Tendril

Getting started

Install Tendril, watch the starter program farm for you, and make your first change.

Install or play in the browser

Download the game for Windows, macOS or Linux, or play it in your browser. Both are the same game. The desktop app keeps your farm on your computer and can sync it to the leaderboard; the browser version keeps it in the browser you play in.

What you start with

Every new farm gets one 8 by 8 plot of land, a barn in the corner at position (0, 0), one bot standing on the barn and no coins. The first time you open Endless mode, a short tour has you type three lines of your own (move east, till, plant carrot). The game’s built-in starter program, which Sandbox mode opens with and the Examples menu offers anywhere, is a longer version of this simple one:

# Start with carrots. Questions are free; actions cost ticks.
repeat forever:
    for each tile in tiles():
        go_to tile
        if scan().ripe:
            harvest
        if scan().empty:
            till
            plant carrot
        if carried() >= capacity():
            go_to barn
            deposit
            sell carrot, all
    go_to barn
    deposit
    sell carrot, all
    wait 100

Type or paste it into the editor and press Run. The bot walks every tile, plants carrots, harvests the ripe ones, and sells them at the barn. Coins start coming in after about a minute.

The screen

  • The farm on the left. Click a tile to inspect its soil. Overlays show moisture, nitrogen and fatigue.
  • The editor on the right, with autocomplete and inline errors. The line each bot is running is marked as it runs.
  • The console under the editor shows anything your program prints with say, plus runtime errors.
  • Run, Pause, Step control the program. Breakpoints pause on a line so you can look at every bot’s variables.
  • The top bar shows the tick, your coins, your net worth and the weather.

The five modes

The tabs at the top of the game switch between them.

  • Endless is your long-lived farm. It keeps running in real time, is saved on your computer, and once you sign in it syncs to the leaderboard.
  • Sandbox is a throwaway farm for experiments, separate from Endless, with speed controls and single-stepping.
  • Campaign is a short series of lessons that teach Sprout one idea at a time.
  • Daily is one farm, the same for everyone, once a day.
  • Season is the same idea over a week, with three medals: Wealth, Speed and Brevity.

Under the farm, the Research tab shows what you can unlock and the Achievements tab tracks small goals.

Make your first change

Carrots sell for 2 coins. Wheat sells for 3, yields twice as much, and survives frost, but you have to research it first for 40 coins. Change the planting lines to this:

        if scan().empty:
            till
            if unlocked(wheat):
                plant wheat
            else:
                plant carrot

And add a line near the bottom of the loop, next to the selling:

    unlock wheat
    sell wheat, all

unlock is a farm action. It costs no time, and it simply does nothing until you can afford it. Press Run again. Every bot restarts from the top of the new program, and the farm carries on where it was.

Where to go next