What's new
Everything that changed, newest first. The site tells you when a new version ships — refreshing is always your call.
Signing up now checks your email, and the extensions have come down
- Making an account with an email now sends a six-digit code to it, and the account is only created once that code comes back. It means nobody can register with an address they do not actually read — including yours.
- If somebody tries to sign up with an address that already has an account, the owner gets told, and the site gives away nothing either way about which addresses are registered.
- Signing in is completely unchanged, and so is every account that already exists.
- AutoRead and Trakr have been taken down and their downloads removed. The Extensions tab is still there and says so — new ones will appear when they are ready.
Show, Don’t Tell
- Pip is a very small mind that has to work out which berries are poison. You are never allowed to tell it the rule — you can only show it berries and let it watch what happens.
- It keeps every explanation that still fits everything it has tasted, leans hard towards the simplest one, and when the ideas it still holds disagree with each other it hesitates instead of guessing. Watching it refuse to answer is the point.
- Ten meadows, four harder expert ones after them, an endless run, and a fresh meadow every day. Each meadow has a par, and the par is solved rather than estimated — it really is the smallest number of berries that pins the rule down.
- StuCade has been retired and its cabinets are gone from the arcade.
Two new games, and a heavier eight ball
- The Steady Hand is a coin-op parlour machine that shocks you for being clumsy: thread your cursor down a corridor of live wire without brushing the sides. Ten house levels with patrolling sparks, swing-gates and insulated couplers you have to seat before the charge drains — and past number ten the wire never ends.
- Magic 8 Ball has been replaced by The Heavy Eight, at the same address. You shake this one: one agitation value drives the fluid, the murk, the bubbles, the sound and how long the answer takes to surface, so a hard throw and a nudge are different readings.
- It also keeps things from you. Eight rare readings sit outside the twenty-answer deck at about one cast in forty, and the ledger counts which of them you have found. It remembers questions you have already asked.
- Your old 8 Ball history stays on your device but stops syncing — the new ball keeps its own. Nothing you had is deleted.
- Digsite is listed too: one underground world that everyone on the site digs at the same time, re-rolled every Sunday. Its digging runs on a separate machine that is not up yet, so for now the tile opens, draws the world and tells you straight that it cannot dig. Nothing about it is broken — it starts working the moment that machine does.
The back button stopped breaking things
- Pressing back onto the arcade left the dice frozen part-way through a roll — and, worse, dead: clicking it or pressing R did nothing at all until you reloaded the page.
- Coming back from the casino dropped you on the arcade with its “are you sure” panel still sitting over everything.
- Backing out of the sign-in page left a loading screen you could not click through.
Google sign-in says what went wrong
- When Google sign-in was refused — the device already had an account, sign-ups were closed, the network dropped — the button just sat there in silence, and clicking it again did nothing. It now tells you what happened and lets you try again.
- It also shows that it is checking, so the pause while your account is verified no longer looks like a dead button.
Forum mutes
- Moderation used to be a choice between letting something stand and banning the whole account. There is now a temporary mute in between: no new threads, replies or edits for a set number of hours, while reading and voting carry on as normal.
- It lifts itself when the time is up, and it tells you how long is left — there is nothing to ask for and nobody to remember to undo it.
One account per device now means one
- The site allows one account per device. Blocking the small script that identifies your browser used to switch that rule off completely — every sign-up looked like a brand-new machine.
- If your browser genuinely cannot be identified, signing up now explains why and what to turn off. Signing in to an account you already have is unaffected, whatever you block.
A bird walks across the loading screen
- The wait on the way to sign-in was a spinning arc. It is a pigeon, a chicken or a duck now, and it brings a fact about itself.
- Background music and loading art are also held in your browser for a day instead of being re-fetched on every page, so moving around the site no longer opens a gap of silence.
- The password and passkey buttons on your account page had icons that looked like each other. They are a padlock and a key now.
Catan is honest about online rooms
- Catan’s “Open sea” panel offered to open and join online rooms here. It never could — that needs a server this site does not run — so the buttons quietly did nothing.
- It now says so, and points at Local harbor, which plays the complete game either hotseat or against bots.
- The Trakr extension page has had the same treatment: its licence server is gone, so the page no longer implies the download will unlock.
Emberfall and Catan
- Emberfall: ten nights, one fire, keep it lit. Warmth is the only saturated thing in the world and the only thing keeping you alive.
- Catan: the full base game — settlements, robber, longest road — against bots with opinions, or pass one screen around.
- New games now carry a NEW badge for their first three weeks and put themselves on the front page, instead of waiting for someone to remember to feature them.
Update notices and this page
- The site now tells you when a new version has shipped instead of leaving you on a stale copy — a small notice appears, and refreshing is your call.
- This page is the running list of what changed.
Every game got a new icon
- Burning Note, Split-Flap, Magic 8 Ball, Word Salad, Chunklord, Cookie Croft, Riftline, Hoops and Coup all have proper favicons now, so your tabs are finally telling them apart.
- Riftline, Hoops, Word Salad and Cookie Croft were also refreshed from their latest builds — Riftline picked up daily challenges and feats along the way.
Cloud saves could delete themselves
- Pressing “save to cloud” on your account page uploaded only part of your saves, and the missing half was then wiped from your other devices. Council of Idiots, Magic 8 Ball, Word Salad and Riftline were the ones at risk.
- It now saves everything it syncs, and refuses to save at all rather than upload a partial copy.
- This stops it happening again; it cannot bring back anything already lost.
Crews work again
- Joining a crew, leaving one, and promoting or demoting a member all failed silently. All four work now.
Playtime was being counted twice
- Pressing Back out of a game and returning re-counted the whole session, inflating your playtime and tokens. Each visit is now counted once.
- Sign-in also stopped locking up if the network hiccuped mid-attempt.
Six new tracks on the jukebox
- Loonboon, the GTA Vice City theme, Kirby’s Mint Breath, meowfey’s “from the start”, Undertale’s Dogsong, and one called “Searching For An Upload Button That Doesn’t Exist”.
- Music still only plays on the menu pages, never over a game.
Motion tidy-up
- Every animation on the site now runs on one shared set of timings, so things move consistently instead of each page having its own idea.
- Press R on the arcade to roll the dice.
Found something broken? Tell us — it lands straight on the issue board.