The last level. 6 segments, 3200 units, 51 events, and the end of the game: `next: null`.
THE GAS. GDD: "flammable gas pockets: shooting inside one detonates it (hurts everyone —
risk/reward)". Built literally, as an entity whose kill() throws a blast:
- one cannon pellet sets it off (hp 10) — the hazard has to be hair-trigger or "don't shoot
near it" is not a constraint;
- the blast reaches 16 units, FALLS OFF with distance, wipes foes, hurts YOU, and chains
through other pockets, so a corridor of them is a fuse;
- foe:false, so the pocket itself scores nothing — you are paid for what the blast KILLS,
which makes the reward self-balancing.
Measured: one pellet into a line of four detonated all four; a blast took 4 virions and paid
240; the player takes 30.3 coat point-blank, 15.4 at mid range and 0 at 20 units. "Detonate
from max range" — which C's Blockage spec calls optimal play — is a real, measurable skill.
And the cruelty that makes the level: fog 0.075 is the densest in the game and there are no
real-time lights in GUTS, so THE POCKETS ARE THE LIGHTING. Clearing a room safely also clears
the lights. No new rendering path was added for the dark; the biome's fog and the emissives
already did it.
THE BLOCKAGE (LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs 3) — 5 armoured plates -> 4 tumbling chunks -> the core
under a 30s doom timer, with gas pockets seeded into every phase, so the boss's own room is its
worst weakness. First cut ran 25.7s, shorter than the mid-game Guardian, which is the wrong
shape for a finale — its windows are continuous by spec, so hp went 120/130/150 -> 220/230/280.
Now: 49.7s brute-forcing the plates, 30.2s using the gas. The room is the weapon, and the
difference is 40%.
The reputation loop lands here as designed: two biofilm gates, the second sixty units from the
final boss. Five levels of deciding whether to shoot the cyan resolve into three phage escorts
and a full coat, or nothing at all, in the dark, at the door.
Registering L5 also closes two dangling threads — L4's ileocecal valve and LS_appendix's exit
both pointed at it and now resolve.
C's tooling: 6/6 levels valid, sim par 540 vs par-pace 505 (reachable, with room for the boss),
pressure 1.33/4.09/3.21/5.75/4.12, min clearance 8.30 vs the 2.5 law. par.score corrected
7000 -> 4000 and a missing checkpoint added at 3060 (the 30s law caught a 34.8s gap I had left
between the boss and the gate).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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