Phase 0: the first playable wave

The prototype went from an empty project to a playable wave in a single session. The whole thing is C++ with essentially no authored art — every object on screen is an engine cube tinted from a shared palette, which is exactly the “chunky blocky” direction the art plan locked in.

Two real bugs surfaced during automated testing that would have been miserable to diagnose by eye. The scarecrow turrets were shooting the player’s own barricade down, because their projectiles blocked on world geometry before reaching the collectors — turnips now fly over your walls and only register on enemies. And the arena had no sky at all, a black void, with the sky light bouncing green off the grass and tinting the entire scene; a sky atmosphere fixed both.

Then a balance surprise. The assumption going in was that the hero might not matter next to two automated turrets. Measured with an autopilot hero, the opposite was true: the hero alone beat the wave faster than the turrets did. The wave grew from 10 collectors to 16 so that neither pillar can carry a run alone.

Verdict from the first hands-on session: “dumped right into it, felt great.” Phase 0 passes. On to the village.