Moonlight

something is coming down the garden path.

a lane defence held upright: moonlight drifts down, you tap it to collect it and spend it on seeds; walkers come down three columns of soil in nights that get heavier; three porch lamps are your lives, and when the last goes out the card draws your income against the wave

Every plant is a bet on time. A daisy costs 50 and pays 25 twice before it has earned its own price back, so planting one early is a loan against a night that is already walking down the path; a thorn costs 100 and starts earning its keep on the first shot. Early on the loan is cheap, because the first walkers are few and slow and the porch lamps will catch one or two. But the nights grow faster than the daisies do, and there is a night on every run where one more daisy would have been one thorn too few. The moment to stop growing arrives earlier than it feels. When the run ends the card draws that: the moonlight you earned, night by night, against what each night was worth in thorns, and marks where they crossed.

Concepts: compound-growth, tradeoffs, timing.

An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.