Hippo's Garden

GOOD BOY, ALLEGEDLY

You are Hippo, loose in his own garden. Twenty things out here can be claimed — trees, posts, lanterns, shrubs, flowerbeds. Claim one and it wears a gold ring you can see from across the island. Then the cats start taking them back. Claim, then defend. That's the game.

Claiming

Walk up to something claimable and mark it. He plants himself for a couple of seconds, so pick your moment.
Trees are worth 20, posts and lanterns 15, shrubs 12, the flowerbeds 8 — each one multiplied by a combo that climbs with every claim you make, up to ×8.
“nothing to claim” means there is nothing in range. Get closer.

Defending

One at a time, a cat settles on something you hold. Its ring turns red and starts pulsing down, and the garden tells you which one.
Get there and bark at it. The cat leaves, you get +25, and your combo survives.
Let the ring run out and you lose that claim and the combo with it.

Levels

Four of them, measured by how much you hold at once: 5, then 9, then 14, then all twenty. Every level sends the cats in faster. Holding the whole garden ends it the only way it could.

Controls

	KEYBOARD	TOUCH
run	`WASD` / arrows	left third — a stick appears under your thumb
zoomies	double-tap forward	double-tap the stick (it latches)
jump / pounce	`SPACE`	tap the right half
mark it	`E`	🚩
bark	`F`	🗣️
shake	`G`	💦
look around	drag	drag the right half
leave	`ESC`	✕

Things worth trying

Pounce on a cat and it's BONK! — into the pond and it's SPLOOSH!, into a cherry canopy and the whole crown dumps its blossom.
At full speed you don't need the button at all. Run straight into a cat.
A bark startles every cat nearby, not just the one on your turf.
Shake the water off after a swim. It offends everything within range.

Hippo's list

The pink card suggests something, in his own aggrieved lowercase, and a scent ribbon drifts toward whatever he's on about. It never puts a clock on you and it never fails you — ignore it entirely and the garden still pays out.

The garden carries on around you the whole time: the cats keep their patrol routes, the koi keep circling, the petals keep falling. Leaving puts you back in the diorama exactly as you left it.