A mobile-first, portrait, one-thumb creature ranch. Collect 150 pixel critters, raise them through evolution stages, play five one-thumb minigames, and grow a calm, warm homestead that slowly fills in around you — from an empty meadow into a lit-up little city. Tamagotchi-meets-arcade — low-pressure and cozy.
Runs in any modern browser; best on a phone (add it to your home screen — it's an installable PWA). Your progress saves automatically in the browser.
Your ranch grows more lived-in as your collection grows — a new tier of scenery every few cobbies, from a quiet homestead to a glittering skyline:
| Level 1 · Homestead | Level 5 · Village | Level 8 · City Lights |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Five one-thumb minigames feed XP and coins back into the collection:
| 🔨 Whack-a-Cobbie | 🧺 Catch | 🎣 Fishing | 🎵 Rhythm |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
The whole game is one gentle loop, and a guided tutorial walks you through it on first launch (tap the ❓ in the top bar to replay it anytime):
Meet your cobbies. A few critters roam your ranch and greet you by name. Tap any one to open its card.
Play for XP + coins. Tap ▶ PLAY and pick one of five minigames:
- 🏃 Runner — one-tap jumping; the farther you go, the more you earn.
- 🔨 Whack-a-Cobbie — bonk the pop-ups across three rows for 30 seconds.
- 🧺 Catch — slide your cobbie to catch falling treats and dodge bombs.
- 🎣 Fishing — tap when the sweeping line lands in the green to hook a fish.
- 🎵 Rhythm — tap the notes on the beat-line and build a combo.
Choose a star cobbie to level up, plus a cheerleader buddy who cheers from the sideline (the buddy sits out the round, so it can't also star).
Grow & evolve. XP pushes each cobbie through evolution stages, with a dedicated reveal moment when they transform.
Hatch new friends at the 🥚 Nest — a rarity-weighted random egg (with a pity timer that guarantees legendaries) or a direct pick. Duplicates bank bonus XP.
Watch your ranch level up. Every few cobbies collected unlocks a new ranch level — a paved road, a village, street lamps, and eventually a glowing city skyline — plus a bit more ranch space each time.
Put cobbies to work at the 🚜 Barn — station them at the Berry Patch, Fishing Hole, or Lookout to earn coins over time, even while you're away. Collect the coins and expand your ranch to hold more critters.
Spend & customise — buy hats and expansions in the Shop, unlock hammer skins for Whack, dress up your own avatar at the Wardrobe, and browse everyone you've found in the Pen.
Chase goals — a ⭐ daily challenge for each minigame plus long-term goals reward coins, hats, hammers, more ranch space, and new scenes (biomes).
Collecting all 150 cobbies and maxing out the ranch is paced to take a few weeks to a couple of months of a short daily session — cozy, not grindy.
- 150 collectible critters across common / rare / legendary tiers, each with three evolution stages, rarity, and flavor text.
- Five one-thumb minigames — endless Runner, Whack-a-Cobbie, Catch, Fishing, and Rhythm — that all feed XP and coins back into the collection.
- 8-level ranch progression — the home scene fills in as you collect: paved road, garden plots, cottages, street lamps, townhouses, and a lit-up city skyline, each level also granting more ranch capacity.
- Idle economy — station critters at jobs for offline coin accrual (capped so it stays idle-friendly), then reinvest into ranch capacity.
- Hatchery with rarity weighting, pity, and direct buy; dupes convert to XP.
- 4 biomes — Meadow, Desert, Snowfield, and Dusk — each with its own sky, sun or moon and stars, parallax hills, drifting clouds, decor, and ambient particles (snow / fireflies).
- Cosmetics — 7 hats for critters, plus 6 Whack mallet skins with a squeaky bonk, unlocked through whack goals.
- Avatar creator — customise your on-ranch character (skin, hair, outfit…).
- Nora, your hand-authored guide, plus a weighted home-dialogue voice so captured cobbies greet you by name.
- Goals & dailies — one daily challenge per minigame, plus a lifetime goals ladder that unlocks hats, hammers, capacity, and biomes.
- Music & SFX with a settings panel (track, volume, dynamic tempo, mute).
- Guided tutorial — a first-launch spotlight walkthrough of every feature, reopenable anytime.
- Persistent save (localStorage) and an installable PWA manifest.
The game uses native ES modules, so it must be served over HTTP (opening
index.html via file:// will fail on module imports). Any static server works:
npm run dev
# or, without Node:
python -m http.server 8000Then open the printed URL (e.g. http://localhost:8000).
index.html shell + all screen/overlay markup
main.js orchestrator: state, screen flow, minigame wiring
css/styles.css all styles
manifest.webmanifest PWA manifest
data/
creatures.js content spine — sprites, palettes, stages, rarity, flavor
creatures_extra.js additional hand-authored critter art
generator.js procedural sprite-bank generation (scales to 150)
biomes.js selectable scenes (sky, hills, clouds, decor, particles)
cosmetics.js wearable hats (pixel overlays)
hammers.js Whack mallet skins + shared draw helper
avatar.js the player-avatar sprite + options
dialogue.js companion lines (Nora sets the tone)
render/
pixel.js the shared grid+palette pixel renderer
critter.js critter drawing (sprite + equipped hat)
systems/
save.js localStorage persistence (roster, coins, name, pity, flags)
hatch.js egg economy: random roll + pity + direct buy
farm.js ranch home scene — buildings, critters, lived-in scenery
ranch.js ranch levels — tiers, gating, capacity bonuses
run.js one-button endless runner
whack.js whack-a-cobbie minigame
catch.js catch-the-treats minigame
fishing.js timing-bar fishing minigame
rhythm.js tap-to-the-beat minigame
idle.js station/jobs idle economy + ranch capacity
quests.js lifetime goals ladder (hats, hammers, biomes, space)
daily.js per-minigame daily challenges
audio/
music.js background music tracks
sfx.js sound effects (incl. the whack squeak)
ui/
screens.js roster select, collection/dex, character card, pickers
title.js title / splash screen
tutorial.js first-launch how-to-play walkthrough
settings.js music / sound settings panel
scripts/
gen-icons.mjs icon/asset generation
Modules are plain JS with JSDoc types today. Migrating to TypeScript + Vite
later is mostly mechanical: add tsconfig, rename .js→.ts, and the JSDoc
shapes (GameState, OwnedCreature, HatchResult) become real interfaces.
See cobbiesdraft.md for the original product brief.