Games Like Cry Me a Cosmos

Plant humans. Water them. Make them cry.

You are a low-ranking god assigned to a small universe. Your job is to raise humans in a 5×5 garden, collect the Tears they shed, and pay tribute to the gods above you.

Pay all eight tributes, and their Tears will bring about the Apocalypse.

Humans begin as Seeds and grow through infancy, childhood, adulthood, and old age. Keeping them alive means more Tears, but Water and space are always limited. Who gets to grow, where they live, and how long they remain useful are all up to you.

SPEND THEIR TEARS—BUT SAVE ENOUGH FOR TRIBUTE

Use Tears to bring new Seeds and Interventions into your garden. At the end of every Stage, however, the gods above you demand a fixed tribute.

Spend too freely, and you may come up short when tribute is due. Hoard everything, and your garden may never grow fast enough to meet the demands ahead.

Balance what the gods demand now against what your garden will need later.

BUILD A GARDEN OF SYNERGIES

Depressed humans cry more often. Irritable humans attack their neighbors. Happy humans swallow nearby Tears and store them inside their bodies. Lonely humans produce Tears more efficiently when left alone.

Every temperament changes how a human cries, fights, reproduces, or dies. Place the right humans and Interventions together, and one small action can set off an entire chain of Tear production.

The choices offered to you change from run to run. Work with what appears and find a new way to make each universe productive.

INTERVENE WHENEVER YOU SEE FIT

Install sprinklers that Water humans automatically, wells that collect their cries, and memorial gardens that turn death into Tears.

Administer treatments, replace temperaments, divide relationships with walls, or directly remove a human that has outlived its usefulness.

Interventions can keep humans alive. They can also make those humans far more useful to you.

THE SOIL REMEMBERS

Excess Tears leave Stains behind, polluting the soil. Managing that pollution is part of your job.

You can leave it alone—or invest Seeds to cleanse the soil, or use Interventions that turn pollution to your advantage.

Sometimes, pollution is an opportunity.

ANSWER THEIR PRAYERS—OR BREAK YOUR PROMISES

Humans pray to you through Contracts. They may ask you to protect a child, leave them somewhere to live, prevent unnecessary deaths, or help a particular bloodline flourish.

Keep your word to gain Faith. Break it to accumulate Impiety.

Both persist between runs, returning as blessings and hardships in the universes that follow.

BRING ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE WITH THEIR TEARS

Manage Water and space. Reproduce your humans. Combine temperaments with Interventions. Find a way to survive eight increasingly demanding tributes.

The final tribute demands 666 Tears.

Pay it, and the Apocalypse will descend.

But not everything dies with the universe. Faith and Impiety will live on through those who stubbornly survive—and follow you into the next.