Logistica: Under Glass

Terrarium is a deck-builder about a medieval village growing inside a sealed glass case. You never order a villager around. You play cards, and villagers are what the cards cost. Each one you spend walks out across the board, does the work, and comes home a turn later. Villagers you do not spend widen your hand next turn, so a card held back is worth part of a card later.

BUILDINGS ARE CARDS, AND CARDS COME OFF THE BOARD

Every building in your deck is a one-shot card. Place it and it leaves the deck for good, so raising your village is also how you thin it.

What goes back into the deck comes off the board. A Farm hands you Harvest. A Lumber Camp sends Fell, a Tower sends Muster, a Smithy sends Forge Arms. If a raid burns that building down, the card it gave you leaves the deck from wherever it is sitting, whether that is your hand, the draw pile or the discard.

The market is a rack of shelves at the side of the case, and it sells things rather than cards. A building bought there goes straight onto a tile and is paid for when it lands. What the shelves stock depends on what already stands in your village. No Smithy, no Hired Swords.

THE BOARD IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE PUZZLE

Each tile is a 3x3 grid of smaller cells, so footprints straddle tile borders and neighbours matter. Mills boost the farms beside them. Palisades stiffen each other. A Gate is worth more with wall on both sides. Trees block the cells they stand on and leave the gaps buildable. Docks want water, quarries want stone.

Ground outside your start square is locked and fogged until you buy it. Every tile you clear is also a tile the raiders have counted, so growth and threat are the same number. The lantern on the corner post of the case runs from green through ember to red as exposed threat climbs. Tap it and the tally swings out so you can do the arithmetic yourself.

RAIDERS LOOT BEFORE THEY BURN

A raid measures its threat against your defence, and anything left over is damage. Damage first steals from your largest stockpile, so hoarding carries its own risk. Buildings only start coming down once there is nothing left to take.

Muster puts your idle villagers on the wall, where they die before your buildings do. Play another card after mustering and you have thinned your own line.

AGES

Every village starts with a Town Centre. Pay for the next age and the Builders leave for two turns. When they come home your hand grows, the stalls open a new shelf, and the deck owes a burn: any card, from any pile, out of the run permanently. Cards of a later age carry that age's dye in their wood.

Raiders who get past everything else do not burn the Town Centre. They pull it down an age, and the shelves close behind them.

THE ROAD

A case is one run. Win it and you go out onto a road across an island you drive yourself. You are the ox cart, and the country around each stop is that stop's own biome, so the desert you can see from the track is the desert you will land in.

Each place is a run with its own bed, outline and rule. Raiders wading in off the coast. A quarry already standing. Walls already up. Every edge at once, at the last case.

Between places, notes offer a choice of two: cards into the deck, a purse, a card burned out, an upgrade. Jars hold relics that rewrite the rules of the next run, such as cheaper tiles, wider markets, boosts that linger, or a warning turn before every raid.

Lose a place and the road ends there. Start again and the island is laid out fresh.

FEATURES

Villagers as energy. Cards cost people, not mana. Spent villagers walk out, work, and return a turn later. Unspent ones widen your next hand.

Buildings are one-shot cards. Placing a building removes it from the deck, so construction is deck thinning.

A deck that answers to the board. Buildings put their own boost cards on top of your draw pile. Burn the building and the card goes with it.

A market of things, not cards. Six stalls, one reroll a turn, stock gated by what stands in your village.

Sub-cell placement. Tiles split 3x3, footprints straddle borders, and terrain decides where a building is worth building.

Growth is threat. Every tile you clear counts toward the next raid, and the lantern on the case shows how exposed you are.

Raids that take before they break. Damage loots your biggest stockpile first, then your walls, then your buildings, then your people.

Ages. Pay the Town Centre, lose your Builders for two turns, gain a card in hand and a new shelf of goods, and owe the deck a permanent burn. Raiders can knock an age back off you.

A drivable road. An island laid out fresh each campaign, with places, notes and jars in tiers. Steer the ox cart between them and choose which stop to take next.

Places with rules. Six board outlines and four biomes, each place scaled to how far along the road it sits.

Relics in jars. Most rewrite the rules of every run that follows. A few are read by the road itself.

Rarity that means supply. Rare cards have a fixed number of copies for the whole run, and the shelf ink tells you how many are left.

Built to be looked at. Flat-shaded low poly under glass, selectable art looks, and a camera you can orbit and push in on.

CONTROLS

Drag the glass to turn the case, scroll to zoom, tap a card to lift it and tap again to play it. The hand rests low against the glass and rises to meet the pointer. Everything is one pointer, so nothing is buried in a modifier key.