Permaban launches in the first half of September!

Here is what the last stretch of work went into.

A real desktop version. Permaban started as a browser game. It now also runs as a proper application on Windows, Mac and Linux, with achievements, Cloud saves, and a friends list that will announce which wave you are stuck on.

Interweb Exploder. There is a browser inside the game now. Ten sites you can actually visit, five adware toolbars stacked on top of each other, and popups that spawn two more every time you close one. Close fifty of them and something happens.

A cold boot. The desktop version starts the way the machine it is pretending to be would have. Power button, fan spin-up, manufacturer splash, a BIOS screen counting memory, then the desktop. Eight seconds. You can skip it, but the first time, let it run.

A long pass on how the game reads. The biggest chunk of work and the least screenshot-friendly. A round of playtesting made it obvious that banning was the only action with any weight to it. Now warnings land with their own stamp, skipping files the post away instead of dropping it into nothing, the score counts up instead of snapping, and the correct-action beep climbs a semitone per combo. Shift changes go through a dial-up dialog. Clippo gives you hints from the corner instead of blocking the screen with a dialog box. The burnout gauge and the thread meter explain themselves the first time they matter, because before that they were two numbers moving for reasons nobody could see.

Plus the fixes nobody notices unless they break. Banned users kept posting. Escalating threads occasionally had people insulting themselves by name. Achievements could get stuck without ever reaching the server.

I have been quiet for months, and that is on me. Every day I sat down and worked on the build instead of writing about the build. That is the standard failure mode of a one-person project: the visible work and the actual work compete for the same hours, and the actual work always feels more urgent. I'll be posting regularly from here on.

First half of September. See you then.