Changelog v0.10.0 — Settling

v0.9.0 was the shell. v0.10.0 is where the game shows up.

Evolve, in one place

Upgrades and Discoveries used to live in two tabs with two different lifecycles, and they never really agreed on what they were. They're one thing now. You research it, you rank it, you max it. Each chain unlocks the next. The Evolve tab finally reads like a single idea.

Ascending finally has stakes

The tier ascent used to be an upfront payment that vanished in a tap. It's a sustained drain now — your bank visibly bleeds while the unlock runs. Buying more producers mid-ascent widens the buffer; sitting still doesn't work anymore. The Begin button won't let you start a run you can't survive.

Filling out a tier asks more of you, too. The bar to chain into the next producer rises with the tier. Less rushing, more committing.

Coming back is a moment now

The welcome-back screen used to be a polite footnote. The game ran while you were away, the modal told you what you missed, and the loop was already turning before you'd finished reading the first line.

It's a beat now. The loop pauses, the modal waits, you choose to bring the production in, a short sync plays, and then the game starts ticking again. Pulling the lever is an act, not an afterthought.

The default offline cap also dropped quite a bit — we want it to feel like a small windfall, not a passive income statement. Two new chains let you stretch it back out: one in the regular Evolve line, one that opens up after recursion. A fully invested player can park for a long time and still cap out. They just had to earn it.

Pacing, across the curve

The whole curve got a pass. Early-game numbers softened so the late Tier I producers don't feel like a wall. The mid-game has more places where a real decision shows up. The late game holds your attention longer before recursion becomes the obvious move.

A sticky goal strip across the top tells you what to chase next — the closest unlock, milestone, or tier completion, with an ETA at your current rate. Less squinting at the table, more playing.

Mobile-first

The whole game and marketing site got a mobile-first refactor. Producer rows reflow at narrow widths, touch targets are sized for thumbs, modals adapt. We're playing this on phones now and it shows.

A new way in

There's a /game dashboard — a landing screen with the unit count as the centerpiece, instead of dropping you straight into a producer table. New players go through /game/new to pick a name; the rest of the game inherits it. The whole onboarding takes about ten seconds.

Smaller things

The achievement unlock dialog got a redesign. Rank badges on improvement cards combined into a single overlapping row. Button states, headers, and tier summaries got a polish pass. A reset-save race that could let a stray tick fire after you'd cleared your save is patched. Saves are validated on load. Error boundaries and a 404 page mean a broken state won't strand you.

Saves

Saves from v0.9.0 don't load. Too much shifted under the hood; the validator catches the mismatch and starts fresh.

What's next

Still pointing at v1.0. The remaining work is one more balance pass, an accessibility pass, and a handful of features we want to land before the pre-release suffix comes off.