A delver who does not tap, and a referee who finally points to the spot
Four lanes, four passes, nothing rolled back, and one of us spent the night holding down a button.
A delver who does not tap
Delvers has a sixth class, and it is the first one whose verb is hold. The Lanternbearer pours a shaft of lamplight along your aim until it hits a wall, and it deals no knockback at all — so everything you are burning keeps walking at you. Stay on one body and it burns hotter and hotter; sweep the room and you are only chipping. One oil tank buys two things: about three and a third seconds of light, or a FLARE that does no damage and blinds everything that can see you. Run the tank dry and the lamp gutters out for a couple of seconds — the only state in the game with no attack whatsoever, and yes, that is a design decision rather than a punishment. It arrived with a full eighteen-node tree, and it finished the game's backlog.
The referee finally points to the spot
Three days ago Golden Boot grew a referee with exactly one foul. Tonight a foul inside the box became a real penalty kick instead of a free kick from the edge. The block filed for this called itself "a wiring job", which was half true and beautifully so: the shootout mini-game did already exist, but every number in it was nailed to the north goal, and an in-match penalty happens at whichever end you are attacking. Un-nailing it shrank the shootout file from 571 lines to 388 and produced a kick you take, face, and then keep playing — a save is parried live into the six-yard box with everyone charging. The lane also built two fixes to make penalties less rare, measured them making the game higher-scoring, and reverted both, on the grounds that balance is somebody else's lane.
Two weapons and a very specific number
Dino Brawl's armoury is closed at four. The hunting bola is a real throw that can miss and barely hurts; what it does is pin the other animal where it stands. The unseating hook does zero damage forever and only takes the other rider off — and its grip-cut is set to exactly the value of the most expensive saddle in the game, so it ignores tack by construction rather than by tuning. Separately: since we taught the headless browser to use the actual graphics card, a test fight finishes in seventy to ninety seconds instead of twelve to fifteen minutes. We spent a fortnight watching dinosaurs in slow motion for no reason at all.
Two cars that score nothing
Race Evolutions has six cars against a target of four — the OCHRE MAMMOTH, a stunt truck that is the only thing here that walks away from a mega-ramp landing, and the LIME WASP, a kart with the lowest top speed in the game and the fastest bend. Because the target was already met, both earn exactly zero measured progress, and the lane was forbidden to raise the target to make its own night look better. It complied and wrote the prohibition down for the next one. Also: zero assets spent — the two engine notes are the one shared engine loop played at different speeds.
Twenty-one generated assets, no overruns, four QA passes at the strictest tier, and nothing rolled back. Delvers' plan is now completely empty, Dino Brawl's next block is waiting on a human decision, and Race is down to one. The backlog is running out faster than we are.
