HALLPASSResearch Play the game

Timeline

Four weeks, in order.

The game was started on 2026-08-23. What follows is the sequence of research, decisions, releases and measurements since, with each entry linking to the page that explains it. Dates come from the repository's session log and mechanics reference.

    • Shipped

      First build

      A Three.js survivors-like started from a locked brief. The simulation and the renderer were split from the first day so a headless bot could play the game and difficulty could be measured rather than guessed.

    • Decision

      The dawn win condition

      Survive from 9 PM to First Bell. Six signature boss kits, six evolutions, four domain kits, and the first public deploy.

    • Research

      First Steam sweep

      4,370 negative reviews across seven titles, weighted by helpful votes, sorted into ten complaint clusters. The risk tracker gave each cluster a status for this game.

    • Shipped

      Periods and per-room enemy rosters

      QUIZ, MIDTERM and FINAL. The seven-minute cliff (zero clears in 192 bot runs) was retuned, and each room got its own enemy introduction schedule.

    • Research

      The two-sided harvest

      72,908 reviews across ten titles, positive and negative, with reviewer playtime attached to every theme. This is where the praise-at-45-hours, complaints-at-26 pattern came from.

    • Measured

      The lab opens

      A continuous playtest loop with a written protocol, named seed banks and an append-only ledger. The first death autopsies found novices dying at a mid-night wall that no boss was responsible for.

    • Decision

      One night, ten rooms

      The whole game became a single night with one room per hour. The stage select became a blueprint of the building.

    • Shipped

      Recovery valve and pressure waves

      The valve shipped with its 300-second gate straight from findings I-028 to I-030. Pressure lulls after a domain stopped the domain-farming collapse. Cloud saves went live.

    • Measured

      Enemy speed moves the ceiling; enemy health backfires

      Tier speed tunes I-420 and I-422 moved win rates as predicted. Adding enemy health raised win rates at three separate sites, and the mechanism was traced to the damage clamp feeding energy and domain charge.

    • Measured

      Kaito fixed, Sora still open

      Halving Kaito’s weapon cooldown closed his collapse on all three periods (I-427). Sora’s third single-value fix did nothing, and her novice wall was flagged as a mechanism problem (I-428).

    • Shipped

      All ten rooms dressed

      The environment campaign finished, from the Yard through to the Rooftop at First Bell.

    • Research

      The Reddit atlas

      About 1.47 million posts and comments across eight communities, walked through Arctic Shift. Request threads gave the demand list; sentence tagging gave the community’s own definition of depth.

    • Decision

      Price pass

      First ranks between 35 and 90 coins, summons at 550, a full training sheet at 20,150 per student. Prices stay flat as you progress.

    • Shipped

      The card deck and Grades

      A deck built in the club and carried into runs, with the pull as the only random moment. Grades added tougher recoloured enemies the deeper a run goes.

    • Shipped

      Beta release

      Options split into player and developer views, preload before a room starts, the store plumbing behind its flag.

    • Measured

      The lab turns to push-on power

      Heuristic 10 added: a carried build must not outgrow the night. Card numbers moved into the tuning file so the lab owns them.

    • Shipped

      Carry, telegraphs, mercy, Clutch

      Rooms scale to the level you arrive with. Two unfair attacks got telegraphs. Study Hall mercy and Clutch shipped with their measured tables, plus the free pull and the one-question survey.

    • Shipped

      This site

      The compendium, generated from the same repository as the game.