Kelp Nursery
A full-3D underwater nursery with 24 seeded layouts. Swim to a rope, hold a seedling at the glowing grip point and attach it, then set each line's buoy depth and tension with sliders or arrow keys. A ten-day growth test (nine seconds) grows every frond using real rules: light fades with depth, surface chop hurts shallow fronds, current speed must suit each seed kind, taller upper fronds shade lower ones, slack lines sag, bow and can tangle, and tight lines load their anchors. A frond thrives when it reaches the nursery target; win when every seed thrives in the same test. Nursery 5 adds surface chop, nursery 9 adds two seed kinds with different current bands, nursery 13 reverses the current mid-test and nursery 17 makes two lines share one anchor. This is one nursery with different seeded layouts, not 24 separate environments.
How to play
- Use the swim stick or WASD to move; UP/E rise and DOWN/Q sink. Swim your hand to a rope until it glows, then press ATTACH or Space. SEED or C switches seed A, seed B or the pick-up tongs.
- Choose a line with LINE or Tab. Drag the BUOY DEPTH and TENSION sliders, or use Left/Right for buoy depth and Up/Down for tension, then press TEST or G to run the growth test.
- Read the probe panel for light, chop and current at your depth. If an anchor is overloaded it lets go: swim to the drifting orange buoy and press ATTACH to re-anchor it. Escape pauses, R retries outside rooms.
Tips
- Light fades with depth but chop hurts near the surface, so the best buoy depth is a trade-off that changes from nursery to nursery.
- Seedlings need 0.45 m of rope between them and shade the fronds below them, so spread seeds and put light-hungry fronds on the shallower lines.
- Tight lines hold fronds steady but load the anchors; shared anchors from nursery 17 carry two lines, so watch the load readout before testing.
Questions
How do rooms work?
Three or more friends can compete on the same seeded first nursery using the existing room lobby. Scores are the best banked growth-test tally. The shared computer is a scoreboard opponent, not another diver in your nursery. A room run ends once, waits for the podium and cannot be retried locally.
What saves?
Best scores, unlocked nurseries, per-nursery records and successful UTC Daily streaks save on this device. Daily success counts at most once per date and failed Dailies do not count. Active swimming frames are not saved.
Why did a seedling not thrive?
After each test every failing seed gets a plain reason such as too dim, chop, wrong current band, shaded or tangled, shown in the message so you can adjust the line.
What if the nursery fails to render?
The game shows an explicit recovery panel. Enable WebGL and hardware acceleration, close graphics-heavy tabs and reload. A lost graphics context also stops the run and requires reload.
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