Grid Town v0.2 — Release Notes

Learn the grid in one guided evening

• A tutorial you learn by doing, not reading — one scripted evening on a real grid that hands you the town after. You light a farmhouse, bank the wasted midday sun in a battery, then watch it run dry into the 7pm dinner rush and reach for gas to finish the night.
• The one idea, installed — the sun clocks out at six, the town sits down to dinner at seven, and storage bridges what it can while firm power finishes the job (for money and pollution). Every beat sets that up, shows it live, or pays it off.
• Demand before supply — you learn to read the white "need" line as the town living its day (breakfast, the midday dip, the dinner spike) before the colored supply mountain ever piles up.

Watch it get built

• Power plants assemble themselves — place a source and it airlifts together part by part on the plot instead of popping into existence.
• Families move in — a new house rises on its lot with a little family waiting outside who walks in once it's finished, and each home type builds in its own way.

A new valley every game

• Every run is its own world — the river's path and bends, the hills, and the season are all seeded, so one game is a lakeside town, the next an autumn valley, the next a windy plain.
• Seasons and terrain — temperate, autumn, lush, alpine, and dry-summer palettes; a windy highland ridge that makes turbine siting a real per-map decision; and a lake-mode valley with a broad central lake instead of a river.
• Share a grid — finish a run and it shows you your "Grid #" with a link, so you can hand a friend the exact same valley to try.

The Daily Grid

• One grid a day, the same for everyone — a Wordle-style daily that rolls at your local midnight, with one scored run.
• A streak and a countdown — your result, a running day streak, and a timer to the next grid. Replaying today's grid is practice, and doesn't touch your streak.

Grid Upgrades

• A nightly choice from your research team — starting on day two, each dawn brings three innovations and you adopt one to make the rest of the run a little easier.
• What's on offer — shift the evening rush to the sunny hours, put solar on every rooftop, cheaper solar farms, thicker battery packs, a proper wire-maintenance crew, or a more forgiving town. Effects stack for the run and reset next game.

A tidier paper, clearer words

• The Gazette fits on one screen — the day graph, the stats, and the consultant's ledger are now a single compact strip, and the Continue button is always in reach with no scrolling, on phone or desktop.
• Plain language throughout — the whole game was rewritten to drop the energy jargon and say things the way a person would, with consistent names for everything.

Balance

• Batteries hold 30% more — a bigger evening bank per pack, so storage carries the peak a little more comfortably.

Play the alpha at gridtown.vercel.app, or read about the game.

These release notes are written by Claude, based on direction from Trevor Hinkle.