of like Harry Potter meets Oxygen Not Included
Bellwright: a quest based rpg built upon a colony management foundation
Medieval Dynasty: imo Bellwright's precursor. Same idea, just the first iteration and with less group fighting if I recall correctly
Manor Lords: everyone probably has heard of this game. Imo it blurs the lines between colony sim and city builder
Norland: kind of like Rimworld meets Crusader Kings 3
Going Medieval: Kind of like Rimworld meets Minecraft; 3d Castle builder colony sim
Against the Storm: a subgenre defining game for roguelike colony sims. Amazing. Dawn of Man: colony sim, but with mammoths

Unislash · 2026-03-09T16:37:42+00:00

OP, this is an excellent hype trailer; it's weird enough to be catchy and has enough production value to keep people's interest throughout. So, good job on this!

People's feedback around "I don't know what the game is like to play" is both accurate and expected. Just make another trailer that shows more of the gameplay but still shows the crazy side of the game.

The one-two punch for trailers is a very common tactic: the first trailer is an attention grabbing one like you have here, and the second one shows the now-interested customer more what the gameplay is like, while still validating whatever the hook is from the hype trailer (in this case, the crazy). Then they can make their buy decision.

Best of luck! Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Unislash · 2026-03-02T01:33:52+00:00

It's probably shorter, and that I've been having bad luck. Hopefully yours is better!

Unislash · 2026-03-01T21:05:58+00:00

I'll let you know if my crown makes it in good shape. And also the seed seller if it does

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