Snarfles

Snarfles is a turn-based tactics game about shaping and maintaining a living ecosystem that changes whether you’re ready or not.

Predators move through the world hunting bunnies, bunnies search for grass and reproduce when they survive long enough, and grass spreads quietly across open space to keep everything alive. Each part follows simple rules on its own, but together they create a system that never really settles into balance. Your role is to guide how it develops over time, setting conditions that allow it to survive what comes next.

Between turns, Snarfles steps in and disrupts whatever stability you’ve managed to build. Parts of the ecosystem are removed, regardless of how carefully they were placed, and the system has to adjust immediately. Most of the experience comes from responding to those changes and rebuilding a working balance from what remains.

A system built on dependency

Every level is built around simple relationships that constantly affect one another.

When predators grow too numerous, prey disappears and the food chain begins to collapse. When prey spreads too freely, it eventually outpaces the grass that sustains it. Terrain, movement, reproduction, and survival are all linked, and small changes early in a run can shape how everything behaves several turns later.

There is rarely a single stable solution, because the conditions that define success are always shifting as the ecosystem evolves.

Working with both sides of the ecosystem

Control is indirect and comes from timing and positioning rather than issuing direct commands.

Predators move toward nearby prey when they can reach it. Bunnies prioritize safety and food, avoiding danger while searching for grass. Both groups reproduce when conditions allow it, and grass spreads gradually into nearby space when there is room to grow.

Because everything follows consistent rules, decisions matter most in how they shape future turns rather than what they accomplish immediately.

Snarfles and disruption

At key points, external events reshape the conditions of the ecosystem.

Storms can alter terrain or remove sections of the map entirely, changing how movement and survival work. Different biomes introduce variations in how systems interact, sometimes making familiar strategies behave in unexpected ways. Snarfles itself adds another layer of disruption by forcing sacrifices that remove specific parts of the ecosystem, regardless of how central they may have become to your current setup.

These changes are structured and predictable in timing, but they force constant adjustment to what is still viable.

Campaign and replayability

The campaign begins with simple interactions between predators, prey, and grass, then gradually introduces additional systems that overlap and influence one another in increasingly complex ways. Early levels focus on understanding basic relationships, while later ones build toward scenarios where multiple pressures have to be managed at once.

Free Play generates new ecosystems each time, with different layouts, starting conditions, and environmental pressures shaping how each run unfolds.

Features

• Turn-based tactics built around a living, evolving ecosystem

• Indirect control over predator and prey behavior through positioning and timing

• Emergent interactions driven by movement, feeding, and reproduction systems

• Terrain and biome variations that affect how ecosystems develop

• Structured disruption events that alter conditions during play

• Handcrafted campaign with gradually increasing systemic complexity

• Free Play mode with procedural ecosystem generation

About the game

Snarfles explores what it feels like to maintain structure inside a system that resists staying still.

The idea of the world sits just under the surface of the mechanics, framed through the imagination of a child building a mental model of predators, prey, and an unseen force that intervenes between them. As the ecosystem shifts and breaks and reforms, it becomes a reflection of how control, loss, and sacrifice are understood when the rules are only partially visible.

Wishlist Snarfles

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