pond.nz

The goal

Make your pond as deep as you can. Depth, measured in fathoms, is your score, and it's what the leaderboard ranks. A new pond is a few fathoms deep. A good pond is hundreds. Ponds that have been kept a long time go much, much further down.

You don't dig. The pond wears itself deeper, and how fast depends on how alive it is. A pond full of plants, healthy animals, births and buildings erodes faster than a bare one. So really, the goal is to keep a thriving pond, and the depth follows.

Every time the pond reaches a new depth, new animals, plants, foods and buildings become possible. What they are is for you to find out.

Your first 10 minutes

A new pond is nearly empty: a few seedlings, some snails, shrimp and crabs, 30 pearls and 15 essence. That's on purpose.

1. Look around. Click any animal to open its card. Drag to move around, scroll to zoom. Point at anything for a tooltip.
2. Feed them. Open the item bar at the bottom, pick Pellets (free) and click the water. Hungry animals leave, don't breed and eventually starve.
3. Plant something. Plants cost 2 to 15 pearls. Each one is liked by certain animals, and its tooltip says which. Plants spread on their own, and a pond with grown-up plant life is what draws new kinds of animals in.
4. Wait for dawn. Every dawn pays out pearls: one for every species in the pond, plus up to 5 more for how comfortable they all are. More kinds of animals, kept happy, means more money.
5. Watch the journal (bottom left). Births, arrivals and discoveries show up there. Your first new species usually turns up after a pond day or so.

The screen

Pick a food, plant or building from the item bar, then click the pond to use it. A little chip shows what you're holding and what it costs. Press Esc to put it down and go back to just looking. Hover any item and press + to pin it to the bar.

Controls

On a phone, press and hold any button to see what it does without pressing it.

Money

There are three numbers to keep track of. They do different jobs.

Spending on things that last (buildings, plants, animals, gene upgrades) also counts as an investment: you get a tenth back as points right away, and a small dividend every dawn after. Food doesn't count. The score panel (P) shows what you've invested and what it's paying.

Animals

Getting new kinds

You can't buy an animal your pond hasn't met yet. New kinds find their own way in, one at a time, with a wait after each one that gets longer the more you already know. A kind turns up when:

• the pond's plant life is grown enough for it,
• the water suits it (fresh, salt or both, and warm or cold),
• the pond is deep enough for it,
• and the wait since the last new kind is over.

Click the ? on the animal rail to open Wildlife. It lists every kind that could still come, how likely each one is in your pond, whether the pond is ready for it, and when the next one can arrive. A lure (pearls) makes one kind much more likely to be next and shortens the wait. Once a kind has arrived, you can spawn more of it from the rail with essence.

Keeping them

Unhappy animals age faster and wander off. An animal's card shows how it's doing. The ones that matter most:

Growing them

Animals get bigger every time they eat, with no hard limit. When one animal eats another, it can pick up any of the prey's genes that were better than its own and pass them on to its young. You can also improve any animal's genes directly from its card with essence, up to ten levels each. Max one out and it shows on the animal.

Breeding

Breeding is where most of your points come from, and it's how you get rare animals. Two animals of a kind will breed on their own when all of this is true:

• they're adults and close to each other,
• they're more than 65% full (Brine shrimp gets them there fast),
• they haven't bred too recently,
• there's room in the pond (the census count shows it) and the water isn't too tense.

Some kinds only breed at a breeding habitat you build, like spawning gravel or an amphibian pool. The card for each habitat tells you who breeds there.

Rare animals

Babies get a mix of both parents' genes. Some looks, like albino, piebald and melanistic, are hidden: an animal can carry one copy without showing it. Breed two carriers and some of the babies will show it. Others, like shiny, glow and ghost, just turn up now and then and often pass down. Rare animals get a thick colored outline.

Breeding the same rare again pays 25% more each time, up to 3×. The first one of its kind in your pond pays 20 extra.

Paragons

Keep breeding the same rare line and you'll earn a Paragon: a free, top-quality animal of that line with a crown of light. You get one at 3, 8, 20 and 50 rare births in a line, and also when a species has scored enough points for you. Claim them from the ♛ on the rail.

The hatchery

If you want to breed on purpose, build a hatchery. Put a pair in a pen, feed it, pick a trait to breed toward (size, speed, longevity, glow...), and each brood's best baby replaces the weaker parent. It's a little idle game of its own, and it keeps running while you're away.

Building

Buildings cost pearls (a few also need essence), sit in the pond and affect everything around them. Click one to upgrade its reach and strength. Some you'll have from the start:

More buildings unlock as the pond gets deeper. Built out over deep water, they also let the pond hold more animals.

Going deeper

The pond erodes a little all the time. The side view next to the map shows how far you are to the next depth. What wears it down:

• Tides. They do most of the work. Salt water has big tides, fresh water barely any, so salt deepens about three times faster than fresh.
• Plant life. A pond grown thick with plants erodes faster.
• Buildings. The ground around them scours away.
• Life happening. New generations, rare births, new species and fossils all push it along.
• Points count a little too, but on a curve, so you can't just farm your way down.
• Essence. You can pay to deepen the pond directly. It costs a bit more every time.

Here's every depth in order. Salt-water names come first, fresh-water names after the slash. Times are rough, for a salt pond at normal speed. Fresh water takes about three times as long.

1. 0The reef/ The pondstart
   A few pioneers (snails, shrimp, crabs, starfish, jellies) and some seedlings. Plants fill in, and new kinds find their way in one at a time.
2. 1Tide pools/ Marsh pools~30 min
   Pools get scoured into the beach and cut off at low tide. Sand sharks start turning up in the shallows.
3. 2The twilight zone/ The deep lake~1–2 h
   The far edge falls away past a drop-off and the pond gets bigger, growing out into deep water. Reef sharks or giant catfish move in, with lanternfish, sturgeon and more. New build: kelp forest / drowned forest (shelter and a nursery). New food: krill / bloodworms.
4. 3The midnight zone/ The sunless cavea few hours
   The light runs out, so only things that glow stay bright. Anglerfish with lures, gulper eels, vampire squid, blind cavefish, olms. New builds: black smoker / crystal grotto (pay essence every dawn), the brood chamber where deep species breed, and the oil rig (rich, but it leaks).
5. 4The abyss/ The drowned cathedralmany hours
   The first mythic animals. They're huge, rare, and the whole pond scatters when one arrives. New builds: whale fall (a feast for deep life) and the drowned idol (draws the mythic up, but nothing near it rests easy).

Every time you reach a new depth

• You get a lump of points: 150 × the depth number² (depth 4 pays 2,400).
• The pond grows outward, and the new part is darker and deeper than the last.
• New animals become able to arrive on their own. You can also unlock that depth's species early with essence from the evolution tree (click the side view).
• New plants, foods and buildings show up in the item bar with a NEW badge.
• The narrator's notes get a little less calm.

Stuck?