Grid Town v0.6 — Release Notes

The last update was about the first run and whether you come back the next day. This one is about the full game growing up. The town now has businesses that move in and demand power on their own, so where and when you build starts to matter more. It adds new clean ways to serve that demand, makes the daily forecast honest about how hard a day will really play, and smooths out the controls on a phone.

A town that demands more

In the full game, the town no longer grows on houses alone — commercial and industrial buildings now move in as it fills out. This is full game mode only for now; the Daily Grid stays a fixed, comparable challenge while it settles in.

• Businesses move in on their own. As the town grows, shops, factories, and data centers arrive by themselves — each with its own daily rhythm. Shops draw in the evening, a factory runs a day shift, and a data center pulls a flat load around the clock.
• They pay for their power. Keep a business lit and it pays you for the power you send it — a little less per unit than a home does. Leave one dark too long and it packs up and leaves, the same way an unhappy neighborhood does.
• Placement becomes the game. A data center that never sleeps, a factory that peaks at midday, shops that spike at dinner — the shape of demand is now something you design around, not just a headcount of homes.

New ways to power the grid

• Hydroelectric dams. Where a river runs through the valley, you can now build dams for steady, clean power. Dam sites are limited to a few spots along the river, so build mode lights up exactly where they can go.
• Power Purchase Agreements. A new grid upgrade you can pick as the town grows: sign PPAs and every new business arrives with its own clean power — matching solar or wind, built for you and paid up front, right where the shop, factory, or data center opens.

An honest Daily Grid

• The forecast tells the truth. Some days look calm on the calendar but play brutally hard once the real weather rolls in. The daily forecast now reads the actual conditions and warns you — a day that plays far harder than its label reads "tougher than it looks" instead of "nothing unusual ahead," on the start card, the score screen, and your shared result.
• Dams in the Daily too. Hydroelectric dams are available in the Daily Grid as well, wherever the day's river allows.

Smoother on mobile

• Rotate with two fingers. Twist two fingers on the map to spin the view, the way a maps app works — alongside one-finger pan and pinch to zoom.
• Building feels right. The build tray scrolls cleanly now that there are more sources to choose from, a proposed spot flips from red to green the moment you can afford it (no more leaving and re-entering build mode), and a spot you can't yet afford says so plainly.
• Music fixed. Fixed a bug where the day and night music could play on top of each other during a transition on some phones.

Smaller fixes

• Clearer siting. The nuclear plant's cooling-water advantage now shows on the map while you're placing it, so the best spots read at a glance — the same way solar and wind already do.
• Tidier town. Town squares and footpath stairs no longer form right on the water's edge, and the first shop, factory, or data center of each kind is announced when it appears so a new load never turns up unexplained.

Also since v0.5

Three smaller updates shipped between v0.5 and this release. They did not get notes of their own, so they are folded in here:

• A more polished phone and a reworked tutorial (v0.51). The intro and HUD were retuned for small screens, the forecast moved into the bottom peek bar, and the grid reads more clearly. The tutorial gained step-gated narration boxes and a cleaner hand-off when it finishes.
• Tougher, fairer Daily nights (v0.51). Batteries now lose a little energy on every charge-and-discharge cycle, the red Dunkelflaute day holds back the recharge that used to make it easy, and the no-gas Moratorium day was rebalanced so its hardest seeds stay fair.
• Historical mode fixes (v0.52). In the experimental Historical mode, hydro now runs ahead of batteries in the dispatch order, and a river-flooding rendering glitch was fixed.
• The Daily became the front door (v0.53). Coming back to the game now lands you straight on today's Daily Grid: the welcome-back screen shows the forecast and a Play button on one surface, with the other modes tucked behind a button.

Play the alpha at gridtowngame.com, or read what changed in v0.5.

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