How to Play Angry Crops

Welcome to Angry Crops! Your goal as the head gardener is simple: harvest all the healthy, smiling vegetables in your garden bed while avoiding the buried hot red chilis (🌶️). Using numerical clues, logical deduction, and smart tools, you can solve any garden layout safely.

1. The Core Objective

Each garden bed consists of an unrevealed grid of fertile soil tiles. Underneath some tiles lurk spicy chilis that will detonate if harvested. Every tile that does not contain a chili holds a friendly vegetable with a clue number indicating exactly how many chilis are hidden in its 8 neighboring plots (up, down, left, right, and diagonally).

2. The First-Tap Safety Guarantee

You never have to fear an unfair loss on your very first move. In Angry Crops, your first tap is guaranteed to be 100% safe. The game engine dynamically places all chilis outside of your initial tap and all eight of its surrounding neighbors, opening up a spacious starting clearing so you can start analyzing clues immediately.

3. Warning Stakes (📍)

When your deduction leads you to a plot that must contain a spicy chili, you should place a Warning Stake (📍):

• Mobile: Toggle the Warning Stake tool in the bottom toolbar, then tap the suspected tile.
• Protection: Staked tiles are locked against accidental digs. Tapping a staked plot in Harvest mode will do nothing until you remove the pin.
• Chili Counter: Every placed stake decrements your remaining chili counter in the top bar, helping you track how many hazards remain in the garden.

4. Smart Harvest Chording (⚡)

Once you are comfortable with basic moves, Chording will multiply your harvesting speed!

When a revealed crop's clue number matches the exact number of surrounding Warning Stakes you have placed:

• Simply tap the numbered crop again.
• All remaining untracked neighboring soil tiles will instantly harvest at once!
• Warning: If your placed stakes are in the wrong positions, chording will detonate any unpinned chilis! Double-check your logic before chording.

5. Vegetable Clues Reference Chart

Each vegetable represents a specific number of adjacent hazards. Learn your harvest crew:

6. Fluid Zoom & Pan Controls (🔍)

When playing on larger garden plots (such as the 16×16 Overgrown Orchard or large Custom Farms), you can easily examine sections of the board using our fluid viewport tools:

• Micro Zoom Controls: Located on the top-right of your screen, use the + button to zoom in, − to zoom out, and ⟲ to reset the view to fit your device screen.
• Pinch & Pan: Natural two-finger pinch-to-zoom and drag-to-pan gestures let you glide around the farm effortlessly.

7. The 4 Garden Sizes

• 🌱 Sprout Garden (8×8): 10 hidden chilis. Cozy, fast, and perfect for quick 1-minute mental warmups.
• 🥕 Harvest Patch (12×12): 25 hidden chilis. The balanced enthusiast challenge testing multi-step deduction.
• 🌾 Overgrown Orchard (16×16): 45 hidden chilis. An epic sprawling puzzle requiring careful stake placement and chording mastery.
• 🚜 Custom Farm: You choose the grid width, grid height, and chili density to craft your personalized garden challenge.

8. Essential Gardening Deduction Patterns

The Corner "1"

If a 1 (Sprout) sits on an outer convex corner of the unrevealed field, it only touches one single hidden tile. That solitary neighbor plot must be a chili! Stake it immediately.

The Wall "1 - 2 - 1" Pattern

When you see the sequence 1 - 2 - 1 along a straight wall of untouched soil, the middle tile of the "2" is shared. The two chilis are guaranteed to sit directly in front of the two 1s, and the tile directly in front of the 2 is 100% safe to dig!