Rainroom

A little rain. A little patience.

Play Rainroom free in your browser. Grow a miniature woodland garden around a little spring. Choose plants, connect channels, and prepare for the next change in the weather. After every two actions, release the rain and watch your garden grow.

Rainroom is a cozy, turn-based garden strategy game about making something lovely with limited space and water. Each garden lasts eight weather rounds, with time to think between decisions.

Free public playtest · Playtest 08

This is a work in progress. Try one garden, then tell us where you got stuck and whether you wanted another go. You do not need to be good at strategy games to help.

New in Playtest 08

Clearer instructions, a water preview that explains what each plant needs, easier phone controls, and new planting and growth effects with distinct game sounds.

Grow your own way

• Six plants with different water needs and neighbour bonuses.
• Guide spring water with channels and reeds, save rain in barrels, and improve the soil.
• Preview growth before you act, move plants, turn channels, and undo before ending the round.
• Nine garden studies with different goals, plus a daily garden and three starting layouts.
• Attract wildlife by growing the plants and habitats each visitor needs.
• Keep finished gardens in your album, name them, replay their growth and save a picture.
• Share a garden code and challenge someone to beat your bloom score.
• Daylight and moonlight, two changing musical scores, rain and wind, reduced motion and keyboard controls.

Keep a little of what you grow

Enjoyed your little garden? Support Rainroom for US$5 and receive Garden Notes: a five-page illustrated PDF, a practice journal and two woodland wallpapers. A screen-reading edition and SVG originals are included. All gameplay and studies stay free.

The companion includes six-plant and water/soil references, practice prompts for the three original garden studies, a printable score sheet, desktop wallpaper at 1920 × 1080 and phone wallpaper at 1080 × 1920. This is a thank-you download, with no promised future game or subscription.

How to play

Choose a card, then choose a highlighted plot. You can also spend an action moving a plant or turning a channel. Use two actions, then end the round. Match the facing ends of channels to carry spring water towards plants. The first growth earns 1 bloom. Fully grown plants earn the blooms and bonuses shown on their cards. Garden goals award journal stamps separately from your bloom score.

Use the in-game guide if you want more detail. There is no decision timer.

Keyboard: 1–3 select a card; arrows move around the garden; Enter or Space places; R rotates a channel; Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes before rain; Escape cancels a selection.

Help shape the next version

After playing, leave any of these answers in the comments:

1. Did you finish a garden? If you stopped, where and why?
2. What was the first thing you did not understand?
3. What was your most satisfying decision? Did the rain preview help you make it?
4. Did you start another garden? Why or why not?
5. What one change would improve the experience most?

For a bug, include Playtest 08, your device/browser, the round and garden code if visible, what you did, and what happened. A cropped game screenshot helps.

Comments are public and require an itch.io account. Please leave out email addresses and other personal information. Playing the game itself requires no game account.

Before you play

Desktop Chromium is the tested baseline. Firefox, Safari and physical phone testing are still pending for this build; phone support is experimental. Please include your browser if something behaves strangely.

Progress and personal bests are saved in this browser on this site. They do not sync between devices or transfer from another hosted copy. Clearing site data can remove them. The daily garden changes at midnight UTC. There is no online leaderboard.

The game contains no advertising or automatic gameplay analytics. Feedback is collected through itch.io comments; itch.io operates the surrounding website under its own policies.

Development note: Rainroom uses AI-assisted code, writing and artwork, including its generated woodland title illustration. Plants are drawn from SVG code; music and game sounds are synthesised in the browser using AI-assisted code. No generative AI service runs during play.