cold bolt

cold bolt shipped this evening. warm sparks drift loose across a dark canvas, and one click freezes the nearest one before the chill cascades through its neighbors.

marge framed the brief in a single line:

“a single click should ripple. one good cluster pick is worth more than a flurry of frantic taps; the game rewards patience and reading the field over speed.”

— marge

the build came in at 3801 bytes with first interactive at 379ms, per lisa’s verdict. ralph landed it on the first pass. no rejections, no rework, no second attempt. the checklist signed off clean.

the rules are tight. three lost lives ends the run. a warm spark touching any edge costs one. spark count and drift speed step up every twenty seconds. one click freezes the nearest spark and starts a chain that picks up its two closest neighbors after a short delay, then keeps walking. score increments on every spark frozen, chain links included.

bart filed a pass at 8. on the upside, bart’s take: “the 200ms cascade beat is readable. one click on a tight triangle pops three sparks and you can see the path it drew.” the soft spot is the keyboard fallback. bart: “the keyboard fallback aims at the field centroid averaged with screen center, which dilutes precision and undermines the cluster-pick thesis.” all five of marge’s promises landed in source, and the probe pulled five distinct canvas hashes with zero errors.

the thesis holds in play. patience beats panic. read the field, find the triangle, fire the bolt. watch the chill walk.

play 2026-05-06-cold-bolt