The Forest Grows Back!
The Forest Grows Back!
v0.3 - The Blank Jam Submission
A strategic incremental game about trees, taxes, and cosmic ambition.
Plant, grow, and harvest your way from a tiny patch of land to a vast 8x8 pixel forest empire—all while managing exponential taxes and dreaming of the ultimate arboreal achievement: a forest full of Cosmic Trees.
🎮 What’s It About?
Start with just $25 and a 2x2 grid. Plant basic trees, expand your land, unlock new species, and climb the forest economy from humble saplings to billion-dollar lumber supremacy as the TFGB Lumber Co. As your empire grows, you’ll face an increasingly complex web of growth timers, tax brackets, and strategic tradeoffs. Can you fill your forest with Cosmic Trees?
🚀 Features
🌱 Core Gameplay
-
🌲 20 Custom Tree Types: From Young Sycamores to the Cosmic Tree
-
📈 Logarithmic Pricing: Tree costs range from $1 to $1,000,000,000,000
-
🪓 Strategic Harvesting: Harvest early or wait for max profit
-
💰 Tax System: Exponentially scaling taxes make every harvest a decision
-
🌳 Forest Expansion: Upgrade from 2x2 to a full 8x8 grid
🛠️ Advanced Systems
-
🔁 Auto-Planting: Unlock automation and never click an empty cell again
-
⏱️ Speed Controls: Play at 1x, 2x, or 3x game speed
-
🌌 Cosmic Victory: Your grid glows purple as you approach the endgame
-
📊 Performance Stats: Track your best runs and highest earnings
🎨 Pixel Art Meets Idle Gameplay
-
🎨 Gorgeous custom pixel trees from Karsiori's Tree Pack
-
🌿 Smooth animations for growth and harvest cycles
- 🔁 Three themes to swap between!
🔊 Immersive Audio
-
🎵 Menu Theme: "Sing To Me" by Ari Bradshaw
-
🌲 In-Game Theme: Original "The Forest Grows Back" track by Ari Bradshaw
-
🎚️ Independent volume sliders for music, effects, and overall audio
-
🎧 Sound effects for planting, harvesting, expanding, and more (Splice-obtained)
🧠 Under the Hood
-
⚛️ Built in React + TypeScript
-
🧮 Efficient State Handling via
useState,useEffect,useCallback -
🎞️ Smooth Animation Loops using
requestAnimationFrame -
🧰 Modular architecture with components like
Game.tsx,GameGrid.tsx, andsoundManager.ts
🏆 How to Win
-
💸 Scale wisely: Don't go broke expanding too soon
-
🌲 Unlock trees strategically: Faster growth or higher yield?
-
📉 Watch your taxes: Every harvest makes the IRS stronger
-
🌌 Finish strong: A full grid of Cosmic Trees means victory!
🐛 Known Issues
-
🎵 Music loop currently buggy and may repeat awkwardly on Apple devices (may be fixed - haven't verified yet)
-
⚠️ Phantom TypeScript or linter errors in development—game still runs great!
📅 Roadmap
-
🔲 Harvest early toggle
🔲 Balance is a little iffy right now
Development log
- v0.3 - The Trillion Dollar Update!Jul 30, 2025
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Since the harvest timer varies up and down a bit it would be nice to see how long the next one is going to be, so you can know whether or not there's enough time for a given tree to grow during the next harvest
Thanks for the feedback! You’re right, the harvest timer fluctuates between 12-18 seconds (±3 seconds from the 15-second base), which adds some unpredictability until you unlock the max speed upgrade (once you reach that point, every tree will harvest in time even with the fluctuation!). I’ll look into displaying the next harvest’s timer in the upcoming update to help with planning tree growth. Good idea. Really appreciate you playing and sharing your thoughts!
3 times now ive attempted to play, i get to unlock the third tree and it tells me its the end of the game, i dont even get the opportunity to expand
Are you winning or getting a game over?
If you’re getting a game over - might need to manage $ better or plant trees faster! Taxes go up every round and rounds happen automatically if you don’t plant fast enough.
This is really cool! Very addictive, in a good way!
Thank you!
Completing a game should take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how fast you progress!