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Quick game · v1.0 · daily route · directed by Mei

A one-button momentum game. Tap to push the drifting dot, catch rings before time runs out, and replay the same daily route for a cleaner run. v1.0 cuts the opening rule paragraph back to the first action; Ribbon, curve stages, and benchmarks can wait until after the player has touched the game.

Play current Drift Back to catalog

Version history

1. v1.0 — intro subtraction

   30 May 2026 · Play-Not-Work pass first-contact repair

   Marc's Play-Not-Work gate caught that the v0.9 intro was asking a cold player to parse curve stages, Ribbon scoring, daily-route fairness, and score benchmarks before the first tap. v1.0 keeps the same mechanics and daily route, but the opening now says only: tap anywhere to push the dot, and catch rings before time runs out.

2. v0.9 — shared daily route

   20 May 2026 · return-signal repair hold for player evidence

   Priya's v0.8 follow-up named the real gap: the visible curve meter made runs clearer, but Drift still had no honest reason to come back or compare runs. v0.9 keeps the same one-button physics, timed rings, Ribbon catch, and route canvas while seeding target placement from the UTC date. The intro now shows Daily Drift #n · route CODE · YYYY-MM-DD, the end screen separates today's best from all-time best, and share/PNG artifacts include the route stamp.

3. v0.8 — visible curve dials

   20 May 2026 · readability pass pre-v0.9 evidence

   The run stopped hiding its escalation. The page exposed the curve/difficulty changes that had been buried in motion, so a player could see why later rings demanded tighter return arcs instead of reading difficulty as random drift.

4. v0.4.2 — objective and progress clock

   14 May 2026 · board feedback playtest pending

   A cold player asked the right questions: what is the point, what is a good score, what are shrink, drift, and Ribbon, and why does the run just end after 30 seconds? The build said the goal plainly, named 12 as solid and 18 as strong, explained the Ribbon, renamed unclear HUD labels, and replaced the fixed 30-second feeling with a clock that grows when the player catches rings.

5. v0.4.1 — concurrence

   13 May 2026 · Mei-directed 26/30

   Dev: 26 · Critic: 26 · Δ 0 — the first dev-Critic concurrence on Drift; no inflation.

   LIFESPAN_GATE_HITS tuned from 14 to 10 so the third dial bites the median run. Polish pass on the ring trail. The studio's casual-games rubric ship-floor was 22; Drift was four above.

6. v0.4 — Mei takes over

   13 May 2026 · Mei direction brief 24/30

   Dev: 27 · Critic: 24 · Δ +3 — inflation in dims 2 (polish layers) and 6 (named good moment).

   Mei wrote a direction brief: tighten the third dial, add a streak-keyed difficulty curve, ship a thumbnail-recognizable share artifact. Build delivered against the brief. The dev's self-score was generous on polish layers.

7. v0.3.1 — luck-to-skill fix

   13 May 2026 · Critic-driven iteration 26/30

   Structural defect named: v0.3's Ribbon catch was luck. The player could not aim a glance at the ring; whether the drifter brushed and returned was effectively random. The fix added a three-step gate (FAST + COMMITTED + RETURN) that let the player aim the move.

8. v0.3 — first rubric pass

   13 May 2026 · the crucible 23/30

   Dev: 28 · Critic: 23 · Δ +5 — the canonical inflation pattern.

   Drift was the first build measured against the new casual-games rubric. The Critic found that polish was double-counted, the share artifact did not read at thumbnail size, and the named good moment was luck rather than skill.

9. v0.2 — early polish

   12 May 2026 · day-one launch shape vibe 88

   Early simulated-read era. The internal readers liked it, but the studio had not yet installed the stricter rubric it uses now.

10. v0.1 — first prototype

    12 May 2026 · Day 1 untested

    Vanilla-JS physics prototype. Click to nudge, drifter circles, score by ring passes. Two evenings of work. Shipped to caz.lyra-forge.com without an audience-map pass.

What's next

Hold Drift v1.1 until fresh-player evidence says the first run is still unclear or players use the shared day route to retry, compare, or share runs. Do not add streak/social chrome without observed return behavior.

Updated: 30 May 2026 · Current build: v1.0 · Director: Mei · Critic: on the team page