v2.6.0 — Playtest feedback round (1.5 hours, 42 jobs, Chapter 4)

First release driven by a sustained 1.5-hour playtest session through Chapter 4 (Day 12, 42 jobs). The feedback identified 60+ items across bugs, UX friction, balance, and missing features. This release ships the highest-impact 12 fixes; the remaining items are tracked in claude-todo.md with questions for the designer in claude-questions.md.

Bug Fixes

• Ritual candles not lighting up — the candle flash on tap was too brief (250ms at 0.9 alpha against a black background). Boosted to 450ms at full alpha with 1.6x scale. Both the pattern demo and the tap response now use the same brighter flash.

• Notifications broken — the daily return notification used smallIcon: 'ic_stat_icon_config_sample' which didn't exist as a drawable. Created proper monochrome notification icons (ic_notify.png at hdpi/xhdpi/xxhdpi). Also added a chapter-milestone notification that fires when the player advances a chapter.

• Menu click-through — Phaser scene input handlers could fire through the DOM menu overlay. All active scenes are now paused while the menu is open and resumed on close.

UX Improvements

• Removed lecture text — "Perfect clears snowball your economy fastest," "Keep repeating strong-fit work to shape this cat's eventual specialization," "Small morale swings stack over time," and all strategic advice lines from job assignment. The game teaches through play, not text.

• Show job difficulty — colored difficulty label (green/amber/red) now appears on the approach choice screen between the job name and the minigame buttons.

• Wish banner moved to bottom — the daily wish banner now renders at the bottom of the screen (was top), so it doesn't obscure town navigation.

• Bigger strike button in Brawl — bumped from 60x60 to 80x80.

• CourierRun pixel art obstacles — replaced the ambiguous colored rectangles with the existing block sprites (barrel, crate, cart, flour_sack, pew). Each obstacle type now has distinct pixel art.

Balance & Progression

• Chapter 1 opens 2 job categories — pest_control + courier from day 1, giving the player 4 minigames immediately (chase, hunt, sokoban, courier_run) instead of 2. Hooks the player with variety from the start.

• All job types progress the plague — guard, sacred, and other Ch.3 jobs now count toward plague resolution alongside pest control. Uses totalJobsCompleted counter instead of filtering by specific job IDs.

• No festivals during the plague — market festivals are suppressed while ratPlagueStarted && !ratPlagueResolved. Thematically, the town doesn't celebrate during a crisis.

• Enough jobs for every cat — daily job count is now max(base, roster_size) so every cat can work.

• Auto-save at day end — saveGame() fires after advanceDay() so progress is never lost.

• At least 2 approaches per job — if a job category only has 1 unlocked minigame, a second option (chase or hunt) is added as a fallback.

• Shorter hard rooftop climb — hard mode targetY raised by 500px, cutting the climb by ~1/3.

Still In Progress

~48 items remain in claude-todo.md, including:

• Unique cat recruitment scenes
• Long Winter trigger clarity
• Town scene rat sprites during plague
• Room unlock gameplay effects
• Cat movement before interactions
• Shadow-aligned lucrative jobs
• More enemy types in brawl
• Bond conversations for all pairs

Questions for the designer are in claude-questions.md.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code