Six panes of glass and a few small puzzles.

● Trellis

A 12×12 trellis planted at random with six species. Your region starts as the single square in the top-left corner.

Choose a species and your whole region becomes it, absorbing every neighbouring square of that species — and then everything those squares touch, and so on. The region grows in one wave. Take the whole board within 24 moves.

The trick is that the best move is rarely the one that grabs the most squares right now. Look at what a colour opens up two moves later. Finishing with moves to spare is worth more Nectar; each spare move is worth 45.

Species are told apart by shape as well as colour, so the board works without colour perception.

◆ Lantern Rows

Twenty-five lanterns in a five-by-five string. Touch one and it flips — lit to dark, dark to lit — along with the lanterns directly above, below, left and right of it. Corners and edges simply have fewer neighbours.

Every string we hand you is built by scrambling a fully lit grid, so a solution always exists. Touching the same lantern twice undoes it, which means order never matters and there is no move you can't take back.

Scoring starts at 700 and drops by 30 for each touch, with a floor of 150. Solving it in under ten touches is a good evening.

▲ Orchard Recall

Six trees. The bees visit them in an order you're shown once, then it's your turn to repeat it. Get it right and the route gains one more stop.

There is no timer and no penalty for thinking. There is, however, no second showing — a wrong stop ends the run and banks whatever you'd reached.

Each completed round is worth 35 Nectar, so a run of ten rounds is 350. Trees carry both a colour and a symbol, and the flash is accompanied by a change in brightness rather than colour alone.

Playvora is nine people in a converted glasshouse on the edge of Ghent, plus two who work from Porto and refuse to be photographed.

We have been making small browser games together since 2019, mostly under other names and mostly for other people. Playvora is the first thing we've built entirely for ourselves.

Why a glasshouse

The building came first, honestly. It's a Victorian propagation house with bad heating and very good light, and once we were working in it the metaphor did the rest: you plant a lot of ideas, most of them fail, and the ones that make it through a season get a bed of their own.

It also gave us a rule we've kept. A game goes in the ground as a rough prototype, and if nobody on the team plays it voluntarily for a fortnight, it comes out. Trellis survived four winters. Orchard Recall nearly didn't.

How we're funded

By the studio's contract work, which is dull and pays for the interesting thing. We run no advertising, we sell no player data, and we take no affiliate payments from anyone. If that ever changes, this page changes first and the privacy policy changes with it.

What we won't do

• Take a payment of any kind, for anything.
• Hand out money, goods or vouchers for playing.
• Let Nectar be bought, sold, transferred or redeemed.
• Sell a link out of this site to anyone.

The people

• Ilse Vermeulen — studio lead. Wrote the first Trellis in a weekend and has been tuning the move limit ever since.
• Tomas Reinders — systems and scoring. Owns the argument about whether spare moves are worth 45.
• Noor Haddad — art direction. Responsible for the six species, the ribbon and the plate numbers.
• Emmanuel Sarr — front-end. Keeps the whole site to one file, which he insists is a discipline and not a bet.
• Greet Baelen — support and community. Answers the contact form personally.
• Everyone else — see careers, where there are more of us than there were last season.

Vora Glasshouse BV. Registered in Belgium, company no. 0784.115.229. Registered office: Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent. This is a sample site and the entity details above are illustrative.

1. It has to be explainable in a breath

You should be able to teach it to someone standing next to you in under a minute. If the pitch needs a diagram, it goes back in the tray.

2. Reading beats luck

We want games where a thinking player beats a lucky one over any reasonable stretch. Chance can lay out the board; it shouldn't decide what happens on it. Trellis is the clearest case — the starting planting is random, the solution isn't.

3. It has to survive having nothing riding on it

This is where most candidates die. Take away any possibility of winning something and a surprising number of designs simply fall over: the loop was never the fun part, the reward was. If a prototype isn't interesting when nothing at all is at stake, it isn't interesting.

4. No mechanic built on risking a balance

We don't build games where you put a score at risk on an uncertain outcome, and we don't borrow the interface language of products that do. Not because it wouldn't work — because it would, and that isn't what this glasshouse is for.

Have an idea you think passes all four? The contact page reaches a person. We read everything and reply to most of it.

There's no money here, but an evening is still an evening. A game with nothing at stake can eat one just as easily.

Decide the length before you start

Pick how long you're playing for and put a timer somewhere you'll see it. Trellis in particular is built so that "one more board" always sounds reasonable, and it will keep sounding reasonable for an hour.

Treat the score as decoration

Nectar measures nothing outside this page. It isn't progress, status or an asset. If chasing it starts to feel like an obligation rather than a game, that's the signal to close the tab.

Play around your life, not through it

Sleep, work, people, food. If any of those are being moved to make room for a browser puzzle, the puzzle should give way.

Take the twenty-minute look away

Every twenty minutes or so, look at something twenty metres off for twenty seconds. Lantern Rows is a bright grid on a small screen and your eyes will thank you.

If it stops being fun

Stop. That's the whole advice. And if playing here ever prompts something heavier — a feeling you recognise from elsewhere in your life, or a pull you'd rather not have — talk to someone you trust, or to your doctor or local health service, who can point you at real support.

The short version: the games are free, the score is worth nothing, be decent, and don't try to break the place.

1. Entertainment only

Playvora is a free-to-play games website provided solely for entertainment. All plots are played for Nectar, a free virtual score with no monetary value. Nectar is not money and is not a payment instrument. It cannot be purchased, sold, withdrawn, transferred, gifted, traded or redeemed for money, goods or services.

2. No money, in or out

There is no payment facility on this site. We do not accept payment, we do not hold balances, and we do not award money, goods or vouchers for play. Nothing of value is put at risk on the outcome of any plot, because there is nothing to put at risk and nothing to be won. Outcomes and scores exist for amusement only, and success here indicates nothing about anything outside this site.

3. Eligibility

The games are suitable for players aged 13 and over. Accounts are limited to people aged 16 or over, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher. By creating an account you confirm that you meet that requirement, and we may close an account where we reasonably believe you don't.

4. Nectar and rungs

Nectar and propagation rungs are a limited, personal, non-transferable licence to view score features on this site. They remain ours, confer no ownership or property right, and may be adjusted, expired, recalculated or reset at any time — for example when scoring changes, or where we detect automated play.

5. Accounts

Accounts are free and optional. You are responsible for your credentials and for activity under your account. Don't share it, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has got into it.

6. Acceptable use

Use the site lawfully. Don't attempt to disrupt or overload it, reverse-engineer it for exploits, scrape it at volume, automate play, impersonate anyone, harass anyone, or submit unlawful content through any form on the site. We may restrict or end access where behaviour harms the service or other players.

7. Content and fiction

The glasshouse, register, species, plates and staff described on this site are invented. Any resemblance to real nurseries, organisations or people is coincidental. Nothing here is legal, financial, medical or horticultural advice.

8. Intellectual property

The site, its games, code, artwork and text belong to Vora Glasshouse BV or its licensors. You may play them; you may not copy, resell or redistribute them without written permission.

9. Availability, "as is", and liability

The service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind. Plots may change, close or be dug up without notice. To the fullest extent permitted by law we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost scores, or damages arising from the use of a free entertainment service. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

10. Changes and governing law

We may update these terms; the version date above will change, and continued use means acceptance. These terms are governed by Belgian law, without prejudice to mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@playvora.site.

1. Who we are

Vora Glasshouse BV, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent, Belgium, is the controller of personal data collected through playvora.site. Data questions go to privacy@playvora.site.

2. What this build collects

This demonstration build has no server-side account system. The only things kept about you are stored in your own browser: your Nectar total, your best run for each plot, your gardener name if you set one, and your cookie choice. None of it is transmitted to us.

3. If you create an account on the live service

We would hold a display name, an email address, a hashed password and your Nectar total, in order to run the service and let scores follow you between devices. Lawful basis: performance of a contract with you. We do not ask for and cannot accept payment details, because there is nothing to pay for.

4. Contact form

In this sample build the contact form transmits nothing at all; submitting it only shows a confirmation. On the live service, messages and the address you send them from would be used solely to answer you, kept for up to 24 months, then deleted.

5. Cookies and analytics

Essential storage keeps your Nectar, best runs and preferences on your device. Optional analytics tells us which plots people finish and where they get stuck. Decline it and nothing about the games changes. Full detail on the cookie policy page.

6. What we don't do

We do not sell or rent personal data. We run no advertising and no advertising trackers. We do not build marketing profiles, and we do not share data with third parties for their own purposes.

7. Your rights

Where the GDPR applies you may request access, correction, deletion, restriction or portability, or object to processing, and you may complain to your supervisory authority — in Belgium, the Data Protection Authority. Write to privacy@playvora.site and we'll respond within one month.

8. Retention

Local data lives on your device until you clear it. Account data on the live service would be deleted within 30 days of a deletion request, or after 24 months of inactivity.

9. Children

The games are suitable from 13, but accounts require 16 or over and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we'll delete it.

10. Third parties

Web fonts are served by Google Fonts, which may receive your IP address as part of delivering them; self-hosting the font files removes this. Hosting is provided by a European infrastructure provider under a data processing agreement.

11. Changes

Material changes will be announced on this page with a new version date before they take effect.

Essential — always on

• pv_nectar — your Nectar total. Local storage, kept until you clear it.
• pv_best — your best run for each plot. Local storage, kept until you clear it.
• pv_name — the gardener name you chose, if you set one. Local storage.
• pv_consent — remembers your choice below so we stop asking. Local storage, 12 months.

Analytics — optional

A single first-party measurement cookie recording which plots are opened and finished, and on what kind of device. No advertising identifiers, no cross-site tracking, nothing sold. Declining costs you nothing — every game behaves identically either way.

Advertising

None. Playvora carries no advertising and sets no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Changing your mind

Use the button below at any time, or clear this site's data in your browser settings.

Review cookie choice

What works today

• All three plots are fully playable by keyboard: Tab to move, Enter or Space to act.
• Focus outlines are visible everywhere and never suppressed.
• Game feedback is announced to screen readers through a live status region.
• Trellis species differ by shape as well as colour, so the board doesn't depend on colour perception.
• Orchard Recall flashes trees by brightness as well as colour, and has no timer.
• Animation, including the demonstration board on the front page, stops when your system asks for reduced motion.
• Text reflows to 320px and survives 200% zoom.

Known gaps

• Trellis squares are small on narrow phones. A four-species, eight-by-eight variant is being tested.
• Lantern Rows has no arrow-key grid navigation yet — Tab works, but it's a long way across 25 lanterns.
• The display face is a little tight at very large zoom levels; a high-legibility toggle is in progress.

Tell us

If something blocks you, write to hello@playvora.site with the page and what happened. Accessibility bugs jump the queue.