Nightlight Knights — build progress

…

Phase: Build+Judge: pipeline + story passed; art style lock on round 2; core, levels, audio still building · run started 2026-10-30 00:35 EDT · ship target Nov 1 evening (~18:00 EST) ·

Play it

No playable build yet — the first one lands at the end of wave C1.

Next time I need you: First playable APK on your Android phone, around 11:00-12:00 EDT today (Oct 30). You will get a phone notification.

C1 — Foundation: engine, build pipeline, 12 level layouts, art style lock, audio calibration, story data

Construction wave 1 of ~4. The first attempt was cut off at 01:16 when the lead session ended; nothing was lost: finished work goes straight to its critic and interrupted builders continue from their saved branches. Quality waves (blind A/B against Kingdom Rush / BTD6) follow once the game is content-complete.

Piece	Status	Verdict	Largest gap
Engine core (sim, rendering, scenes, first playable L1)	BUILDING	—	—
Build pipeline + instruments (APK, iOS, deploy, capture/blind/perf tools)	PASS	PASS (round 1)	Motion check trusts what the game reports about itself, not the rendered pixels (instrument blind spot)
Level layouts + waves (12 levels)	BUILDING	—	—
Art style lock (10 anchors + pilot sprites)	BUILDING	FAIL round 1, rebuilding	Sprites are lit like bright studio product shots (2x the key's luminance, no cool moonlight rim), so they look pasted onto the moonlit room
Art batch 1: Chapter 1 towers, soldiers, plinths	QUEUED	—	waits for the style-lock gate
Art batch 1: Sir Biscuit, Madame Coda, enemies E01-E07	QUEUED	—	waits for the style-lock gate
Audio: calibration, 8 voices, first music + SFX, lullaby	BUILDING	—	—
Story data: 10 cutscenes, VO script, panel briefs	PASS	PASS (round 1)	Panel prompts inherit the gameplay camera text (45-degree overhead); cutscene shots need a panel variant of the style prompt

Budgets and cost meter

Higgsfield credits (game cap)26 / 850 · 3%

ElevenLabs characters (60% cap)10797 / 178390 · 6%

Frame time (4x CPU throttle): — fps median, p95 — ms · APK — MB · web first load — MB

Wave history

No completed waves yet.

When I'll ask you for something

When	What	Status
Design	Approve design + title	Done (Oct 30)
~11:00 EDT Oct 30	First playable APK on your Android phone (2 minutes, 4 questions)	Upcoming
Quality wave 3	2-minute smoke test	Upcoming
Ship, Nov 1 evening	Final test + share link	Upcoming

You get a phone notification only for these and if the run stops. Everything else lands here.

This page ages its own build stamp: it is rebuilt at every phase boundary and by an hourly heartbeat while the run is alive, so a stale stamp means the run (or its publishing) has stopped. Expected gap between rebuilds: 120 min.