HollowARK: the log

Devlog · October 15, 2026

Belts and placed buildings: the first production chain

The first topic of the design pass on the foundations: production chains. Chapter One rebuilt around one chain, miner to belt to smelter to belt to Ark, with a crate between stages.

• Belts replace mining lines. Select a miner, a smelter, a crate or the Ark, press L and click where it goes: it follows the tunnels, costs iron by its length and grows out over a few seconds.
• Goods ride a belt as dots, two a second on a full grid. A full target stops the belt, the goods close up behind it, the source fills and stops. Nothing is lost.
• Belts run out of the Ark too, each carrying one thing from the stores, never what a queued repair needs.
• Smelters and storage crates are built by the Ark's Constructor and set down in the cave. A smelter makes one thing at a time: iron bars or copper bars. A crate holds 100 of anything.
• The Ark no longer smelts. It keeps the stores, repairs, drones and moving; its belts detach when it drives off and dock again when it parks near them.
• Chapter One's objectives teach it in order: the first belt home, the Constructor, a smelter, the chain, copper through its own smelter, a crate between stages. The test player still finishes in about 21 minutes.

Devlog · October 15, 2026

The simplest fun core first

A story-free prototype, built fresh on a tile grid. One cave, no swarm and no chapters, a single sitting of 25 to 35 minutes, ending when the Ark's Bore is rebuilt. The draft plan took one idea from each game he named: Factorio's belts, ratios and bottlenecks; Satisfactory's free placement and milestone unlocks; Dyson Sphere Program's huge visible goal; The Crust's underground colony; Desynced's drones doing the work.

• The plan: dig, drill, belt, smelt, assemble, deliver to the Ark, unlock the next tier, then fix the bottlenecks and repeat.
• Three resources (iron ore, copper ore, stone), six buildings (drill, belt, smelter, assembler, crate, geothermal tap), seven products and three milestones, ending with four Bore sections to build.
• Drones build what you place and dig what you mark; nothing is ever hauled by hand.

Devlog · October 15, 2026

Core v1: a fresh grid factory

The whole prototype in about an hour: 2,700 lines of logic and drawing, a data table for every ore, building, recipe and milestone, and a test player that plays a full session without graphics. It borrows the Lantern look, the camera and the generated music from the story build.

• A 160 by 100 tile cave. The Ark sits in the start pocket, can't move in this version and is the hub: stores, deliveries and drones.
• Placing anything inside rock marks it, and the shortest tunnel to it, for the drones to dig.
• Belts plug straight into building edges, Satisfactory style. Drop a smelter onto an ore belt and it joins the line. Dragging a belt across another makes a crossing.
• Milestones deliver to the Ark by belt: First light unlocks the assembler and splitters, Machinery the bricks, circuits and frames, then four Bore sections each of 40 circuits and 20 frames.
• The test player wins on every seed in 18 to 23 game minutes, with milestone 1 at about 2 and milestone 2 at about 5.5.
• Played the way the data invites, it sprawls: a drill on every patch, a smelter per drill, a web of belts. That sprawl is what Kraig reacted to next.

Devlog · October 15, 2026

Upgrade, don't multiply

Buildings level up in place instead of being duplicated: miners are 1 by 1 with speed and mining-radius upgrades, belts have faster tiers, assemblers and smelters upgrade too, and there are underground belts and splitters with a chosen priority side.

• The 2 by 2 drill and the Mk2 drill are replaced by one 1 by 1 miner with three levels.
• Belts, smelters and assemblers get levels too; the milestones decide how high you can go.
• Underground belts and priority splitters join the toolbar.

Devlog · October 15, 2026

Core v2: upgrades, belt tiers, undergrounds and priority splitters

Built in three commits in about half an hour, then a playability pass from his first session's notes: belts that turn and join, buildings you can rotate, item cards, and a layout that works down to a 330 pixel screen. The test player now plays the upgrade way and wins seed 7 in 17.4 minutes.

• One upgrade mechanic for miners, smelters, assemblers, belts and undergrounds: select it, press U. Drones fly the cost out from the Ark, a gold frame pulses while it happens and the building keeps working. Milestone 1 opens level 2 and milestone 2 level 3.
• Miners are 1 by 1. Each ore tile of its kind inside its square gives ore, and the square grows with the level: 3 by 3, then 5 by 5, then 7 by 7, so one miner goes from about 0.45 to about 5 ore a second.
• Belts come in three tiers, 4, 8 and 16 items a second, marked by grey, gold and blue rails. Upgrade one tile or a whole line; the slowest tile sets a line's pace.
• Underground belts: an entry and an exit up to six tiles apart, with anything in between, drawn as two portals joined by a dotted line.
• Priority splitters: set which output gets everything until it backs up, and which input side is taken first, with the others sharing the overflow. The priority side shows in gold.
• Belts turn where you turn, join when you drag onto them and feed the belt beside a dead end. R turns anything 90 degrees, Shift+R reverses a whole run.
• Item cards: hover any item for its recipe, where it's used, which milestones want it and how many the Ark holds.
• The hint line points at the exact spot to tap, buildings show a "not connected" badge when nothing takes their output, and the toolbar scrolls on narrow screens.
• A first-session fix: New game now asks for a second tap, because the play page blocks the browser's confirm box.
• A save from v1 still loads: each drill becomes a level 1 miner, and removing it refunds exactly what it cost.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Power, smelters and ice

• Solar power by day, batteries for the night.
• A smelter turns ore into metal; a melter turns ore into molten metal for bigger parts.
• Ice is the only source of water, and it keeps the melters cool.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The look: Foundation and Dune

Claude turned that into rules: big calm ground with no clutter, plain geometric shapes, almost no colour, and the day and night cycle carrying the mood.

• Light grey stone, white light, cold and sci-fi.
• Colour only where it matters: live power glows, molten metal is orange, ice is pale blue.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Enemies with a purpose, and lasers

• Bugs attack the base now and then, but the real game is going out to hunt them and their bosses for rare materials.
• Combat drones are the same drones with lasers, running on power. No ammunition.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Never settle: the convoy

• The base is always on the move. Staying to mine longer or packing up before the attacks get worse is the main decision.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The story: crash-landed and hunted

• A crew of five lives in one command vehicle and steers a swarm of drones.
• One enemy force, later named the Tide, grows forever. There's no rescue and no win screen.
• Each run gets a new map. Your score is days survived plus distance travelled.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The first mockup

• Two still pictures, not the game yet: the camp on grey stone by day, and the same camp at night under attack.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Everything is a drone

• Any parked drone is a drop-off point, so chains link up without special drone types.
• Buildings are ships that unfold as they grow and fold back up to travel.
• A design rule for everything: every choice is a spectrum with pros and cons, never one right answer.
• Batteries are your travel range.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Keep it simple

Claude's answer: only materials are physical cargo (ore, metal, ice). Parts are recipes, not items: an upgrade is just a cost taken from one shared stockpile, so nobody manages warehouses of gears.

• Kraig agreed. Hauling materials is the puzzle; spending them is one click.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Build it while I sleep

• Claude picked a browser game in plain JavaScript and Canvas, played with a Mac trackpad and keyboard.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Version 1: the first playable build

Kraig was asleep. Claude worked through the night in this order: the game's data and tuning, map generation, the simulation, objectives, then a test bot that plays the rules headless in Node, before drawing anything. Then the renderer, the interface, trackpad controls, sound made in code and a build script that bundles everything into one HTML file.

• Ark-9 crash-lands with five crew and four drones; the Tide closes in from the west.
• Drones haul, mine, relay, defend and hunt, with four module slots each.
• One network of beams carries both power and cargo; a stranded drone trickle-charges and hops home.
• Smelter, melter, solar array and battery bank grow from drones and fold into pods to travel.
• The tests caught real bugs before morning: the starting copper sat just outside the Ark's reach, the swarm ramped up too fast, and one run survived the Tide with a full-health Ark, which shouldn't be possible.
• The working title, Driftline, was Claude's placeholder.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Versions 2 to 4: polish before morning

• When the Tide catches the Ark now, the run really ends.
• A quiet DAY 3 title at each dawn, and a warning when a wave sets out.
• Smaller, subtler ground slabs, and one clean line from each defender back to the Ark.
• Test numbers: the bot lasts 7 to 11 days; a player who never moves dies around day 4, so the game teaches moving on.
• About 3,400 random orders from a "monkey" tester, including saves and reloads mid-run, caused no crashes. A late-game frame with 338 bugs on the map draws in under 1 ms.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

WASD moves the camera

• W, A, S and D pan the camera. Defend moved to G and hunt to T, since A and D were taken.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Number keys for drone jobs

• 1 to 5 give drone jobs; Tab cycles the game speed.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Drones grow into buildings, and a drone limit

• A drone grows into a building where it stands, over about 4 seconds.
• Drones are built from the Ark's panel and appear beside it.
• A Fabricator (Kraig's "constructor") builds drones faster.
• AI datacenters raise the drone limit and draw power all the time.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A tidier screen

• The Objectives and Crew boxes fold down to a title line.
• The minimap sits flush in the bottom-right corner.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A build queue you can see

• A build queue in the bottom-left with progress and cancel.
• A ring around the Ark fills while a drone is built, with a faint drone taking shape where it will appear.
• Folded boxes really fold now.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Night raids and golden hours

• Every nightfall a group of bugs comes out of the dark around the camp.
• Days are 8 minutes, with a long golden sunrise and sunset.
• The first sunset was too sepia and lost the cold Foundation look, so Claude toned it down to a softer gold.
• Longer nights drained the starting battery before dawn, so the Ark got a bigger battery.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Objectives that point the way

• Hovering an objective rings its target on the map and the minimap, with an arrow at the screen edge when it's off screen.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Start damaged, unlock as you go

• You start with one drone and a smoking Ark at a third of its hull.
• Repairs to the fabricator, hull and engines each open up the next options; anything still locked is hidden.
• The top bar fills in as you go, and the Tide waits until your first smelter runs.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Mining lines replace hauling

• A miner runs a line back to the Ark: power out, ore home, shown as a stream of dots. The haul job is gone.
• Mining is under half the old speed, and repairs take time by cost.
• Music: Kraig linked a dark sci-fi ambient track as the reference. Claude wrote a score that's generated live in code, with no audio files, darker at night and with a low pulse when the swarm is close.
• Runs start mid-morning.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A crash to open the game, and honest dots

• The Ark falls in burning, hits with a shake and a dust ring, and leaves a long gouge in the ground.
• Each dot on a line is one unit of ore at the real mining rate.
• Every cost names what it is ("60 iron"), with its own icon shape.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Power turns yellow, the music turns to drone

• Power is yellow everywhere: the top bar, the beams, battery cells and power meters. Low power turns orange-red.
• The music became a continuous low synth drone that glides to each chord, with a cold shimmer on top and rare, quiet bells.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Buildings become Ark modules

• Kraig reversed his own call from version 7: drones stay drones.
• Buildings unfold out of the Ark on truss arms and fold back in before it moves.
• The smelter starts jammed and is repaired with raw ore, the only thing you have.
• Deposits read IRON ORE and COPPER ORE; nothing becomes metal without a smelter.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A slow, counted opening

• 16 objectives with counts and progress bars: mine 30 iron ore, repair the smelter, smelt iron, repair the fabricator, build drones, and on.
• Two new repairs make systems feel like parts of the Ark coming back online: the power cells (only a third of the battery works until then) and the AI core (3 drones until then).
• Slow on purpose: a perfect player reaches the AI core at about 17 minutes. The Tide waits until then.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Ore counts when it arrives

• Each unit mined travels the line as a dot and is added to storage only when it reaches the Ark.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Smelting you can watch

• Two ore dots travel out along the arm, the smelter glows white-hot while a ring fills, and one ingot travels back.
• 2 ore make 1 metal, about 4 seconds a bar at first.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

See-through glass

• Every panel is see-through glass with a stronger blur, light by day and dark at night, with a faint halo behind text.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Grow what you have

• An iron smelter and a copper smelter, each melting only its own ore, so you always see both.
• One of each module. Once you have it, the button says Grow instead of Unfold.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The tutorial gets an ending

• The guided start ends with your first move: pack up, drive 500 m east and make camp.
• A title card, THE ARK IS WHOLE, each crew member says a line, and everything unlocks.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Air and water for the crew

• After the tutorial an AIR gauge appears: five people breathe and drink.
• A water still melts ice; an oxygen plant splits water with power.
• Food and greenhouses are saved for a later chapter.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Show that the ship has a battery

• A battery readout in the top bar: charge, stored power, a hatched part for capacity lost in the crash, power in and out, and time until full or empty.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Power affects everything

• A grid level slows mining, smelting, building, repairs and lasers when the battery runs low.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Less on screen, and nothing lost on the line

• Nothing is lost on a mining line any more. Long lines are slower instead.
• The minimap became a small round radar; the crew list and future repairs are hidden until needed.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Power from the first minute, simpler

• One row: POWER, a small battery icon, the stored amount and a green or orange arrow for charging or draining.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The grid follows the battery

• Grid speed eases down with the battery: about 96% at 90% charge, 76% at half, 57% at a fifth.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

1, 2, 3 for speed

• 1, 2 and 3 set normal, double and fast speed. Drone jobs went back to letters.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Too hard: full speed while charging

• Charging or steady means 100%. Only a draining battery slows the base, more the harder it drains, until everything stops at zero.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Icons instead of words

• Drawn icons beside each number: faceted rocks for ore, lit ingots for metal, a crystal, a drop, a gem. Hover for the name.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The grid percentage on the Ark

• A small battery glyph and the grid percentage sat under the Ark. It lasted one version.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

One number, and a first wave you always win

• Power is one number in the top right: green at 100%, then yellow, then red. Over half a battery, everything runs at full speed; under half 70%, under a fifth 40%, empty stops.
• Low power shows in the world: lines and lights dim and flicker, ore dots slow down.
• A far mine costs only time. Lines run straight to the Ark.
• After the AI core repair, five scouts walk in and the Ark's laser always wins.
• Night raids start small and grow one bug a night.
• Shadows follow the sun. The bottom bar is gone; ore and its metal share one colour.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The big idea: start inside a mountain

Claude's take: starting buried gives the slow, safe tutorial a reason. Nothing knows you're there until you break out. The plan came in three stages: the buried start, then a great cavern with the first enemies, then back to the surface and the sun.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The buried start, bare bones

• The Ark sits in a small cave inside solid rock. Click a drone, two-finger click the rock, and it digs a tunnel there.
• Digging into a hidden pocket reveals it: iron, copper, ice, a buried wreck or an empty cave. You can't see anything still buried.
• Power is a steady geothermal tap; there's no day or night underground.
• The tutorial runs inside the rock and ends when you dig east and break through to DAYLIGHT. That wakes the Tide.
• The first bug: the carving brush had inherited a nearly transparent fill from the stone texture, so the cave wasn't carved at all.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Readable in the dark

• Underground, every panel switches to the dark style with light text, and labels in the cave are lighter and bolder.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

One line along the tunnel

• One smooth line carries power out and ore home, following the tunnel. Digging a straighter cut shortens it at once.
• Sound: removing the bottom bar had taken away the only obvious Sound button, and an old saved setting kept it off. Sound is back on; N toggles it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Let's share it

• This page. Claude built the devlog from the conversation and the code history while the game kept changing, and rebuilt old versions from the code to screenshot the stages that had no pictures.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Miners with lasers

• A miner fires a flickering laser at one rock at a time; the rock shrinks, chips fly, and the patch visibly runs out.
• The build queue is back at the bottom left. An earlier stylesheet edit had deleted its styles by accident.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The miner moves to the middle

• The miner parks in the middle of the patch and its laser sweeps round the rim, outer rocks first, so the patch closes in toward it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Open question: why is the Ark in a cave?

Claude suggested the crew "went to ground": the Ark came down hurt with the swarm on its trail, drove into a mountainside cave and brought the entrance down behind it to hide. Kraig parked the idea for now.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The game stays in the caves

• The mountain's outer rim is bedrock: you can't dig out, and there are no enemies for now.
• The tutorial ends by repairing the engines, packing up and moving the Ark into another cave. A perfect player finishes it in about 36 minutes.
• Any number of miners share a patch: the first sits in the middle, the rest ring around it, and they all feed one line home.
• Send a drone into solid rock and it tunnels there and hollows out a small room, then waits.
• Every power line shows the grid's colour: green, yellow or red.
• The crew box is gone: the current step's guidance sits under the objective, and one-click steps (Repair, Build, Unfold) have their button on the objective's row, with the cost in red when you're short.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A new name: Hollowark

Claude checked candidate names against existing games and offered three: Faultline (its own pick), Ark Below, and Hollowark, one invented word that's unlikely to clash with anything.

• The game was called Driftline until version 39. From version 40 it's Hollowark: the title screen, the top bar and this page's address.
• The new title line: "Five people in one damaged Ark, buried deep inside a mountain. Command the drones: dig, mine, smelt and rebuild, one cavern at a time."
• Each ore patch sits in its own small cave with open floor around it.
• Next, running as a separate job while Kraig keeps playing: natural cave walls, rock types you can see (the hard one is granite), ore glints near hidden caves, and chunks and dust as drones dig.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Carved stone and rock you can read

Claude proposed natural cave walls instead of the scalloped circles, rock whose colour shows how hard it is to dig, glints of ore near hidden pockets, gravel on dug tunnel floors, and digging you can watch: chips and dust off the face, and an opening that widens with a burst of rubble.

• Cave walls are carved stone instead of scalloped circles: uneven edges, a lit lip along the inside of each wall and a soft shadow on the floor below it.
• Four kinds of rock you can tell apart by colour: loose rock, stone, granite (the hard one) and bedrock, which can't be dug, each with strata, facets and grain.
• Rock near a hidden ore cave glints in the ore's colour, a clue to where to dig.
• Dug tunnels have gravel along the floor, so they look different from natural caves.
• Digging throws chips and dust off the face, and each new opening widens over half a second with a burst of rubble.
• Hovering over solid rock names its kind and how long one drone takes to dig it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The Fabricator becomes a module

• Repairing the fabricator unfolds a Fabricator module from the Ark on its own arm, the way the smelter does.
• New drones are built there, and growing it makes it build faster.
• The separate Constructor module was the same idea, so it's now just the Fabricator.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Miners line up on the ore's near edge

An earlier version parked the miner on the patch's edge facing the Ark. It had since moved to the middle of the patch, with extra miners ringed round it.

• The first miner parks on the edge of the patch nearest the Ark and lasers out across the rocks.
• Extra miners line up beside it along that edge, one on each side in turn, each lasering its own rock.
• One line home starts at that edge.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The Fabricator gets its own look

• The Fabricator is a squared assembly platform facing the Ark, with rails, corner posts and blue light. The smelter stays a round furnace with an orange glow.
• While it builds, a gantry sweeps over a hexagonal bed and the new drone takes shape in the middle.
• Each level adds a pair of lit bays along its sides.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The objective's button stays in its box

From Kraig's first screenshot, Claude saw the Repair button spilling out of the objectives box when its cost listed two materials.

• When the button and its costs don't fit beside the step count, the button drops to its own line inside the box. In a narrow box its costs stack under the label.
• On its own line it lines up on the left with the step count and the objective text.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Smelters grow out of a bare furnace

• A level-1 smelter is a bare round furnace.
• Each level from 2 to 5 brings out three more crucibles and tanks around it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Sharp rock, and lines that keep off it

Claude found two causes: the rock was drawn at two metres a pixel, and the line followed the movement grid while the drawn walls could bulge past it, as at the narrow throat in Kraig's screenshot. Both fixes ran as a background job while Kraig kept playing.

• The rock is drawn at 2.5 times the detail, so grain, cracks and wall edges stay crisp up close. Only what's on screen is painted up front and the rest fills in over a few frames, so there's no stall.
• Walls can no longer pinch into a tunnel, so every tunnel has a clear middle.
• Mining lines, drones and the Ark keep to the middle of tunnels and go round bends. A line still shortens when a straighter way is dug.
• Smelters take ore straight from storage, and the bar goes straight back when the melt ends. The ore and bars on the arm are only for show.
• Melts now run back to back, so a perfect player finishes the opening in about 33 minutes instead of 36.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Click open ground to move drones

Digging wasn't the problem: a two-finger click on open ground tried to post the drone as a relay, and relays are still locked in the tutorial.

• A two-finger click on open ground moves the selected drones there through the tunnels, and they wait. It works any time, even mid-dig.
• Several drones spread out around the spot, and if there's no way through, it says so.
• Relays keep their own key for later.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The base rides along, and the drones dig the way

• Packing up folds each module into a pod that rides on the Ark, in a train behind it and along its sides, each on a short coupling. They unfold again when you make camp.
• The Ark moves at about half its old speed, and a little slower for each module it carries.
• Send the packed Ark into solid rock and every drone becomes a digger, mining a lane in front of it while the Ark waits for each stretch to clear. Bedrock can't be bored.
• Version 50 still let the Ark grind rock away as it drove, which looked like rock vanishing. From version 51 the Ark never clears rock itself: wherever its way is too narrow, even in an existing tunnel, the drones widen it first.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Biolight: a sun for the caves

Claude first proposed dropping the day, the solar power and the battery underground, with power as geothermal supply against demand. Kraig's biolight idea kept all three, and Claude laid out how: the plants keep the old 8-minute cycle, solar becomes light collectors, the battery carries the base through the dark, and caves thick with flora make exploring pay.

• Glowing plants grow in clusters on the floors of the natural caves and in tufts along their walls: a ring round the start, a few in each ore cave, more in the empty caves.
• They keep the old 8-minute day as their cycle: Rising, Bloom, Fading and Rest. The clock is back underground, reading "Cycle 1 · Bloom".
• In bloom the caves fill with soft teal light. In rest the plants sink to a few embers and only the lamps of the Ark and the drones light the dark.
• Solar is now the light collector, which harvests the glow: its output follows the cycle and how much flora is near it. It sets itself on the brightest ground by the Ark and shows the light there, like "Light here: 1.3×".
• The Ark keeps a small geothermal trickle, and the battery carries the base through rest.
• Two hidden garden caves, thick with flora, are the brightest places in the mountain and worth digging to.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A tighter fog

Until now the stone texture showed across the whole mountain. Claude's first version of the fog had square corners, so it rounded them off before publishing.

• You see the open caves and tunnels plus about one block of rock round them, the wall itself. Deeper rock fades to dark behind a soft, rounded edge.
• Every new tunnel pushes the fog back with it.
• Ore glints in the rock near a hidden cave only show once you're digging close. Planned digs still show their dashed outlines through the fog.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Power climbs from red to green

Putting a light collector step right after the power cells would have stalled the opening: the collector cost copper, which you don't have until later. Claude made it iron only so the step works where it sits.

• Version 54 held the grid at yellow (70%) until the Ark's power cells were repaired, however full the battery.
• From version 55 power climbs in three steps: red (40%) at the start, yellow (70%) once the power cells are repaired, and green, with the battery in charge, once the first light collector is out.
• A new tutorial step after the power cells: "Unfold a light collector", with its Unfold button on the objective. The collector now costs 35 iron and no copper.
• Hovering the power reading says which stage you're at and what fixes it.
• The opening got much slower: a scripted perfect player took about 52 minutes instead of 32, with the power cells at 20 minutes.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Room for modules, a lead to more ore, auto-dig, a hungrier base

In Kraig's screenshot the datacenter had unfolded on top of the Fabricator: module spots were picked without counting their real size.

• Modules are placed by their real size, which grows as they level up, and kept clear of each other. In a tight cave a new one takes the roomiest gap; with truly no room, unfolding says "Dig out more space around the Ark" before it takes your materials. Saved runs with overlapping modules move apart on load.
• When the current step needs an ore you can't reach any more, the objective points at the nearest cave that holds it: "No iron ore left in reach. The scanner shows more to the south-east (about 400 m): dig to it."
• An Auto-dig toggle in the drone panel: idle drones keep widening the caves round the Ark, soft rock first. Two drones cleared 21 blocks in two minutes with no orders. Any order comes first.
• The Ark itself now draws power all the time, and more than twice as much while the flora rests, for lamps and heat. Drones draw more while mining, digging and parked, so the battery really drops through each rest.
• A scripted perfect player now took about 57 minutes.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Upgrade every drone at once, from the AI core

Claude's plan: one place to make the whole fleet better instead of fitting modules drone by drone, with five tracks, iron and copper for each level, and the crew installing them like repairs. Copper would finally matter beyond the early repairs. It was built as a background job.

• Once the AI core is repaired, the Ark panel has "Drone upgrades · every drone", and each level applies to every drone at once, including ones built later.
• Drills: mining and digging 25% faster a level, about 3 times as fast at level 5. Engines: flight 20% faster a level, 40 to 100 m/s. Batteries: 20 more charge a level, so drones fly further on their own. Hulls: 20 more hull a level. Lasers stay hidden until there's something to fight.
• Each level costs iron and copper, 1.6 times the one before, and installs over time like a repair, from about 16 seconds at level 1 to about a minute at level 5. The crew works on one repair or upgrade at a time.
• Drone panels lose their module slots. Drones already fitted keep their bonuses, which stack with the upgrades.
• Ice needed a Cryo shell module on each drone, so for now Hulls level 1 also let drones mine ice. Version 59 gave ice its own upgrade.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The Surveyor charts what the fog hides

Claude proposed a dish that sweeps slowly and charts hidden caves without opening them, so you still dig to reach them. The background job found that the planned 180 m of range charted nothing from the start cave and looked broken, so it starts at 250 m.

• The Surveyor unfolds from the Ark on its own arm for 40 iron and 20 copper, unlocked by the AI core repair: a round base with a dish that turns with its sweep and a soft cyan light. Each level adds three segments to the ring round its base.
• Its beam goes round about once every 40 seconds. Each hidden cave it passes shows through the fog as a dashed outline of the cave's own shape, labelled with what's inside (iron ore, copper ore, ice, a garden, the buried wreck or an empty cave), with a soft ping and a note: "Charted: iron ore. Dig to reach it."
• It opens nothing: the drones still dig to it. Charted caves show on the minimap too.
• Range 250 m at level 1 and 60 m more a level, up to 490 m, and each level sweeps 25% faster. It draws a little power while sweeping and keeps sweeping when there's nothing new in reach.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Where it's going (planned, not built yet)

Claude wrote each idea into the design notes as it came and suggested holding the build until the shape settles, so none of this is in the game yet. Its draft of Chapter One: a black screen and "CHAPTER ONE · THE SEED", a boot log in the dark (power 3%, location unknown, date unknown, colonists in cryo: 400, stable), the Ark's lights coming on section by section, the first drone flying out to dig toward the ore, the tutorial's repairs in order, a seal too hard for the drills, and daylight.

• Planned: the Ark is a seed ship, sent out to restart a civilisation. Its systems boot in a tiny cavern with the colonists asleep in cryo, and nobody knows where or when it is. The guidance becomes the Ark's own terse system log.
• Planned: Chapter One, "The Seed", ends by breaking out to the surface. The Ark reads the stars to learn how long it slept, the first colonists wake, and air, water and food begin.
• Planned: three bases. A starter base that packs up fast, a middle base worth staying at, and an anchored end base that stops moving for good and holds the biggest machines.
• Planned: the caves stay dark, cramped and safe, with tunnels you can wall off; the surface is colourful, alien, wide open and exposed, and it's where the enemies come in. Some resources are found only underground, so you keep going back down.
• Planned: the ending is terraforming. Huge machines push the planet's air toward breathable, which makes it worse for the bugs, so the swarm fights back harder the closer you get.
• Also in the notes: one rock with a hardness percentage instead of rock types, stone from digging as a resource, and a storage limit with a Storage module.
• Reshaped later the same afternoon (next chapter): the cave flora, not a geothermal vent, wakes the Ark; Chapter One leaves the AI core, drone upgrades and Surveyor for Chapter Two; and the Ark itself, not a drill upgrade, breaks through the seal.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Fixes from the first full playthrough, and a 39-minute opening

Claude's overview found seven weak spots, among them ice that nothing could mine once module slots went away, leftovers from the surface version (a Help screen about hives, relay and hunt keys, a distance score) and a 57-minute tutorial. It proposed five phases. Kraig said yes to the first two, the fixes and the tutorial's pace, built as one background job.

• Cryo shells: ice gets its own one-level drone upgrade at the AI core, 20 iron and 15 copper, and every drone can mine and carry ice. Hulls are only hull again. The water step has a Cryo shells button until they're in.
• Leftovers from the surface version are hidden while there's nothing to fight: Relay, Defend and Hunt and their keys, the Ark's laser upgrade, a drone's beam reach, and Travelled in the top bar. The Help screen is rewritten for the caves.
• Costs that wanted hive cores, which only come from hives, ask for copper underground instead.
• The score under the mountain is bloom cycles survived and caves found.
• Cost buttons wrap inside the panels instead of spilling out.
• The power cells now come straight after the first smelt, so the red start ends at about 13 minutes instead of 20. The power cells cost 20 iron, the light collector 25, and the engines 20 iron and 50 copper, since iron was the bottleneck.
• A scripted perfect player now finishes the opening in about 39 minutes, down from 57.
• Caves never touch each other, so every map's first dig works. In some maps a cave touched the start cave and the run couldn't begin.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A space programme and a city to defend (planned, not built yet)

• Planned, the arc of a run: Buried → Nomad → Settled → Anchored → Terraform. Dig out of the caves, scout the surface with a base that packs up fast, settle somewhere worth staying, anchor for good, then remake the planet.
• Planned: mid-game, a communications array makes contact with orbit and finds the seed kit still waiting up there. Terraforming from the ground alone is possible but slow and costly; a space programme, single launches at first and a space elevator at the end, brings the kit down to finish it.
• Planned: the anchored base is a city you lay out yourself around the uplink, the launch pads, the elevator and the terraforming machines, with permanent towers and walls. The swarm's waves and bosses go for those, harder the closer you get to the end.
• Rare resources found only underground feed the launches and the machines, so the caves matter to the very end.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The story: you are ARK, the Ark's own AI (planned, not built yet)

Claude suggested SEED as the AI's name. Kraig: "I like Ark better than seed", so the ship and its mind share one name, ARK, and Chapter One keeps "The Seed". Claude's first answer to why the Ark wakes was a geothermal vent slowly charging its batteries; Kraig's glowing flora replaced it.

• Planned: you play ARK, not a person. Drones are its hands, its system log is the voice, and the colonists sleep in cryo. Today's AI labs and reusable rockets are the inspiration, with no real company names in the game.
• Planned: the Ark was one ship in a convoy, with cargo landers and a seed kit for terraforming. Something hit the convoy as it arrived: the Ark buried itself in a mountainside, the landers crashed and scattered, and the seed kit is still in orbit, waiting for a signal that never came.
• Planned: the opening is a black screen, then a faint glow as cave flora grows round the dead Ark, its lights coming on section by section, and the boot log: "Power: 3%".
• Planned: the data cores found in the world are the crashed landers' computers, weathered on the surface and better kept in buried wrecks, which is one more reason to dig.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter One: a power famine inside a seal (planned, not built yet)

The morning's draft ended Chapter One at a seal too hard for the drills until a drill upgrade. With the upgrades moved out of Chapter One, Claude suggested the Ark itself breaks through instead.

• Planned: Chapter One is only mining, smelting and getting the Ark running, with about three drones. The AI core, drone upgrades, the Surveyor and datacenters move to Chapter Two.
• Planned: the tutorial caves sit inside a ring of hardened rock no drone can cut, and what's inside runs out, so the only way on is out. With its engines and cutter restored, the Ark bores up through the seal.
• Planned: underground, power is always short. The flora is the only source (the geothermal vent goes), so even green is fragile, and the sun at the breakout is the relief.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Anything is possible, nothing is easy (planned, not built yet)

• Planned, a rule for everything after Chapter One: no hard locks. Research and modules change how fast and how well you can do something, not whether you can.
• Planned: everything has a slow way by hand. The Fabricator makes almost anything, slowly, and drones take one order at a time. The reward is systems: modules that do one job fast, mining lines and haul routes that run themselves, automation rules, and compute that speeds up research.
• Even terraforming could start crudely on day one. The satisfaction is building the machine that does it for you.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Waking the colonists, one at a time (planned, not built yet)

Choosing who wakes was the second of ten ideas Claude pitched. Kraig added the compute cost and the stacking bonuses, then the rule that colonists can die.

• Planned: Chapter Two brings the enemy, deeper smelting and building, and the people, and with them oxygen, water and food.
• Planned: each colonist is a specialist whose bonus stacks: a botanist for plants and food, an engineer for building and repairs, a geologist for surveying, a pilot for launches, a medic for the crew. You choose who wakes by what you're working toward.
• Planned: life support is one gauge, coloured like power and checked about once a minute. Green: nobody dies. One of the three low, yellow: about a 5% chance a colonist dies at each check. Two low, orange: about 20%. All three low, red: about 50%. Any one run out: someone dies every check. The numbers get tuned in play.
• Planned: colonists can all die, taking their bonuses and the compute spent on them, and more can be woken. Only losing the Ark ends the run.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Compute, the game's currency (planned, not built yet)

Claude's first take was compute as a rate only, nothing stored: a project finishes faster the more compute runs. Kraig wanted it stored too, so it now works like the power and battery.

• Planned: compute arrives in Chapter Two and pays for every big project: research, ARK's own upgrades, waking colonists, decrypting data cores, launches, the elevator and terraforming. Each better model makes every recipe cheaper.
• Planned: datacenters make it each second, a store holds a surplus up to a cap, and research draws it at a rate. When it runs short, research slows, the way low power slows the base. Power runs the base; compute moves ARK forward.
• Planned: datacenters need power, water, space and protection, and can sprawl. Cooling is one of two ways to play: in the caves cold rock cools them for free, safe but cramped and short on power; on the surface they need water but get room and sun, and run cooler at night. Heat sinks help either way.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

How the enemies notice you (planned, still open)

Claude pitched noise as the swarm's one sense: digging, smelters and above all launches draw bugs, with damping and quiet modes as the counter. Kraig turned it down, and didn't want a copy of Factorio's pollution either, then reshaped it into the split below.

• Planned: in the caves, work sends vibration through the rock and can stir nearby pockets of cave creatures. On the surface it's sight only.
• Planned: the bugs have their own fog of war and send out scouts now and then. Colonies mostly keep to habits you can learn, with enough randomness that an attack can come at any time.
• Still open: how the enemies spread, decide to attack, build, upgrade and change. Each gets its own design talk.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Two kinds of cave plants (planned, not built yet)

Claude pitched the glowing flora as living tech: plant cuttings to grow light farms, bugs graze on it, terraforming slowly kills it. Kraig kept light and harvest apart.

• Planned: the glowing flora is light only. It lights the caves and runs the day cycle, and it isn't harvested.
• Planned: plants you harvest are separate patches, mined out like ore, that grow back slowly while biolight shines on them: mine one, let it rest, come back.
• Planned: the surface gets its own plants and creatures, different in each biome. Biomes are a design talk still to come.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Ten ideas from Claude, and what Kraig did with them

Claude listed ten ideas, then went through them with Kraig one at a time, each with its own take.

• Reworked: 1, memory cores. Decrypting a data core costs compute, and each one gives something you use: a blueprint, a map to a rare resource or the seal's weak spot, a lasting bonus, or a boss's weakness. Some wake an old wreck's defences.
• Kept with Kraig's changes: 2, choosing which colonists wake, and 4, cooling compute in the caves, which became a choice between cave and surface.
• Turned down and reshaped: 5, bugs hunting by noise, became vibration in the caves and sight on the surface. Reshaped: 6, flora as living tech, became separate light and harvest plants.
• Parked: 3, trust and autonomy, the crew granting ARK more freedom as it proves itself. Ideas 7 to 10 are still to come.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

HollowARK, with ARK in capitals

Kraig asked for a rebrand to fit the new story. Of Claude's names he liked Hollowark best, asked for a few more built on AI and today's tech, and turned those down.

• The name is now written HollowARK, so the Ark, and ARK, the AI you play, sit inside it.
• On the title screen and the top bar, HOLLOW stays in ink and ARK is in biolight teal.
• The web address stays the same.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The Beacon: one ping, one find (planned, not built yet)

The seventh of Claude's ten ideas was a sonar ping. Kraig made it a building with a cost and a risk.

• Planned: the Beacon is a building you put up after the tutorial, a mid-to-late-game tool for hunting rare resources.
• Planned: each ping costs power and compute and finds one thing in its radius, shown as a rough marker. You still have to go and explore to find out what and where. Upgrades push the range and the strength.
• Planned: pinging gives you away. In the caves, creatures slowly burrow towards where they heard it; on the surface the sound carries and they come to look.
• The mid-game rhythm: push into deep caves, set up defences, build a Beacon, ping, choose where to dig, and defend while you dig.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The Ark always moves; what you leave behind is the base (planned, not built yet)

Claude had asked how new buildings get built (placed instantly, assembled by drones over time, or a mix) and whether there should be a limit on how many. Kraig answered with pods, and no limit beyond what a big base costs.

• Planned: the Ark can always pack up and move. Its attached modules, one of each kind, fold up and travel with it and unfold wherever it makes camp.
• Planned: detaching a module is permanent. It becomes a standalone building, and a new attached one can be built at a cost. Detached buildings still move: they fold, travel and unfold where you send them.
• This replaces the idea of the Ark stopping for good at the end. The Ark stays free; the permanent base is what you detach and leave behind.
• Planned: every building comes out of the Fabricator packed, as a pod, and unfolds in place with a short animation. Late-game megastructures get a bigger builder of their own. Sizes and designs come last.
• Planned: no limit on buildings. The limits are complexity, power, logistics and having to defend it all.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

One network, and every line leads to the Ark (planned, not built yet)

Claude's first suggestion was a Hub building at the heart of each base, with bases linked by long lines. Kraig wanted one network rooted at the Ark instead. For moving goods, Claude offered travel time only, capacity limits, or one then the other; Kraig kept travel time only.

• Planned: power lines from the Ark carry both power and resources to every building, and relay stations stretch the reach. A city is a web you can arrange in clusters, branches or loops, and an outpost is a far branch at the end of a chain of relays. Smaller Arks as hubs of their own are an idea for later.
• Planned: an outpost can mine and stockpile on its own, but what it collects joins your totals only once it's connected to the Ark. The Ark is the heart and the swarm's target, so relay chains are every base's backbone, and cutting them is the enemy's best move.
• Planned: goods on the network only take travel time, with no limit on how much a line carries, which rewards building tight around the Ark. Line upgrades come later.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Laser towers, hangars and veteran drones (planned, not built yet)

Claude's suggestion was stone walls, power-hungry laser towers, guard drones and the Ark's own laser. Kraig kept the towers and added hangars, sorties and promotions.

• Planned: laser towers are the main defence, placed at chokepoints, round key buildings and along supply lines.
• Planned: every drone gets a small laser to defend itself, though a swarm will overwhelm it.
• Planned: hangars hold attack drones. They launch on their own when the base is attacked, or go out on sorties under your control. The battery is the leash: away from the grid they have to come home to recharge. Engine speed, battery size, a small solar trickle and the laser's draw are their stats, which fit the drone upgrades already built.
• Planned: drones gain experience on their own from working and surviving, over three to five ranks of a few percent each in their own job, shown as a small chevron or pips. Losing a veteran stings, so careful sorties pay.
• Attacking nests with the Ark itself is noted but not planned: losing the Ark ends the run.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Enemies guard the way forward (planned, not built yet)

Claude asked why anyone would attack a nest, offering drops, better land or growing pressure. Kraig's answer covers it: they guard what you need. For damage, Claude suggested drones repairing nearby buildings for a little iron; Kraig wanted something simpler.

• Planned: nests and creatures guard resources, data cores, story finds and the way on, with bigger guards further along, so the enemies set the pace of the game.
• Planned: they grow and change slowly over time, tuned in playtests. Attacks come when you're close or they sense you, with a little chance on top.
• Planned: a cut relay drops power to everything past it, defences included.
• Planned: everything repairs itself very slowly. "Repair all" at the Ark fixes every building and drone at once, for a cost that grows with the damage: wait it out, or pay to be ready now.
• Still open: enemy types will drop materials for specific uses. One fit: samples from the swarm as research for the terraforming that poisons it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Four tiers of production, simple first (planned, not built yet)

Claude proposed raw, refined, components and megastructure parts, and thought three tiers might be enough. Kraig kept all four.

• Planned: four tiers. Raw (ore, rock, ice, plants), refined (metal and the like), components, and megastructure parts such as elevator segments and terraforming cores.
• Start with one fun loop; the long production chains come in Chapters Three and Four. Chapter One first, then Chapter Two.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

The tree: from seed to stars

Kraig asked whether the tree could change the name. Claude suggested keeping HollowARK, since a hollow is already a tree word, the space inside an old trunk where things shelter, and making the tree the look and the chapter names instead.

• The chapters grow like a tree: The Seed (buried in the cave), Sprout (breaking ground into the sun, the first colonists wake), Roots (the network and outposts), Trunk (the permanent city), Canopy (terraforming) and Reaching (the space programme and the elevator to the stars).
• The look: the Ark drawn as a seed, a thin teal shoot rising out of ARK in the logo, lines that look like roots underground and branches on the surface, and the space elevator as the trunk into the sky. A tagline idea: "From seed to stars."
• HollowARK stays. The shoot in the logo went into Stage 1.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter One, built in four stages

Claude wrote the plan as four stages, each one playable. Kraig asked whether building them all at once would be faster. Claude's answer: it costs about the same, and the stages build on each other, but the rock is separate enough to build next to the opening. So Stage 2 started alongside Stage 1.

• Stage 1, the wake: the new opening and ARK's voice.
• Stage 2, the rock: one rock with a hardness you can see, rock from digging, a storage limit, and the seal.
• Stage 3, the famine: flora the only power underground, three drones at most, the AI core, drone upgrades and the Surveyor saved for Chapter Two, and the tutorial in a new order.
• Stage 4, daylight: the Ark bores up through the seal, the sun floods the grid, ARK reads the stars to learn how long it slept, and "Chapter One complete".
• After each stage a test player runs the whole chapter, then a report and Kraig's OK before the next. Old saves start fresh.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Rock becomes concrete

• Digging yields rock, more from harder rock. A concrete mixer unfolds from the Ark like the smelters and turns rock into concrete.
• Concrete patches the hull and builds the Storage module, and later walls, defences and foundations.
• It went straight into Stage 2, which had just started.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Stage 1, the wake: ARK opens its eyes

Built as a background job while the design talk went on. Two rough edges Claude flagged: a "Grid falling behind" warning pops up the moment play starts, and ARK still mentions the AI core and upgrades until Stage 3 takes them out.

• The crash from the sky is gone. A new game opens on black: CHAPTER ONE · THE SEED, with a small teal shoot growing above it.
• The flora round the buried Ark brightens out of the dark and the hull catches its glow. One light blinks, then the Ark's lights come on in six sections, nose to tail.
• The boot log types itself out: core online, Power 3%, location unknown, date unknown, 400 colonists in cryo and stable, hull breached, an ore signal in the rock.
• A bay opens and the first drone flies out, the camera pulls back and the controls fade in. It takes about 22 seconds; a click or any key skips it, and Continue skips it too.
• Underground, the crew is gone: every objective, warning and remark is now ARK's short system log. Game over reads THE ARK HAS GONE DARK.
• On the title screen and in the top bar, ARK grows a thin teal shoot.
• The test player still finishes the opening in about 39 minutes.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Stage 2, the rock: hardness, the seal, concrete and storage

Built as a second background job next to Stage 1, then merged into it; at the merge, the new concrete step was rewritten in ARK's voice.

• Every rock cell has a hardness from 0 to 100%: soft by the start cave, harder further out, with hard veins. One drone digs a cell in 3 seconds at the softest and 15 at the hardest. The rock shades from warm and light to cold and dark, and hovering reads "Rock · 64% hard · about 11 s for one drone".
• The seal replaces the bedrock edge: a ring of hardened rock round everything, the darkest of all, with faint cold veins. No drone can cut it. Hovering reads "The seal · too hard for the drones. Only the Ark's cutter could get through."
• Rock is a new resource: each cell dug brings 2 to 6 home.
• The concrete mixer, 15 iron once the iron smelter works, turns 2 rock into 1 concrete and grows like the smelters.
• The Ark holds 200 of each resource. The readout shows how full it is and turns amber at the top, and miners pause. Rock past the limit is left behind, but the cell still clears. The Storage module, 20 concrete and 10 iron, adds 200 more of everything per level.
• A new tutorial step, make 20 concrete, comes before the hull patch, which now takes 20 concrete, 30 iron and 10 copper.
• The test player finishes the opening in about 39 minutes. Old saves start fresh.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Expeditions, outposts and one inventory (planned, not built yet)

This was the ninth of Claude's ten ideas, cave expeditions. Claude assumed a party could spend what it carried on the spot, to put up a wall or a tower; Kraig said no, since that would make little networks of their own.

• Planned: build anywhere, in the caves or on the surface. A building with no line runs on its own power: light collectors underground, the sun on the surface, batteries.
• Planned: resources reach the Ark's totals only over a line, and one line carries both power and supply, so connecting is the natural choice but never a rule.
• Planned: every module holds a little of any resource and keeps it when packed. An expedition party, a few drones with a power module and a storage module, goes out, mines, packs up full and comes home, and its load counts once it's connected. A trip or a permanent line: two ways to get far-off resources.
• Planned: one inventory, the Ark's. Anything you build or spend draws on it. A tower for a far chokepoint is fabricated packed at home, carried out and unfolded there.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Components, the Fabricator and factories (planned, not built yet)

Claude proposed four starting components and one Assembler that could make any of them. Kraig first described makers in tiers by recipe size, then split them in two: one Fabricator for whole things, and factories for the parts.

• Planned, from Chapter Two: Frame (2 iron) for structure, Wiring (2 copper) for power, Motor (a frame and wiring) for anything that moves, and Circuit (wiring and crystal, found only in caves) for anything that thinks. Concrete stays a refined material. Chapter One is raw and refined only.
• Planned: the Fabricator prints whole things from a build queue: modules (packed), drones and attackers.
• Planned: factories make items. Pick a recipe, switch one on, and it keeps going while the ingredients are in the Ark's inventory, so factories feed each other through it, with travel time and no belts. Refiners take one input (the smelters, the concrete mixer), the Assembler two, the Heavy assembler three or four; the names are placeholders.
• Planned: to make more, upgrading is the efficient way (level 2 doubles the speed for one and a half times the power, in the same space). A second copy costs full price, full power and more room.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Build the whole game thin first, about two hours (planned, not built yet)

Claude sketched a thin run with one simple goal per chapter, from digging out of the cave to bringing the seed kit down from orbit, and suggested about two hours to win.

• Planned: after Chapter One, every chapter gets a short, simple version first, so a whole run can be won end to end. Then each one is deepened from playtests: longer recipes, harder enemies, more steps.
• Planned: the thin run takes about two hours to win, about 35 minutes for Chapter One and about 15 for each of the rest, and grows longer as the chapters deepen.
• Planned: difficulty is tuned with a few global dials: one multiplier on every recipe's cost, plus how hard the enemies and the power push back.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Work the tree backwards from data centres and rockets (planned, not built yet)

Claude proposed four second-tier components, which Kraig accepted. Then, working back from his two end goals, Claude drafted the recipes with real-world parts under plain names, including methane harvested from the cave plants for rocket fuel.

• Planned: four second-tier components, made in the Heavy assembler from three or four inputs. Processor (two circuits and wiring) for compute; Emitter (circuit, wiring and crystal) for lasers, light collectors and the Beacon; Drive (motor, frame and circuit) for fast and attack drones, the Ark's engines and launch stages; Armour plate (frame, alloy and concrete) for walls, towers and hulls.
• Planned: the recipes come from the end goals, backwards. A data centre is GPUs, heat sinks, optical fibre and frames, plus water to cool it. A GPU (the Processor, renamed) is two circuits, wiring and crystal; a heat sink is copper and alloy; optical fibre is drawn from glass, and glass is fired from rock, so rock feeds both concrete and glass.
• Planned: a rocket stage is a rocket engine, a fuel tank, a heat shield and a GPU for the avionics. The engine is a drive, alloy and a heat sink; the heat shield is ceramic tiles fired from rock on armour plate; rocket fuel is methane from harvested alien plants plus liquid oxygen from ice.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Food, and life in the caves and on the surface (planned, not built yet)

Claude worked food backwards the same way, from what the colonists eat down to what the caves give, and recommended three more trees to plan like it.

• Planned: plants and creatures both in the caves and on the surface, with different kinds in each.
• Planned: food in three steps up. Algae, grown in vats from water and light, is the easy cave food. Crops from the Ark's seed bank grow in a greenhouse on soil, water and light, and soil is rock dust and composted cave plants. Native food, alien plants and creatures made safe in a lab, is the richest, and it teaches the biology terraforming needs.
• Planned: a kitchen turns them all into rations, the one food the colonists eat.
• Planned: three more trees worked backwards the same way: medicine from plant extracts (lower death odds, safer waking), what terraforming needs (air, soil, the seed kit from orbit) and the space elevator's cable (carbon from methane, then carbon fibre).

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Terraforming: one number for the air (planned, not built yet)

Claude proposed terraforming as a tree of its own, worked backwards: three tracks, machines, life and orbit, all pushing one planet meter, with samples from the swarm as research.

• Planned: one headline percentage, how breathable the air is, fed by smaller numbers such as oxygen, toxins and temperature. Breathable air wins the game.
• Planned: three tracks push it. Machines: air processors, megastructures of catalyst stacks, carbon filters, turbines and GPU control, scrub out the toxic gas the swarm breathes and add oxygen. Life: seeders plant Earth crops and hardy native cover across the surface, with soil and microbes cultured in a lab. Orbit: each package of the seed kit brought down speeds a track.
• Planned: samples the swarm drops speed up the research that turns the air against them.
• Planned: the sky and the colours shift as the number climbs.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Compute: ice caves, memory banks and numbered training runs (planned, not built yet)

Claude had suggested that data centres in caves stay cool for free, and that ARK's upgrades be numbered like real model versions. For the units, Claude picked real ones that grow with the game.

• Planned: some caves are freezing ice caves. A data centre built there needs no cooling; anywhere else, other caves included, it does.
• Planned: the Ark holds only a little compute. Memory bank modules, big drives, add room, grown by levels or by building more.
• Planned: real units that climb with the game: data centres make petaflops, memory banks hold exaflops of work, and the last projects cost zettaflops and yottaflops.
• Planned: ARK's upgrades are numbered training runs, ARK 1, ARK 2, ARK 3 and on. Each is a big compute project that makes every recipe's compute cheaper, lets ARK run more drones at once and adds smarter automation. They are the game's spine.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Water only from the ice caves, and a barren surface that greens (planned, partly built)

This replaces the rich, colourful surface of the earlier notes. Stage 4 already built the bare version: a bright, pale surface with mineral colours and no ice.

• Planned: ice exists only in the freezing ice caves, so every drop of water, for the colonists, for cooling, for the oxygen in rocket fuel and for the crops, comes from underground. Lines from the ice caves are lifelines, and the caves matter to the end.
• The surface is bright and barren, somewhere between the moon and a desert, its colour from rock, minerals and sky rather than plants.
• Planned: terraforming shows on the land: as the number climbs, grass, then plants, then more spread over it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Six places, each with a reason to go (planned, not built yet)

Claude proposed three sub-biomes on each side, each one holding something the run needs.

• Planned: two biomes, the caves and the surface, each with three sub-biomes, and each sub-biome holds something you need: a resource, a find or an enemy to beat.
• Planned, in the caves: the Glow caves (the glowing plants: light, methane, medicine and native food, and cave creatures), the Ice caves (all the water, and free cooling for data centres) and the Crystal deeps (crystal for circuits, emitters and GPUs, buried wrecks with data cores, and the worst cave creatures).
• Planned, on the surface: the Flats (sun, common ore, room to build and launch sites, where the swarm hunts), the Badlands (colourful mineral canyons with a rare metal for heat shields and rocket engines, and natural chokepoints) and the Hive lands (the swarm's own ground: samples for terraforming research, and guarded finds).
• Planned: the surface's own life is mostly the swarm and its hives, plus hardy crusts and lichens.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Stage 3, the famine: flora for power, three drones, a new order

Not yet: the seal was the end of what was built, and breaking it is Stage 4. Claude offered to build Stages 3 and 4 back to back in the background, with a report and a playable link after each. Stage 3 went live as version 63 with one thing for Kraig to judge: the grid now stays red for about the first 18 minutes, because the power cells come after the three drones. Moving the cells earlier is the easy fix if it drags.

• Chapter One is now a chapter in the code: what belongs to Chapter Two is held back, not deleted.
• The cave plants are the only power underground. The geothermal tap is gone: the Ark's skin and the light collectors drink the flora's glow, and when the flora rests, a faint glow is all that's left. The grid runs at full speed in green, three-quarters in yellow and half in red.
• Red until the power cells are repaired, yellow until the first light collector unfolds, then green while the battery holds. It slips back to yellow while the flora rests: that's the famine.
• Three drones at most. Try to build a fourth and ARK says, "My core is cracked. Three drones is all I can run." Drones cost 15 iron instead of 20 to keep the red start bearable.
• The AI core, drone upgrades and the Surveyor are saved for Chapter Two, along with data centres, life support and packing up the Ark. ARK's lines, the panels, the help and the title screen no longer mention them.
• The tutorial in a new order, 13 steps: dig to the iron, mine it, repair the smelter and smelt; repair the Fabricator and build up to three drones; repair the power cells and unfold a light collector; dig to the copper and unfold the copper smelter; make concrete and patch the hull; repair the engines and cutter. The last objective reads "Bore through the seal".
• "Grid falling behind" no longer pops up the moment play starts.
• The test player finishes the 13 steps in about 35 minutes. Old saves start fresh.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Stage 4, daylight: the Ark bores out, and Chapter One is complete

Built in the background while the talk moved on to Chapters Two and Three, then merged, tested and put live as version 64. One quirk Claude flagged: the caves' flora cycle and the surface's sun share one clock, and the breakout always landed at night. So in Chapter One, when the Ark breaks out in the dark, the clock skips ahead to the next morning. You always get your daylight.

• Bore out: once the engines and cutter are repaired, the "Bore through the seal" objective has a Bore out button. The Ark folds its modules and sets a straight course for the nearest point outside the mountain.
• The drones dig the lane through plain rock. Only the Ark's own cutter bites the seal: a white-hot face at the bow, glowing cracks spreading through the dark rock, sparks and chips, an orange light down the tunnel, a slight shake and a heavy grind.
• The seal takes about a minute of cutting at full power, and the cutter draws more than the battery holds. The battery runs dry near the end and the Ark cuts on at half speed on the flora's trickle, but it never stalls. Once it's through, the rest of the hole goes three times faster.
• Daylight: a white flash fades into a bright, barren surface, warm pale ground with rust, slate-violet, basalt, ochre and salt mineral fields, and the camera eases back over the open land.
• The sun reaches the Ark at the hole. Its skin drinks six times what the brightest bloom gave, and the grid is green in about 20 seconds: the famine is over.
• ARK reads the stars in the boot log's hand: sky clear, star fix acquired, matching against launch charts, then "I slept N years", a different number each run, between 200 and 459. "Colonists in cryo: 400 · stable. Waking them comes next."
• The CHAPTER ONE COMPLETE card, in the opening's style with the teal shoot: THE SEED, your time, cells dug, rock mined, concrete made, drones, and "Chapter Two · Sprout · coming next".
• Keep exploring lets you roam the surface, still in Chapter One, while the swarm sleeps: its guards stay still and nothing fights. Or go back to the title.
• Chapter One speaks only in ARK's voice now, with its own lines for night and dawn on the surface and for the first hive it sees.
• A save made mid-bore picks the bore back up. The test player reaches the card in about 38 minutes.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A first brush with the enemy, in Chapter One (planned, not built yet)

Claude suggested doing both, in different ways: a real fight in the cave, and only a glimpse outside.

• Planned: when the drones break into the copper cave, two cave creatures nesting there burst out and run straight at the Ark. Its laser cuts them down, so you always win, but each shot costs a little power, which stings in the famine. ARK logs it: "Movement in the copper cave. Two contacts. Defence online."
• Planned: after the breakout, a few swarm scouts on a ridge watch the Ark, then slip away. No fight, just the hook into Chapter Two.
• Planned: both go into a polish round on Chapter One, with Kraig's notes from playing it.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter Two, Sprout: the plan (planned, not built yet)

Claude drafted Chapter Two in Chapter One's shape: a thin version, about 20 minutes, in four playable stages with Kraig's OK between them. The goal: wake the first three colonists and keep them alive while the swarm finds you.

• Planned, stage 1, sun and mind: the chapter opens on the surface after the Chapter One card, with CHAPTER TWO · SPROUT. Real days and nights with sun power: the famine's relief, but the nights bite. The AI core repair comes back and makes a small trickle of compute, and training run ARK 1 raises the drone cap from three to six and brings drone upgrades back.
• Planned, stage 2, water and the first sleeper: water comes only from the ice cave back inside the mountain, an ice miner there and a line to the Ark, the first lifeline. The still turns ice into water, the oxygen plant water into air, and algae vats water and light into food. Life support is one gauge with death odds.
• Planned: colonists wake one at a time, for compute, three in this chapter, each a specialist with a bonus that stacks: the engineer (building and repairs), the botanist (food) and the medic (lower death odds). They can die; only losing the Ark ends the run.
• Planned, stage 3, parts and factories: the Assembler makes frames, wiring and motors on its own while the inputs last, and upgrading it beats building a copy. New drones, life modules and towers cost those parts.
• Planned, stage 4, the swarm and the lander: scouts find you, and the first nest guards the convoy's crashed cargo lander. Laser towers, laser-fitted drones, slow self-repair and a costly Repair all. Clear the nest and salvage the lander: circuits, and a data core whose fragment points at the seed kit in orbit. CHAPTER TWO COMPLETE · SPROUT.
• Planned: built after the polish round on Chapter One, one stage at a time.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter Three, Roots: the plan (planned, not built yet)

Claude laid out the order (Stage 4, then a polish round on Chapter One, then Chapter Two) and offered to draft Chapter Three in the same shape. The goal: grow the network outward, find crystal and make real compute.

• Planned, stage 1, lines and outposts: one network from the Ark, lines carrying power and goods, and relays to reach further. An outpost with no line runs on its own power, and its goods count only once it's linked; expedition parties pack up full and carry their load home. The swarm starts going for lines, and a cut line drops the power past the cut.
• Planned, stage 2, the Beacon and the deeps: each ping costs power and compute, finds one thing, and can wake what's nearby. It finds the Crystal deeps: an expedition in, cave creatures guarding the crystal, and the Assembler making circuits from wiring and crystal. Wake the geologist for rarer finds and better pings.
• Planned, stage 3, data centres and memory: a melter turns ore and ice into alloy and water, heat sinks are copper and alloy, and the first data centre, built from frames, circuits and heat sinks, needs cooling water, or none in an ice cave. Memory banks store the compute.
• Planned, stage 4, ARK 2 and the lander's core: training run ARK 2 raises the drone cap from six to ten and adds auto-build and auto-repair. Decrypting the lander's data core with compute gives the convoy's map: the rare metal in the Badlands and the site planned for a permanent city. CHAPTER THREE COMPLETE · ROOTS.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter Four, Trunk: the plan (planned, not built yet)

With Chapter Three approved, Claude offered to draft Chapter Four next, and Kraig said yes to the draft and then to the plan. The goal: found the permanent city and hold it.

• Planned, stage 1, the city site: follow the convoy's map to where the Flats meet the Badlands, with room, cliffs and natural chokepoints. Detach modules there to found the permanent city while the Ark stays free to move, raise concrete walls, and bring in titanium, the Badlands' rare metal, by line or expedition.
• Planned, stage 2, the Heavy assembler: drives, armour plate, emitters and GPUs; a glass furnace and optical fibre; a second-generation data centre for a big jump in compute. Wake the pilot.
• Planned, stage 3, defence grows up: a hangar sends attack drones out on sorties, drones that survive earn veteran ranks, and laser towers and armoured walls get stronger.
• Planned, stage 4, ARK 3 and the siege: training run ARK 3, then the swarm's first siege on the city, with bigger waves and one large brute. Hold it, and ARK 3 finishes decrypting the lander's core: the blueprint for the uplink, the hook into Chapter Five. CHAPTER FOUR COMPLETE · TRUNK.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter Five, Canopy: the plan (planned, not built yet)

Right after Kraig approved Chapter Four, Claude drafted Chapter Five in the same shape. The goal: make contact with orbit and start turning the planet green. Kraig approved it with the Chapter Six plan.

• Planned, stage 1, the uplink: build the communications array from the blueprint, a big compute project. Contact: the seed kit is in orbit, intact and waiting, and the uplink shows what became of the convoy. Two roads open: terraform from the ground alone, slow and costly, or bring the kit down in Chapter Six.
• Planned, stage 2, life: harvest the Glow caves' plants for methane and extracts, grow crops from the Ark's seed bank in a greenhouse, make rations in a kitchen and medicine in a lab. Wake the biologist.
• Planned, stage 3, machines: the first air processor, and the planet meter appears, "Air: N% breathable", fed by oxygen, toxins and temperature. Samples from swarm kills and hive raids speed the research. Training run ARK 4 makes everything cheaper and faster.
• Planned, stage 4, seeders and the swarm's answer: seeders plant cover outward from the city and the land visibly greens, while the swarm fights harder as the number climbs and goes for the air processors. Reach 25% breathable. ARK's conclusion: from the ground alone this takes generations, and the kit in orbit would finish it. CHAPTER FIVE COMPLETE · CANOPY.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

First contact: the copper cave's lurkers and the scouts on the ridge

The first piece of the Chapter One polish round, built to the plan Kraig approved earlier.

• When the drones first break into the copper cave, its nest stirs and two lurkers, the caves' own creatures, pale, many-legged and glowing faintly, run for the Ark along the tunnels.
• A short-range turret rises from the hull and cuts them down. It always wins: it fires even on an empty battery, drones only get a scratch, and the hull loses a little at most.
• ARK logs it: "Movement in the copper cave. Two contacts.", "Defence online.", "Contacts down. The caves aren't empty." The camera nudges once to frame the nest and the Ark.
• After the breakthrough, before the chapter card, four swarm scouts come over a rise on the plain, stand watching the Ark, then drop back out of sight. No fight: just the hook for Chapter Two.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A design upgrade: the Lantern look, in four phases

Claude audited every screen (what already looked good and the twelve biggest problems), then offered three directions: Lantern (dark caves lit only by the flora and the Ark's lamps, pale ceramic machines, a bone-white surface under an amber sun), Porcelain (everything light and airy) and Signal (the world as ARK's sensors see it). It recommended Lantern: the opening Kraig already liked, carried through the whole game.

• Lantern chosen, with Claude's defaults: modules at about half their size as one family of seed pods, the Ark drawn as a seed and power lines as roots; on phones the title and a compact screen, while play stays laptop-first.
• Four phases: 1, dark cave, bright machines; 2, the pod family and its unfold animations; 3, a readable screen; 4, alive caves and the surface.
• The rules: colour only where it means something, one accent colour per object, nothing on the ground that looks like interface, no pure black, and white only for lamps.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Chapter Six, Reaching, and "build all the way to 6" (planned, not built yet)

Claude drafted the finale in the same shape as the other chapters and proposed the build order to the end: the design upgrade first, so every chapter is built on the new look, then Chapters Two to Six back to back, each tested and put on the play link as it lands.

• Planned, stage 1, fuel and the launch site: rocket fuel from the flora's methane and oxygen from ice-cave water, rocket engines, heat shields fired from rock, fuel tanks and a launch pad at the city.
• Planned, stage 2, first launches: each rocket reaches the seed kit in orbit and brings one package down, each package speeds the terraforming, and the swarm hits launch sites hardest. Training run ARK 5.
• Planned, stage 3, the elevator: carbon fibre spun from methane for the cable, segments from the Heavy assembler, and the climb as the last great project.
• Planned, stage 4, the last stand and the win: the swarm's final assault as the air nears breathable, the elevator finishes, the whole kit comes down, "Air: 100% breathable", the land green to the horizon and colonists stepping outside without suits. The final card: "REACHING · The seed has grown."
• The order to the end: design phases 1 and 3, then 2 and 4, then Chapters Two to Six back to back. Kraig plays and redirects any time.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Design phase 3: a screen you can read

Built first because it was the quickest win: the old labels were 8.5-pixel capitals that were hard to read.

• Three text sizes and three typefaces with jobs: a wide display face only for the name, chapter cards and module names; a plain face for reading; a monospace for numbers and ARK's voice.
• One dark-glass screen in the caves and on the surface, so nothing flips at the breakout.
• A cost you can't afford keeps its number with a small red dot, and hovering says how many more you need.
• The objective reads at a glance: the step, its count and a progress bar, the button on its row and ARK's line cut to one sentence. A finished step ticks, folds away, and the next slides in.
• The Ark's panel in three tabs, Repairs, Modules and Upgrades, each with a dot when something can be done. Counts in the top bar roll up and down and flash as they change.
• On phones the title stacks, and play gets a compact bar, a one-line objective and panels that slide up from the bottom.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Music that follows the bloom

Claude proposed keeping the music generated live in code, driven by the flora's cycle, with cues for the big moments and a short theme of its own.

• Planned: rest sparse and dark, rising opening up, bloom the fullest, fading thinning downward; caves close and glassy, the surface wide and airy; a red grid thins the music.
• Planned: cues for the opening, the first fight, the bore, the breakthrough and the chapter card, a four-to-five-note HollowARK theme, and separate switches for music and sound.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Menus and settings, overhauled

Claude bundled it into one round: a living title screen, a pause menu, full settings, rebindable keys and save slots. Next after that: a feedback button, a sound-effects pass and polish for sharing links.

• Planned: a title screen with Continue, New game, Chapters, Settings, How to play and Credits; a pause menu on Esc.
• Planned: settings for sound, graphics, accessibility (text size, reduced motion, a softer breakout flash) and gameplay (difficulty, tutorial hints); rebindable keys; three save slots with autosave, export and import.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A tiny, cramped start, and a faster Chapter One

Claude proposed moving the power cells right after the first smelting, so the red start lasts minutes, not 18, and a pacing pass aimed at about 25 minutes at normal speed, down from 38. The tiny start folded into the same pass.

• Planned: a starting pocket barely bigger than the Ark, lit by one small patch of flora glowing through a crack; everything else is rock to dig, so the first steps reveal the map.
• Planned: softer rock near the start, quicker early mining and repairs, cheaper early costs and less waiting.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

A time-lapse for every chapter

One of Claude's ideas for the design upgrade: every chapter-complete card can play a short sped-up overhead replay of the tunnels spreading and the base growing, set to the theme, made to be shared as a short video.

• Planned: light snapshots recorded during play, replayed in 20 to 30 seconds from the chapter card.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Design phase 1: a dark cave, bright machines

The biggest single change to the look so far, all in the drawing code: the rules of the game didn't change.

• Under the mountain the cave is now dark: teal light pools around the flora in bloom, and in rest it falls nearly black, so the Ark's warm lamps, each module's lamps and each drone's own lamp carry the scene.
• The cave floor is the mountain's own stone, and the rock has body: hardness shows as tone and grain, the walls have a lit lip, the seal has cold veins, and ore glints only near open ground.
• The opening's slow brightening now lands exactly on the dark cave, so the wake flows straight into play.
• Drones are bigger, pale ceramic with dark trim, with twin engine glows that brighten with speed and a cyan trail. Lasers, sparks, power lines and ore draw over the darkness.
• Quieter rings: a selection is four corner brackets, the objective's target a small dashed ring with an arrow, and ranges show only while something is selected.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Hold the launch until the whole game is played through

Claude suggested keeping these pages unlisted until the whole thin game can be won and Kraig has played it start to finish. Lessons from making this game are being kept for the next one.

• The pages stay quiet until the thin game is winnable and Kraig's playthrough notes are in.
• Then the launch becomes its own piece of work: getting the first players in and hearing back from them. The first goal is as many players and as much good feedback as possible, to improve the game and the way games get made.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Music that follows the bloom, and the HollowARK theme

Still synthesised live in the browser, no recordings. Claude also wrote a test that plays 36 minutes of the score through a strict stand-in for the browser's audio and fails on any error or voice left running.

• Under the mountain the score follows the flora, blended continuously: rest is a low drone, the odd water drop and a lot of silence; rising fades in a slow arpeggio; bloom is warm pads, glassy bell melodies, a gentle pulse and the cave breathing; fading lets the melody fall away.
• Caves sound close and glassy with a long echo; the surface wide and airy, brighter by day, colder at night. A red grid thins the voices and makes them waver.
• Cues: a tone rising with the Ark's lights in the opening, a climbing figure under the first fight, a crescendo with a quickening heartbeat through the seal, a swell that peaks into the breakthrough flash and resolves, and the theme on the chapter card.
• The HollowARK theme, five notes, D A B E D, also turns up now and then in the bloom's bells.
• Music has its own switch (J), separate from sound effects (N), and both are remembered.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Pacing: a tiny start pocket and a faster Chapter One

Aimed at about 20 minutes for the test player at normal speed, down from 38. A new test reports minutes in each power band, when the red start ends and the longest stretches with nothing new.

• The start pocket is barely bigger than the Ark, lit by one patch of flora through a crack. Everything else is rock to dig.
• With no open ground, a new module's arm grinds out its own bay beside the Ark.
• Power cells come right after the first smelting, so the red start is short.
• Quicker everything early on: faster mining, softer rock, quicker smelting, and roughly half the early costs (15 ore for the smelter repair, 12 iron for the power cells and the Fabricator, 10 iron a drone).
• A narrower lane for the bore, so the breakout comes sooner.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Design phase 2, seed pods, and new menus

Two rounds built side by side and merged a minute apart.

• Modules are one family of seed pods: a round ceramic pad, petals lying flat round the core, the core the only coloured part, each type with its own small working motion (a pulsing crucible, a turning drum, a fan leaning to the flora).
• Half the size, so a cave holds two to three times as many. Pods land, hinge their petals open and light their lamps in order; they pack back into a capsule to travel and ease outward as they grow.
• The Ark is drawn as the seed: a teardrop hull with leaf vanes and a teal seam that brightens with stored power. Power lines are roots, tapering and wandering, with pulses running out along them.
• A new title screen with Continue, New game, Chapters, Settings, How to play and Credits, worked with the arrow keys.
• A pause menu on Esc; settings for volume, quality, screen shake, text size, reduced motion, a softer breakout flash, difficulty, hints and pausing when the window loses focus.
• Every key can be rebound, right-click gives every two-finger-click order, and there are three save slots with autosave, export and import.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

An abstract title: the story as a blueprint

Kraig named the feel he wanted: ancient schematics. Claude's version: thin teal lines on dark, telling the backstory in a loop and never showing the crash or the cave.

• Planned: the mother ship releases its seed ships; one ancient seed ship; the jump to light speed; dropping out at a planet; closing on the planet as a slowly turning wireframe globe.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Design phase 4: living caves, a bone-and-amber surface, the time-lapse

The last phase of the design upgrade, so Chapter Two onwards will be built on the finished look.

• The caves are alive: the flora breathes with the bloom, spores drift in bloom, small lights flicker, and dust hangs in the lamps' light. Dug tunnels keep their rubble.
• Before the breakthrough, a shaft of daylight cuts through the seal's last crack, then the flash swells in.
• The surface in Lantern's day colours: bone-white ground, drifting dust, warm shadows, an amber cast at sunrise and sunset, and the mountain in relief with a long shadow that follows the sun.
• The chapter time-lapse: the run is recorded in tiny snapshots, and the chapter card and the Chapters screen play a 26-second overhead replay with its own cue.
• The title screen is a looping blueprint of the backstory: the carrier, the seed ship, the jump, the arrival, the world.

Devlog · October 14, 2026

Pause the chapters; find the loop first

Chapters Four to Six went on hold. The plan became a design pass on the foundations, one topic at a time, each followed by a playtest: the core loop, story with quests, a bigger map, resource amounts, Factorio-style production chains with buffers that spill over, and the mechanics that need tweaking, power first. The playtest recorder, built the same night, shows how each session actually went.

• Chapters Four to Six are on hold; "build all the way to Chapter Six" is replaced by a design pass on the foundations.
• Production chains come first: base materials going into bigger parts, with buffers and storage that spills over.

Devlog · October 13, 2026

I want to make a video game

Claude's first suggestion was a calm hiking game built on Kraig's real routes. He wanted an alien world instead. Claude then offered a RimWorld-style colony with three colonists, and he turned that down too.

• The game is 2D, seen from above, on an alien world.

Devlog · October 13, 2026

Start with a base, build drones

• You start with one base and build drones that collect resources.
• Like Factorio, the game is about building automation that grows. The difference: drones carry everything, so there are no conveyor belts.

Devlog · October 13, 2026

Chains of drones, three temperatures

• Every drone has a limited range, so far deposits need a chain of drones.
• Materials have a weight and one of three temperatures, and those decide which drones can carry them.