# Gameplay review, third pass: the beta-1 gate The mechanics-only reviewer, a short third visit specifically to sign off (or not) on beta-1. `docs/REVIEW_GAMEPLAY.md` (6.5) and `docs/REVIEW_GAMEPLAY2.md` (7.5) are the record. My remit is narrow and I will keep this narrow: since the last pass the changes are localization completeness (the last English-only strings got translated), a per-arc audio guard, and settings that travel with the save. None of that is a mechanic. So my number does not move, and it should not: **the decision layer is unchanged since the difficulty work landed.** **Verdict: 7.5/10, held.** This is a stable, honest build with one genuinely good core decision and, in hard mode, a second *kind* of that decision. Nothing since the last pass touched the loop, so nothing here re-scores. I am signing off on beta-1 as *mechanically sound and shippable*, not as *mechanically finished*. ## What I re-checked (and it still holds) - **The core is still clean and unexploitable.** Server truth, answer stripped, fairness guard extended correctly to hard mode's multi-anomaly loops. I re-read the build path; the double-change still shows every changed property. Good. - **Hard mode is still the real deepening.** Two changes at once, persistence, revert. It remains the one place the task changes shape, and it remains gated behind the first escape. Correct and still my main structural note. - **No regressions in the loop.** The i18n and audio work did not perturb the resolution, the ramp, or the touch layer. Verified by replay and the suite. ## What is still open (unchanged, and fair to restate at a gate) 1. **The depth is opt-in and hidden.** Hard mode, my headline fix, is still off by default and unreachable on a first playthrough. For beta this is acceptable; for 1.0 it is the first thing to reconsider. 2. **The doubt button is still not a mechanic.** Confidence still never enters the outcome. The single highest-leverage decision-layer change remains unbuilt (and parked on purpose in `docs/FUTURE.md`, which I respect as a decision). 3. **Normal mode is still the single dial.** Most players sit here; it did not get a new kind. The new depth lives only at the poles. 4. **The two verbs still do not touch**, by explicit design. A known, accepted gap. ## Gate verdict Ship beta-1. The mechanic is clean, fair, and now has one real difficulty of kind. It is not yet a deep game, and the path to one is well understood and written down. Nothing here blocks a beta; several things here should shape the road to 1.0. ## One line > Nothing since the last pass was a mechanic, so nothing re-scores; the loop is > the same clean, honest, still-shallow-at-normal decision it was. Stable enough > to call beta-1, not yet deep enough to call done. Ship it, then build the fourth > arc and make the doubt button cost something.