Weekly development update
The Forge is becoming easier to follow
This week’s work focused on making the Forge easier to follow, safer to control, and better at keeping a record of your system. These are development changes merged to main; availability on the public site has not been verified for this note.
Reporting window: – · America/Denver
A clearer record of your run
Goals now belong to the stage where you can still influence them. They settle when that stage ends, with an explanation when one is missed. Rarer Feats stay hidden until discovered, leaving more room for surprise. The stage names now follow the scientific journey: Protostar, Protoplanetary Disk, Giant Impacts, Hadean, Archean and Phanerozoic. Settled planetary orbits are marked by First Worlds; Year 0 is reserved for a later, optional seal that becomes possible after an intelligent lineage emerges. The Phanerozoic name and grouping are in place, but its later gameplay is still being built.
More deliberate controls
Explore is read-only: looking through your system should not spend Power or Spark or end a turn. Actions stay in Your move. Starting a collapse is confined to the final setup step, and holding a setup control on a phone brings that control into focus. Phone sheets have more consistent headings and close controls, with work to keep them inside the visible screen beneath a browser toolbar. Spark also has its own pink colour, distinct from Power.
See the disk respond
You can drag the companion’s plane to choose an outer-disk tilt. The action now has a new visual effect, with a camera that widens to show the outer disk changing orientation. On desktop, setup controls sit beside the scene. Turn cards bring the available answers and their prices closer to the decision, while the More picker stays over the scene.
Keeping the history
Work on automatic saves records a run at its beginning, stage changes, when leaving the page and at its end. Records wait locally while delivery is unavailable and can retry later. Seed entry now follows the save service’s rules, and compatibility work accepts records made before the First Worlds rename. This is groundwork for keeping runs, not a promise of cross-device recovery.
A more honest introduction
The home page’s language and sharing were brought closer to the game’s current direction. Account consent work records an explicit marketing choice rather than inferring one.
In the art workshop
Revised asteroid studies explore weathering, fractures and layered surfaces. They remain prototypes awaiting feedback, rather than accepted production assets.