How to play Briarwink

A visual guide · Make your first relight

Your goal

Relight every dimling. Then step through the moon gate.

You are a small gardener in a moonlit walled garden. Grumpy dimlings are fireflies whose glow went out. Plant moon pods; each one bursts into a cross of moonlight that clears briar and turns any dimling it touches back into a firefly. When the last dimling glows, a moon gate opens. Step through it to reach the next night. The nights keep coming, so see how far you can go.

01Walk, then plant

Tap where you want to go

A simplified teaching board. Tap any tile and the gardener walks there along the shortest path, shown as a dotted trail. Tap the Plant button to set a moon pod on the tile where you stand.

Briarwink runs in real time, but every night waits for you: nothing moves until you tap to begin. You can also press and drag on the board to steer. On a keyboard, walk with the arrow keys or WASD, plant with Space, and pause with Escape or P.

02Plant, step aside, and let it bloom

Your first relight

Before · plant, then step aside

After · +60 points

A simplified teaching example. The pod blooms along its row and column. The beam up relights the mope (50 points), the beam right clears the briar (10 points) and stops there, and the moonstone stops the beam below. The gardener stepped diagonally away, so the light misses it.

A pod blooms a little over two seconds after you plant it. Every live pod shows a cross of petal marks where its bloom will reach, and a ring around it drains as it gets ready. The easiest escape is one step along, then one step across, so you finish on a diagonal from the pod.

03Link pods for bigger scores

One bloom wakes the next

Before · two pods in a line

After · +200 points

A simplified teaching example. The first pod's beam reaches the second pod and wakes it, so both bloom as one chain. The second relight in a chain scores double, and linking two pods adds a bonus: 50 + 100 + 50 = 200 points.

Each extra dimling relit by the same chain scores more than the one before: two times, three times, up to 8 times its value.
A chain of pods adds 50 points for each pod after the first, as long as it relit at least one dimling.
A bloom lingers for a moment, so a dimling that wanders into it is relit too. Plant where a dimling is heading, not where it is.

04Stay out of the light

Two ways to lose a heart

In the light · Dazzled!

On a diagonal · safe

Touching a dimling · Bumped!

A simplified teaching example. Standing in any bloom, including your own, dazzles you. A dimling walking into your tile bumps you. Standing on a diagonal from a bloom keeps you safe.

You start with 3 hearts, shown as lanterns, and earn one more every 4 nights, up to 5. At 5 hearts the reward is 300 points instead.
After a lost heart you return a moment later with a short blink of safety. Your best power-up drops one level and waits on the ground where you were, so you can pick it back up.
A dimling relit on the same moment it reaches you costs nothing.

05Meet the dimlings

Each kind moves in its own way

Mope · 50 pointsNight 1. Wanders slowly. The easiest to line up.
Peeker · 80 pointsNight 4. Spots you along a clear row or column, glows its eyes for a moment, then dashes.
Rootling · 100 pointsNight 7. Burrows through briar. Bloom that briar to relight it.
Nudger · 100 pointsNight 10. Pushes a pod one tile along its path.
Twinbud · 120 pointsNight 13. Splits into two sprigs when you relight it.
Sprig · 30 pointsFrom a twinbud. Quick. Harmless while it shimmers after appearing.
Tangler · 150 pointsNight 17. Slow, and leaves sprouts behind it.

New kinds join as the nights go on. The points shown are each dimling's value before the chain multiplier.

What you see in the garden

GardenerYou. Your lantern lights the way on dark nights.
Moon podBlooms along its row and column. A ring around it drains as it gets ready.
BriarBlocks walking. A bloom clears it and stops there. May hide a power-up.
Moonstone and hedgeSolid. Blooms stop without passing.
PondYou cannot walk on it, but moonlight shines across it.
SproutYoung briar. Walk over it to trample it before it grows.
Thorn budsThe next tiles the creeping briar will grow into.
ThicketGrown creep. Solid for the rest of the night.
Moon gateOpens where the last dimling is relit. Step in to finish the night.
Wide PetalLonger blooms: reach grows from 2 to 4 tiles.
Extra PodPlant more pods at once, up to 3.
Quick StepWalk faster.

Pieces have distinct shapes as well as colours. Power-ups hide under briar and stay with you from night to night.

Wide Petal stretches your bloom from 2 to 4 tiles each way, which catches more dimlings but is harder to escape. You can leave one on the ground if you prefer shorter blooms.

06As the nights go on

Pressure that changes the problem

The briar creeps in

A moonless night

Simplified teaching examples. If a night runs long, the briar creeps in from the edge: thorn buds mark the next tiles to grow, and growing briar gently nudges you aside without costing a heart. From night 13, some nights are moonless and you only see dimlings in the light.

Once the briar starts creeping, the dimlings get restless and move faster. Clearing a night quickly keeps the garden open.
From night 4, cleared briar slowly sprouts again. Walk over a sprout to trample it, or bloom it away.
On a moonless night your lantern, your pods and every firefly you relight light up the garden, so your first relight matters most.

07Score and finish a run

Relighting dimlings scores the most. Clearing original briar adds 10 points; briar that grows back scores nothing. Power-ups add 25 points, or 100 when that power-up is already at its best.
Stepping through the moon gate adds 100 points times the night number, and a night without a lost heart adds 50 points times the night number. Both stop rising after night 30.
There is no final night. Your run ends when your last lantern goes out, or whenever you choose End Run, between nights or from the pause menu. You always keep every point you earned.

Play Briarwink