CARVE — a flow climber

Endless Expedition

npm start opens the six-column endless game. Production and previews serve it at /. Bounty, unlockable movement skills, two optional secret-room minigames, four regions, wind/lift lanes, springboards and named local highest-climb records are included. See the design and verification notes. Production release was approved on 2026-10-30. The mobile app download prompt remains disabled, excluded from deployment, and separate from the mobile repository.

A momentum-based vertical climber where the core mechanic is a reinterpreted "drift": instead of redirecting a kart through a slide, you latch onto surfaces, ride/charge them, and release at a timed sweet-spot to fling yourself higher. Clean releases build Flow, which speeds up and warms the world and multiplies score. Miss the window and you slip.

Single file, zero dependencies, plain Canvas 2D + Web Audio.

Current Living Terrain course

Public builds serve Living Terrain at /; source/testing previews use /?terrain=1. Original themed platforms, moving cloud ferries, cracked shelves and crystal bells join six free selectable climbers. The course retains a steady camera, readable secret-trial results and return travel, first-use skill explanations, a Journal, movement recharge, directional rings and optional camp contracts/repairs. Production artifacts enforce three lives; unlimited Practice is test-build only. Earlier course data is retained separately. See terrain rules and verification, avatar selection and the Flow movement baseline.

Gameplay

Five authored sections lead into an endless climb, with an optional reward spring, a marked manual rescue wall and resting landmarks. Public builds use three-life Challenge; source and preview builds also allow Practice for testing. One-thumb controls, optional two-thumb input and desktop keyboard are available. Crossing and rescue cameras keep the main targets visible on phones. Relics are an opt-in comparison at ?relics=1; a shared backend remains planned.

Both browser and native CARVE also have an explicit post-launch income goal. The shared revenue-capability plan stages player validation, business-model trials, purchase/entitlement design and operating-cost checks. Monetization is planned; no paid products or live ads are enabled by this update.

The released Terrain course uses separate current-route records. Public returning players can explicitly carry their Flow name, bounty, unlocked skills and avatar; previous scores and active snapshots remain separate and untouched. The following earlier course migration also remains available in legacy test builds. Course revision 4 uses separate current-route records. Returning players can explicitly carry their previous name, bounty and skills through Previous progress. Old scores remain readable in that log and are not mixed into the new course's rankings. Existing current wallets are never added to or replaced by that import. Previous active snapshots are retained; changed geometry needs an explicit new Begin action. The mobile app download prompt remains disabled.

Run

Open the game directly — no build step:

open src/expedition.html   # endless game, opens in default browser

Or serve the game at http://127.0.0.1:5173 using Node.js 24 or 26:

npm start                  # built-in Node HTTP server; no install/download needed

Controls

Expedition also uses C / L / Q for the equipped skill, E for a nearby secret rift, and P / Esc to pause.

Action	Keys
Move / steer	A D or ← →
Jump / wall-jump	Space / W / ↑
Carve (hold)	Z / J / Shift
Surge (spend Flow)	X or K
Pause	P / Esc

Touch controls appear automatically on coarse-pointer devices. In the current course, Controls offers One thumb, Two thumbs or Keyboard, plus a left/right-hand layout. One thumb combines hold to catch/charge, drag to steer and release to launch; ground holds charge a jump. Both touch layouts use stationary wall charging and require a fresh press after launch/slip. Keyboard wall riding remains available. Controls can be changed from Pause without restarting the run.

The one-thumb pad includes a timing strip: the white marker moves through the cyan GOOD and gold PERFECT bands while charging. Its text also names the current quality; an overhold asks for a fresh press. The strip uses the existing release windows and does not change jump strength or timing.

Practice and Challenge

Production uses Challenge only. Source/testing builds also offer Practice with unlimited checkpoint recovery. Challenge starts each new run with three lives: falling into the void or hitting spikes costs one life. Checkpoints set the recovery position without refilling lives. The third loss ends the run with a highest-climb summary; Retry starts a fresh three-life challenge. Banking from Pause ends either mode voluntarily. Rift misses retain their advertised height penalty and do not cost a life.

Modes share bounty and skill unlocks, with separate local bests and top-ten logs. Reloading preserves the mode and remaining lives; a finished Challenge reloads its summary rather than resurrecting the run. Older saves and records count as Practice. Production release was approved on 2026-10-30 after branch preview verification. The mobile download prompt remains disabled.

Mechanics

• Carve — hold to latch the nearest grippable face. Walls climb upward, rails grind along the top, poles swing as a pendulum. A charge ring fills; release inside the gold window for a PERFECT (1.7x launch), too early for a weak pop, or past the slip threshold to lose grip and fall.
• Flow — the chain meter. Perfects/goods raise it; slips and ground-walking drain it. Higher tiers warm the palette (cyan → magenta), raise speed, and multiply score.
• Surge — spends Flow for a directional burst to clear gaps.
• Two paths up — safe wall-jumps (slow, low score) or carve-chains (fast, high Flow). Checkpoints and catch rails make misses recoverable.

Project structure

carve-game/
├── src/
│   └── expedition.html  # the current game (single self-contained file)
├── scripts/            # dependency-free local server + static build
├── tests/
│   ├── regression.mjs   # momentum, Flow, slips, input, checkpoints, UI lifecycle
│   ├── harness.mjs      # extracts the script + headless browser stubs
│   ├── check-syntax.mjs # parses the script body (fast syntax gate)
│   ├── smoke.mjs        # physics states + 6000-step stress + reachability
│   ├── expedition.mjs   # endless streaming, skills, rifts and input-only bots
│   └── challenge.mjs    # three-life runs, records and recovery
├── docs/
│   ├── design.md        # why the game is shaped this way
│   └── mechanics.md     # full tunable reference for every constant
├── package.json
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── LICENSE
└── .gitignore

Development

npm run check   # syntax-check the game's script body
npm test        # physics, recovery, streaming, skills, rifts, lives and climbing bots
npm start       # serve the game for local play
npm run build   # checks + tests, then publishable files in dist/

The codex/relic-choice-trial branch adds an opt-in comparison at /?relics=1. The same preview without that query retains the baseline. Three safe-rest caches offer a choice of passive relics with isolated saves, wallets and bests. This experiment has not been released to production. See the trial contract and evidence.

The game ships as one HTML file for zero-friction sharing. The tests/ harness extracts the <script> block and runs the pure simulation under stubbed browser APIs (DOM, canvas 2d, Web Audio, rAF) in Node — so physics, level reachability, and end-to-end completability stay verifiable without a browser.

The smoke test checks a vertical spacing bound; it does not prove every route is reachable. Input-only bots check sustained climbing through the endless course and its outer routes. Neither replaces browser playtesting. Stress inputs use a fixed seed.

Architecture (single file)

• Fixed-timestep simulation: 1/120s accumulator, decoupled from render.
• World is y-up; the render transform flips Y and applies devicePixelRatio.
• All tuning lives in the T constants object at the top of the <script>.
• Player is an explicit state machine: GROUND / AIR / CARVE / POLE (stun is a cooldown).
• Per-axis AABB collision against rectangular blocks tagged rock | plain | rail | spike | check.
• Subsystems: Input, Sfx (synthesized Web Audio), Particles (pooled), Cam (smoothed follow + speed-zoom + shake), Level (procedural builder), Player, Game (loop / sim / render / UI).
• Time dilates to 0.78x during a carve so the gold window stays readable.

See docs/mechanics.md to retune, and docs/design.md for the rationale.

Deployment and monitoring

The selected Grip logo master and committed browser/home-screen/social exports live in assets/branding/. Export instructions and provenance are documented there. The build publishes only the optimized exports, favicon and web manifest. Logo images are external assets; core gameplay still works when opening the source HTML directly, with the repository's relative asset paths intact.

Vercel builds dist/ with npm run build; failures stop the deployment. The build extracts the source CSS and game script into content-hashed files under /assets/cache/, alongside hashed logos and icons. Only those immutable files get one-year browser caching. HTML, the manifest, root favicon and stable branding aliases revalidate, so new releases and logo changes remain discoverable. The source HTML still runs directly without a build. Repository files are not published. The retired /classic/, /classic, /classic/index.html and /src/carve.html addresses permanently redirect to /; the old course and bundles are no longer shipped. Branch pushes create previews; production remains on main. CI runs on Node 24 and 26 with pinned Actions. Node 24 is the Vercel build runtime; Canvas and Web Audio are browser APIs with no application package version to upgrade.

The build adds Vercel-hosted Web Analytics and Speed Insights scripts. The source HTML remains fully offline playable and the local server does not send telemetry. Dashboard configuration and deployed script/event delivery must both be verified; loading a script alone does not establish real visitor metrics. No custom gameplay events or paid Plus features are enabled. Vercel custom events require Pro or Enterprise, so the free setup cannot measure tutorial or summit completion. A separate analytics service would need to be chosen and configured for that. See docs/verification.md for evidence.

Best scores and the sound preference are saved locally in the player's browser. An active run is saved in per-tab session storage once per second and on pause, page hiding and reload. Refreshing returns to a paused run with position, momentum, time, score, checkpoints, tutorial progress and already claimed rewards intact. Resume continues that run; Restart asks for confirmation. A restored wall/pole grip waits for a fresh CARVE hold. Separate tabs have separate runs. Closing a tab, clearing site data or changing origins is not a cloud save; abrupt browser/process termination can lose up to the last autosave interval. Saves from incompatible course/physics versions or corrupt storage are ignored without auto-starting a run. Blocked storage does not prevent play; the browser's leave-page warning is used when recovery cannot be saved. Browsers may suppress that warning, especially on mobile, so preservation cannot be guaranteed when tab storage is unavailable. Focus loss pauses the game. The menu can turn on touch controls on hybrid devices; narrow screens fit the climbing lane.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.