Grid Town v0.5 — Release Notes

The last update was about making the game easier to read. This one is about the first thing a new player does and whether they come back the next day. It adds a daily challenge with a shared goal, rewrites the tutorial in plain language, makes the graphs easier to read, and opens the game up to phones and tablets.

The Daily Grid

• Today's grid, the same for everyone. A new Daily Grid gives every player the same map, weather, and starting conditions each day, so you can compare your run against a friend's on equal footing.
• A goal to clear. Each day has a target — a number of carbon-free hours to reach across the run. Clearing it is the thing to aim for, the same way it means the same thing whether the day is calm or a cold snap.
• A shareable result. When your run ends you get a clean, spoiler-free result you can copy and share: your score out of 72, whether you cleared the goal, and a small emoji strip showing how your day went, hour by hour. It reads like a Wordle grid, so it gives nothing away about how you built.
• Streaks. Clear the goal on consecutive days and your streak grows; miss a day, or miss the goal, and it resets. A small celebration marks the moment you hit the day's goal.
• Know where you stand. A live tracker shows your score against the day's goal as you play, and a clear warning appears as the run nears its end so the finish never sneaks up on you.

A clearer first run

• The tutorial is rewritten in plain language. The guided first evening now explains each energy source by what it actually does, without the metaphors that made it read oddly. Solar is cheap daytime power that stops at night; a battery stores the midday sun and spends it in the evening; gas runs any hour but costs money and pollutes.
• You actually try each control. The tutorial now has a real "inspect a building" step instead of a passing tip, dims the rest of the screen to point at the graph while it teaches it, and hands you back to the game the moment you have built something — the same way every other mode works.

Read your grid at a glance

• A color key and labels on the graph. The supply graph now carries a small legend and labels the sources right on the bands, so it is clear which color is which without guessing. The battery band picks up a subtle texture too, so it never blends into the wind band.
• An expandable control room. Open the control room and the supply-versus-demand graph becomes a fuller view: click a source to isolate its band, read every source's output at a point in time, and switch between the live view and the whole day.

More playable on phones and tablets

• Touch is much better supported. The game no longer turns phones and tablets away — touch is now first-class, with tap-to-build and a two-step placement confirm, so the Daily Grid works wherever you are. It is still best on a larger screen, but it plays well on a phone now.

Smaller fixes

• Clearer labels. The main storage tier is now just called "Battery," and removing a plant reads "demolish for a partial refund" with a confirm step, so it is clear what the "×" does.
• A tidier share card. The daily result card was rebalanced — a smaller score with more breathing room — so it reads cleanly when you paste it.
• Small interface fixes. The money readout is centered, the day-and-time ticker carries the end-of-run warning, and a few rough edges around wording and layout were smoothed out.

Play the alpha at gridtowngame.com, or read what changed in v0.4.