Thistle Warren
Gather · Flare · Escape
The game loads when you press play.
- Free
- No ads
- No account needed
- No install — plays in your browser
About the game
Gather the dew, flare the night blooms, and outfly four hunting moths through a moonlit hedge garden.
A firefly drifts into a walled night garden and finds it already occupied. Every hedge lane is beaded with dew, and four moths are working the corridors: Ember charges straight at your light, Dusk cuts ahead of where you are going, Frost pincers in off Ember's position, and Moss loses its nerve whenever you get close. Clear a garden of dew to move to the next one.
The night blooms are the turn. Take one and your lantern flares — the moths pale, break off and scatter, and for a few seconds the chase runs the other way. Catch them in a chain for 200, 400, 800 and 1600, and watch the clock, because a moth you caught is only flying its eyes back to the nest.
Three lives carry the whole run. Night finds appear under the nest twice a garden and climb from a berry to a key as you go deeper. When you want your own garden, the Maze Editor lets you paint hedges, dew and blooms and play what you built — it will not let you strand dew where nothing can reach it.
Built for the seatback: one self-contained file, no network of any kind, eleven languages, touch or gamepad.
How to play
- Slide a thumb anywhere on the garden or below it: the stick appears where you touch. Push toward a side before the gap: the firefly takes the next opening on that side. A moment late? It doubles back into the gap. Pull back to turn round. Arrow keys work too.
- Clear all the dew in a garden to move on to the next one. Each drop is 10 points.
- Eat a night bloom (50) and your light flares: the moths turn pale and flee. Catch them for 200, 400, 800, 1600.
- Ember chases you directly, Dusk cuts ahead, Frost flanks, Moss keeps its distance. From the third garden a death's-head hawk-moth guards the bloom nearest you. They scatter to their corners, then hunt again.
- A find appears twice per garden below the hedge nest. Grab it before it fades — later gardens are worth far more.
- Fly off one side of the garden and you come back on the other. Moths use them too, but slowly.
- The camera button, the C key or a gamepad's View button changes the view: the whole garden, close above the firefly, or down in the lanes behind it, where up means ahead. You start behind the firefly. In every view, when a moth is getting close, the edge of the screen glows orange on its side, brighter as it nears, and a soft wingbeat quickens.
Controls
| Touch | Slide a thumb anywhere on the garden or below it and the stick appears under it. Push toward the next gap and the firefly turns there; pull back to turn round. |
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| Mouse | Press anywhere on the garden and drag: the stick appears where you press, and a drag toward a gap turns the firefly there. |
| Keyboard | Arrow keys or WASD steer; C changes the camera; Esc or P pauses, M mutes. |
| Gamepad | D-pad or left stick to steer, A to confirm, B back, Y restart, Start or X quits. D-pad + A moves through every menu. |
