A cozy nature-restoration life sim. You've set up camp at the edge of a damaged nature preserve: gather fallen materials, craft and plant habitat, shape the land biome by biome — and real animals return when the habitat truly supports them. See more at wildwillows.app.
Built with TypeScript, React + Vite (UI shell), Phaser 3 (world), and Harper v5 (database, API resources, seeded data). Harper is the source of truth — every action is validated server-side; the browser never computes game state on its own. All art — terrain, objects, animals, the player, and journal thumbnails — is procedurally generated from simple shapes at boot, so the game ships with zero asset files.
Play it: bai13y.itch.io/wild-willows (download) · play.wildwillows.app (browser demo)
Source available, not open source. © 2026 Bailey Dunning, all rights reserved. The code is here to be read, studied and learned from — no licence to use it is granted. See NOTICE.md for what that does and doesn't allow. Running, building, distributing or deriving from it needs written permission; ask and it may well be yes.
Working on it? CONTRIBUTING.md is how to run, test and ship it; ARCHITECTURE.md is why it is built this way.
npm install
npm run dev # terminal 1 — Harper (API only) on :9926
npm run dev:web # terminal 2 — the UI on http://localhost:5173Needs Node 24+ and Harper v5 (npm install -g harper). Full setup, testing, deploy and desktop/Steam build instructions live in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Keyboard required. Wild Willows is a keyboard game (WASD/arrows to roam, letter keys for panels, number keys for tools), so it gates to devices with a keyboard.
v1 ships solo-only and fully offline — the desktop app runs the same server logic in-app against local save files, with no server, no account, and nothing to install on first run. The browser demo is server-validated: it plays against the hosted Harper.
- 6 biomes — Willow Meadow, Old Hollow Forest, Rushwater Wetland, Redstone Scrubland (desert), Graywind Heights (alpine), Pelican Shore (coastal). All six are explorable on foot and fully restorable.
- 150 animals — 25 per biome, each with diet, shelter, a real-world fact, and habitat return requirements. Every animal has a unique, procedurally-built sprite composed from its species traits (quills for a porcupine, antlers for a deer, long legs for a heron, a domed shell for a turtle, claws for a crab…), so no two read alike.
- 436 habitat objects and 406 recipes across habitat, structures & decor, paths, storage, camp comforts, and restoration kits. Plantable flowers/grasses/trees are planted, not crafted, so 392 of the recipes are craftable items and the remaining 14 are the plant set.
- Unlockable crafting — most recipes start locked and unlock one at a time as a biome recovers (health crossed, a keystone animal welcomed), with a clear "New Crafting Recipe Unlocked" callout. New caretakers begin with a handful of starter recipes (Grass Patch + a few) and almost no materials — the first job is to gather.
- Three chest sizes — Small (120), Medium (250), and a Large Chest (500) that unlocks later, once Redstone Scrubland is restored to 25% and you've crafted a Medium Chest first.
- 37 gatherable resources, including biome-exclusive ones (geode and agave nectar in the desert; quartz crystal, obsidian, pine nuts, lichen, juniper berries, and packed snow in the alpine) and 5 weather-gated rarities that only surface during the right weather. Node generation guarantees every resource appears in its biome.
- Three upgradeable tools (basket / shovel / watering can, 4 tiers each) plus six field guides — one per area, three steps each (pocket notes → field guide → expanded guide).
- 50 achievements for restoration milestones, food-web moments (keystones, predators, ecosystem engineers), gathering/crafting/terraforming mastery, and preserve-wide progress (no hidden ones; locked entries show a non-spoilery hint). The first, First Friend, is earned the moment you welcome the grasshopper home — and the grasshopper is always the first animal to return anywhere. All are server-validated and shown in a dedicated Achievements menu (K).
- A home you can step inside, decorate, and upgrade. Walk up to your camp tent in Willow Meadow and press E to step inside. Decorate with 91 indoor-only "camp comfort" items — sleeping bag, rug, lamp, house plant, hammock, string lights, armchair, fireplace, bookshelf, rocking chair, terrarium, firewood rack and more. Thirty-three of them hang on the walls and can go nowhere else: framed landscapes, a wall clock, wreaths, a moss wall garden, a driftwood mirror, a dragonfly mobile, both chandeliers. Hanging space is the back wall and the two side walls (not the corners, and not the door wall) — a tile you hang something on is a tile the Warmth track leaves unwindowed, so the wall is yours to arrange. You can sit in any of it — armchairs, stools, a rocking chair, floor cushions, a toadstool, a moss pouf, and the benches and picnic blankets out in the preserve — by walking up and pressing E; any step gets you back on your feet. And tables, dressers and shelf tops hold one small ornament each: a house plant, a snow globe, a model boat, the cocoa warmer. A surface carrying something can't be moved or picked up until you take the ornament off it. First you build your home in one of three styles — Log Cabin (wood), Meadow Cottage (fiber & flowers), or Stone Hearth (stone) — which sets its look for good, and a Cozy Bed is craftable the moment it is built; then upgrade along four tracks: Space, Comfort (a flat carry-capacity perk), Furnishings, and Warmth. Some bigger pieces need a proper house, not the starter tent.
- Daily tasks — a small rotating board of three light goals per day, rolling over at 4 a.m. local time (gather / craft / place / water / plant / observe), with small material rewards drawn from your unlocked biomes. Collapses from the board itself and disappears once everything's claimed.
- A living, biome-specific feed. A corner activity feed narrates everything you do, and notable beats persist to a Feed menu (F); toasts are reserved for the big moments. Each biome has 50+ randomized lines (ecology, atmosphere, coexistence, fun facts) that surface over time, always specific to the area you're in, many gated to that biome's recovery, the animals back there, or the habitat you've built.
On every change the biome is recalculated:
- Health = a baseline plus the health value of placed objects and tended soil/open-water bonuses, on a gentle curve toward 100. The ground visibly greens (or warms, in the desert) as it rises.
- Ecological balance measures how complete the food web is: how many of the biome's animals have returned, how many of its predators / top-of-chain species are back (they depend on prey, so a biome of herbivores correctly reads as unbalanced), and trophic breadth — how many different animal kinds are represented. By design it cannot reach 100% until every animal in the biome is back.
- Each animal has return requirements: minimum health, sometimes balance, specific habitat objects, sometimes water features, and sometimes other animals already back. Every biome has a quick early ramp — the meadow grasshopper returns at just 8% health with a single Grass Patch — with the rest hardened to need a real mix of planting and crafting.
- Water-dwellers need terraformed water. Shaping open-water tiles with the watering can forms ponds, lakes (a large connected body), and rivers (a long connected channel). The snapping turtle needs a lake; the kingfisher and other water-dwellers need a run of open water. (Rivers are measured and shown, but no animal currently asks for one.)
- Plants must mature. A freshly planted habitat is a sprout and doesn't count until it has fully grown in — and the moment it matures the biome re-checks, so anything now eligible arrives on its own.
- Animals return one at a time per change, so a biome fills with visitors gradually.
- Returned animals get a comfort level; remove key habitat and they become "rarely seen," but they're never owned, captured, or lost like pets.
Restore each biome to unlock the next. There are five restoration kits, one per unlockable area, each craftable only once and each unlocking partway up the gating biome's health track (45% for the Forest kit, 65% for the rest) — so the real bar is the health + animals, not the kit. The first unlock needs the meadow at 60%; every later one needs the gating biome at 80% health, with progressively steeper animal counts:
| Unlock | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Old Hollow Forest | Meadow 60% · 10 meadow animals · Forest Restoration Kit |
| Rushwater Wetland | Forest 80% · 10 forest animals · 25 total animals · Wetland Restoration Kit |
| Redstone Scrubland (desert) | Wetland 80% · 13 wetland animals · 45 total · Scrubland Restoration Kit |
| Graywind Heights (alpine) | Desert 80% · 15 desert animals · 65 total · Alpine Restoration Kit |
| Pelican Shore (coastal) | Alpine 80% · 17 alpine animals · 85 total · Migration Path Marker |
All targets stay attainable — every one of a biome's 25 animals can return by 80% health. Areas connect by trail gates, and you spawn at the correct edge when you travel; a forward trail shows a trail sign until its destination is unlocked, then becomes an open gate. Rushwater Wetland opens partly pre-shaped — channels, a pond, and watered beds are seeded on first entry. Redstone Scrubland is dry by design: you can ready soil beds but cannot flood it into open water. Graywind Heights rises into an impassable, snow-capped range along its skyline (the map extends downward by the same number of rows, so its restorable floor stays full size) and carries exclusive resources feeding alpine-only crafts like the Pika Haypile and the Obsidian Totem.
Four tools, each upgraded with materials gated on biome progress. Higher tiers gather more at once (tier 1→1 … tier 4→4):
- Gathering Basket (4 tiers) — carry capacity 200 → 800.
- Shovel (4 tiers) — prepare beds, shape mud banks/burrows, dig more per swing.
- Watering Can (4 tiers) — collect 1 → 4 water per fill.
- Field guides — one per area, three steps each (pocket notes → field guide → expanded guide). The first step shows each animal's basic entry and comfort, but the full diet, shelter, fact, and return hints stay locked until you gather that area's own materials and upgrade its guide — so even the meadow's full entries are earned, not free.
Crafting needs no station — press C anywhere; it draws from your basket first, then all linked chests, atomically. The crafting menu has two filter dropdowns — Place (by biome) and Type (Plants & flowers / Habitat / Structures & decor / Paths & fences / Storage / Camp comforts / Restoration kits) — plus a search box that matches a recipe's name, what it makes, its type, and its ingredients, so typing "reeds" or "clay" surfaces everything that uses them. One-time kits show a "Crafted ✓" state, and restoration kits in your basket can't be thrown away.
Many items can also be planted: dig a soil bed with the shovel, water it, then plant a seed/sapling that sprouts and grows in over time. Every biome has 3+ plantable trees and its own flowers/grasses. Crafted items each get a small deterministic visual variation so no two look identical.
Resource nodes are scattered per area, with the mix randomized per player (deterministic, so they stay put) while guaranteeing every biome resource appears. A water source is guaranteed near where you spawn (skipped in the dry desert), and new saves start with extra water so early bed-watering isn't a grind. You can build anywhere — place or plant on a regen spot and the node simply relocates to the nearest free tile, keeping its regrowth timer. Nodes regenerate on a per-node timer.
Every biome has its own weather, changing about every twelve minutes of play — the calendar advances from accrued play time, not the wall clock, so a world you leave for a week is exactly where you left it. A gentle day/night cycle runs on the same clock: dawn → day → dusk → night, each an equal quarter, tinted over the world and eased between rather than snapped.
- Seasons cycle spring → summer → autumn → winter (a few play-days each), biasing which weather a biome rolls and subtly tinting the ground.
- Seven weather types — clear, cloudy, rain, storm, fog, snow, heat — each with a full-screen colour wash and, for rain/storm and snow, falling particle weather (pre-warmed on biome entry so you arrive mid-storm). A HUD chip shows the current weather + season.
- Weather & Seasons guide (N) is an educational panel: for the biome you're standing in it explains, in plain language grounded in credible sources (USGS, NOAA/NWS, NPS, US FWS, EPA, university extension, Britannica, Audubon, Smithsonian), how the current weather and season shape that biome — desert rain waking spadefoot toads, alpine snowpack as a slow-release "water tower," forest "fog drip," storm-cast kelp wrack feeding the beach. It also shows a short cross-preserve forecast (Now / Next / Later) per biome. The weather-gated resources are intentionally not listed — finding them is a surprise.
- Weather-gated gather nodes. While the right weather is active, a biome sprouts a couple of nodes for a unique material: rain → Rainwater, desert storm → Stormglass (fused like fulgurite), snow → Frostflower, fog → Morning Dew, desert heat → Sunstone. The pairing is biome-specific, and the server re-checks the live weather before granting one.
- They're functional, not just collectibles. Each crafts into bespoke decor with real restoration value — Rain Basin (a water source), Sunstone Cairn (shelter), Frostflower Planter (plant), plus a Dewlit Lantern, Stormglass Lantern, and two home pieces. They earn their keep as habitat, not as trophies.
Grouped by biome, the journal shows each animal's actual sprite thumbnail (colored for returned animals, a silhouette for ones still to come), comfort level, why it returned, and — once the field guide is upgraded for that area — full diet/shelter/habitat notes and exact return hints.
The expanded guide asks before it answers. Opening a still-missing animal's entry poses one question first: from the habitat hint, which of three same-biome habitat objects is this one really waiting for? Answer and the full checklist opens; there's also a Just show me the list link, so nobody is ever blocked. Wrong answers cost nothing and name the right object, and the card keeps a running "read right" tally. Guesses grant nothing and gate nothing. Each full entry ends with a collapsed Sources list (Animal Diversity Web, NPS, US FWS, Cornell Lab and friends). Toggle Unknown first to surface what you haven't found, or search by name or kind.
WASD / arrows to move · E / Space to interact · 1–4 select tools (basket · shovel · watering can · paint) · B basket · J journal · K achievements · F activity feed · C crafting · M preserve map · N weather & seasons guide · T tools & upgrades · G goals · O settings · H How to Play · click animals to observe · Shift+click a placed object to pick it up · Esc closes menus / cancels placement. Gathering spots glow, the nearest interactable gets a pulsing ring, and pickups animate into your basket. The ? button (or H) opens How to Play with the full reference.
The game ships in English and Spanish (pick on the title screen or in Settings → Language), with all player-facing text flowing through a zero-dependency i18n layer. Adding a language is a matter of dropping in catalog files — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Anonymous per-save-slot gameplay metrics, plus an optional email only if you submit feedback. No tracking, no ads, no third-party analytics. Full details in PRIVACY.md.
Developer documentation: CONTRIBUTING.md — local setup, testing, deploying to Harper, desktop/Steam/Mac App Store builds, code signing, the database schema, the API reference, systems internals, metrics, and notes & simplifications.