✨ NEW: Stellar Ignition
The transition has been reborn. No more camera tricks. When your fire outgrows the world, it ignites where it stands: the flame gathers, collapses, and detonates into a newborn star. You'll know it when it happens.
Your build ascends with you. Every upgrade level you bought in the Fire phase now collapses into the star as starting Precious Metals. And your turrets aren't scrapped, they're pulled into orbit as orbital lasers. A hard-built run ignites armed.
✨ NEW: The game now teaches itself
Tutorial reworked top to bottom. It now tells you what this game is: the dark is alive, it wants the fire out, and the fire is your life. Watch the flame gutter and die in front of you, then save it yourself. Each lesson breathes, nothing is rushed, and it closes with a proper fade instead of a hard cut.
The dark closes in. When your fire runs low, the darkness visibly tightens around the edges of the screen and pulses like a faltering heartbeat. You will never again die without knowing you were dying.
Panic now comes with a plan. "FIRE IS DYING" tells you the fix: FEED IT with your feed key, or NO WOOD, KILL FOR DROPS when you're empty.
The Star explains itself. First ignition? The game tells you what Hydrogen and Precious Metals are, right when you need to know. Once, and never again.
Two paths, one fate. The cosmic shop now tells you that your purchases shape what your star becomes. What it becomes... that you'll discover.
⚖️ BALANCE
The Pre-Star wall has been softened. We ran hundreds of simulated runs, at every skill level. Enemy density through that band is trimmed up to ~12%. Skilled runs can now crest into the Star, early waves and endless scaling are untouched.
Stellar Wind is a real defense now. The Wind tree's slow aura is massively buffed, up to 75% slow at max rank. The "push, burn clean, endure" path can finally hold off a swarm the way Accretion always could.
🐛 BUG FIXES
Fixed: the tutorial could soft-lock if an enemy reached the fire before you shot it (or the wood drop expired). Tutorial beats now self-recover and keep giving you targets until you succeed.
Fixed: tutorial text overlapped the shop's upgrade cards. It now docks cleanly beneath open panels.
Fixed: the kill to shop transition slammed open with no warning. It's now staged: the fight ends, you breathe, then the shop arrives.
Fixed: the tutorial's ending cut to the main menu mid-scene. It now fades out properly.
Fixed: low-fire warnings told you the problem without the solution.
Keep the reports coming. Every "I didn't understand X" makes the fire burn cleaner. 🔥