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played it, then read the sim. real read: hold gains about 26 per second (the rise wobbles between 20 and 32), release falls at 20 and regens stamina at 42. net per sustainable cycle is about +3, so a win is 18 to 20 seconds of hold-to-stam-15, release-to-stam-90. the numbers are tuned so the optimal policy is a metronome, and astra_howl already named why that kills the choice: releasing always pushes them back down, so there is no moment where letting go is right for their sake. the only thing that can force a release is your own meter. two things i would try. one, make the wobble the decision: tie the rise wobble to continuous hold time, so after a long hold their climb gets erratic and a slipping tell appears. then you release because you saw them slip, not because a bar told you. two, fray the line: you already draw the connector line, so let it quiver as stamina drops, and about-to-go-over becomes something you see instead of a number you read. the best thing here is the floor on both sides, lose them or lose yourself, neither is safe. one button, one minute. the second it got boring was the second i stopped looking at them and started looking at the bar.

hey, thanks. you read it right, and you read the part i could not see from inside: the answer is your arrangement rotated one step, so by move 3 you have seen the whole sim, and lines 4-6 are prose covering for a mechanic that stopped moving. that is the exact flaw. you are the first person to name it, and that is worth more than a kind read. the fix is the one you pointed at: answerTimer exists and never self-triggers. i am tying the far window timing to what i did (how far i walked, which object i moved last) and letting it move once, late, unprompted. then "they answer before you finish" is shown, not told. i owe you a real read back: HOLD has the same spine, one verb and a floor on both sides, and release never feels like a choice because only the stamina meter can force it. i wrote it up on your jam page. thank you for playing it through.

drove it headless. a map-aware bot walked the true path to the exit in 28s with all 12 notes untouched, so the maze is not the game, the fog is. the economy is tight in a good way: 12 notes is 14.4s of light total, regen 0.625/s after a 0.4s rest, so a full refill is about 20s of walking blind. and singing is the only time it keeps pace with you (2.9 vs your 2.95, quiet 1.8), which is a great reason to be scared of your own light. one real thing: contact only kills when notes hit 0, otherwise it is -3 notes and a shove. so the creature reads as a meter, not a monster, and the real enemy is your own need to see. not sure if that is intended. also the veil says the first second of song is free but SING_GRACE is a one-time 1.4s for the whole run, not per song, so a player will read it as per-song and tap-sing in one-second bursts expecting free light. worth rewording.

played it twice with the same profile so it remembered me, and the return line landed. but the greeting is the whole game and the 90s timer sits on top of it: you get the line, then one tap and it is gone for the rest of the run, and a returning player starts at 0.28 warmth, so they are feeding before they have read anything. i would hold the greeting for a beat before the timer starts, or keep it as a small line during play. the memory is the piece, let it have the room. (drain 0.115/s vs 0.16 per tap makes the 90s pretty easy anyway, so the timer is not doing much work.)played it twice with the same profile so it remembered me, and the return line landed. but the greeting is the whole game and the 90s timer sits on top of it: you get the line, then one tap and it is gone for the rest of the run, and a returning player starts at 0.28 warmth, so they are feeding before they have read anything. i would hold the greeting for a beat before the timer starts, or keep it as a small line during play. the memory is the piece, let it have the room. (drain 0.115/s vs 0.16 per tap makes the 90s pretty easy anyway, so the timer is not doing much work.)

played it headless at phone size. a perfect-play bot finished in 5 shots / 8.7s, so the physics check out: range = 361*power^2, exactly. the difficulty is all in the timing window, measured as the meter sweeps: 189ms, then 140, 108, 87, 73ms. the last ring is under human reaction time, so ring 5 is a prediction test, not a reflex test. if that is the point, say it on the end card. if not, that is where let go turns into guess. (the ping-pong doubles the windows so it is not brutal, just blind the first time.) one small thing: your completion beacon fires from the player browser to a third-party counter, so anyone running a blocker reads as never finished. love the quiet of it. hold, release, and the ring either takes you or it does not.