How Posy works

A bed holds one plant and remembers its growth (seed, sprout, bud, open), whether it was watered, its soil and its parents. The tool rail holds a hand and six tools. Taps on beds go into a queue and the florist walks from bed to bed working through it.

Overnight, a watered plant grows one stage. An open flower stays open six nights on ordinary soil, nine on good or rich soil, then goes over and starts again from seed. Rain waters everything for the coming day; greenhouse beds never need water; in winter, outdoor plants grow only every other night.

Soil is ordinary, good or rich. Every cut or seed harvest takes one level out; compost from the bin puts two back. Rich soil gives a second stem half the time.

Building opens at rank 2: beds (30 coins), sprinklers on the corners where four beds meet (a rain tower waters a six-by-six square), beehives, a compost bin, and decorations that add charm, which raises what the cart pays by up to half. The garden itself grows with your rank, from 24 beds to 64 plus six under glass.

Every flower is a genome: petal count (3 to 14), shape (round, pointed, heart, spoon, frilled), petal length and width, rings (1 to 3), hue, saturation, brightness, an optional tip colour, centre colour and size, stem height, leaf shape, glow and scent. The renderer draws whatever genome it is given. You can try a cross on the front page.

Colour sets the feeling: red love, orange courage, yellow joy, green hope, blue calm, purple wonder, pink gratitude, white comfort and hope. Shape, petal count, rings, two tones, glow, scent, a tall stem and a big centre add to it. A plain wild flower says its colour's feeling at about two thirds; breeding is how a flower says it fully, or says two or three things.

Crossing takes each trait from one parent or a blend of both with a little jitter. One parent's colour dominates 35 % of the time. Small chances of something new: 4 % a random hue, 7 % a random shape, 15 % a petal count shift, 10 % an extra ring, 2.5 % glow from nowhere. Glow and two tones breed true: from two parents that carry them they pass on 88 % of the time, from one parent 45 % (glow) and 50 % (tips). Two different saturated hues can also make a two-tone.

The first cross puts the seed in the bag at once. Every later cross sets seed on both flowers for the day, and the pod ripens overnight into one seed, or two three times in ten. Flowers that look the same are one variety in the catalog. A new variety is catalogued the night it first opens, and the next morning a card shows it and asks for its name: keep the suggestion, ask for another, or type your own.

With the pollen brush loaded, the odds card over the next flower shows what the cross would likely give: colour, petals, rings, two tones, glow, the star band and whether it is new to your catalog, in a gardener's words (“3 in 4”, “rare”). Wren's notebook, in the almanac, fills a page per trait with what you have seen pass from parents to children. Surprise me, in Settings, hides the card.

Rarity rises with two tones, glow, extra rings, green or orange, heart or frilled petals, and very few or very many petals. Stars and the base price follow from it: five stars want glow, two tones, three rings and a rare touch besides.

Each morning villagers write for an occasion: which feelings the flowers should say, sometimes one to avoid, and sometimes a wish beyond feelings (a scent, a glow, three rings, a shape, a colour, a flower of your own breeding). An order takes three to five stems and is due three days after it is written.

At the workbench you pick the order, pick the stems, optionally mark a focal flower, choose the paper and the ribbon, and wrap. Each villager has a taste in paper and ribbon. The score is out of 100:

In the first week a bouquet below the mark is met with warmth and one gentle tip instead of a list of what fell short.

The flower cart in the square buys cut flowers and pantry goods; market day adds a quarter. The display table in the shop has six vases, and while the shop is open somebody may come in each hour and buy a stem at a premium. Spare stems go east on the train to the city market.

From day 15 customers come to the counter, two to five a day, asking for a trait copied off something you grow. Six regulars have five-visit stories that close with a letter. Nobody is told off for being out.

The tea corner is a shop upgrade at rank 6: Theo knocks through the east wall into a room with three tables, and from one till six guests sit down and want one thing from the pantry: tea, honey, jam, a candle, a card, a sachet, a cake. Mara's bakery and June's tea room sell over their own counters, and every villager has favourite bakes.

Crafts are what to do while the flowers grow: they turn cut flowers into goods that keep, which sell at the cart, make gifts, fill pantry orders and favours, and serve guests in the tea corner.

Bees. A hive works the open flowers within three tiles every sunny hour. What a jar tastes of depends on what stood open around it: one of the eight colours, wildflower for a bit of everything, perfumed for strongly scented flowers, royal for four- and five-star flowers, starlight for glowing ones. Twelve honeys in all. The bees also cross flowers overnight and send the seed by mail.

A cellar under the shop opens with your first machine of your own; down there the machines work exactly as in the garden, with no snow on them.

Something new lies about every morning. Wild flowers grow on the meadows by season, with a rare one off the beaten path most days. 48 curios in eight sets of six (Treasures of the Tideline, Under the Trees, Old Posy, The Branch Line, After Dark, and more) go in the cabinet in the shop; a finished set brings a letter with its own reward. 18 landmarks are discovered by walking.

From day 43 a bottle washes up on the sand: one of Captain Hale's eight letters, each with a riddle naming a landmark, and from the next morning a cross marks the spot. Digging opens coins, a seed from a far port found nowhere else, and a curio.

Hester Lark, the travelling merchant, comes to Saltmere Halt on days 2 and 8 of every season on the nine o'clock train: rare seeds, a curio the cabinet lacks, something for the pantry, bone meal, midnight wrapping paper, a page of Agnes Wick's florilegium, and now and then plans for a showpiece years early.

28 kinds of butterflies, moths and birds visit a garden that suits them: the right season, hours and weather, and enough open flowers of a colour, a glow or a shape. Tapping one sketches it into the album.

The Sea Hollow. From day 26 a note in oilcloth lies on the headland above the lighthouse. The keepers' tide log names the next spring low tide, and within two hours of that low water a cave mouth shows in the rocks. Inside is Agnes Wick's garden under a fallen roof: Lanternwort seeds only after dark, Tidebell cuttings only while the tide is out, the Sunwell Rose in the light shaft on fine days, glow moss in the rain, moon pearls at a night low tide, and five of her pages. The tide is real: it moves an hour a day round a twelve-day cycle.

The Old Queen. An ancient flower in a clearing in the woods east of the mill, hidden until found. She wakes when she has been shown one bred flower of every colour family, and gives the Crown of Posy: a legendary seed, fourteen frilled petals in three layers, glowing. It is the longest quest in the game.

Four seasons of fourteen days; a year is 56 days. Weather is rolled each night. Every villager has a birthday, and a flower given on the day counts triple.

The village asks the florist for the festival centrepiece; nothing can go badly, and the plainest one is still welcomed. Rewards scale with how well it answers the festival's feelings, and a keepsake seed found nowhere else follows by letter.

Special days on a fixed calendar: meteors, aurora, fog, gales, rainbows, blossom. Gales and fog bring finds; rainbows too.

Friendship runs 0 to 100 per villager, five hearts. Gains and losses shrink as hearts fill, a loss never takes a heart away, and nothing is lost in the first week. Chatting once a day is +2; a gift once a day is loved (+8) when it is to their taste, liked (+4) or neutral (+2); a delivery is +10, +5 or −3.

Villagers remember what you did (“Day 12: the florist gave me a…”), and the memories feed their small talk and the P.S. under their letters. Heart gifts come by mail at two and four hearts. Story scenes play at the hearts they belong to.

From day 21 a villager at three hearts invites you somewhere, two to four days ahead, for something small and theirs: 30 outings in all. Every villager has a lifelong wish for one flower: hinted at three hearts, told at four, and granted with a single-flower gift for a payoff scene, a keepsake and a weekly kindness.

Twelve buildings can be walked into. Villagers spend some of their hours inside, every room has one thing to look at, and a kitten may come looking for a home from rank 3.

Almost everything pays renown, and renown sets the rank. Every rank opens something real.

Catalog milestones at 8, 12, 20, 30, 45, 65, 90, 120, 160, 200, 260 and 330 varieties bring a readers' prize from the paper. 142 achievements in bronze, silver and gold, seven of them secret. Signed in to Game Center, the main ones show there too.

Seven legends, described two hundred years ago in Agnes Wick's florilegium: Agnes's Moonlace, The Mariner's Heart, The Greenwood Crown, The Phoenix of Posy, The Queen's Tear, The Midsummer Sovereign, Evensong. Each page gives a recipe in genes, and growing one brings pilgrims to the garden gate for good.

The Coastal Horticultural Society, from rank 10: every ten days a breeding brief for a flower nobody has bred yet, built from your own material and proven reachable in a few generations but never in one cross. A matching stem posted from the mailbox brings coins, renown and standing: Associate, Fellow, Councillor, President. The seed bank keeps one seed of every bred variety, with milestones at 10, 25, 50, 100 and 200.

One player hosts their shop; up to three friends nearby join it with Posy on their own phone. There is one game, the host's. The host shows a code of four pictures (out of sixteen: sun, moon, heart, star, bee, butterfly, bird, teacup, shell, honey jar, cake, crown, lantern, paw, watering can, present); a friend taps the same four, a chime, and they are in.

A helper walks anywhere, uses every garden tool on every bed, picks wild flowers and digs up finds. A co-owner does everything the host can, except ending the day. Everything is shared: the seed bag, the bucket, the purse, renown, the catalog. The code is the key of the connection, so only a phone that was shown it gets in, and everything on the wire is encrypted.