BALLAST
A dockside sling heaves stones at stacked timber and stone until every fouled crate is off the quay — nine quays, three milestones.
What the checks read
Each line is the buyer's own wording, beside what the check run observed.
9 of 9 checks passed.
- Roundshotno ability · milestone 1Plain stone. Nothing happens when you press Space, which is exactly why it teaches the arc.
- Pig ironSpace slams it down · milestone 2Heavy enough that stone stops mattering. Space in flight drives it straight into the deck below.
- GrapeshotSpace scatters it · milestone 3One heave that becomes three. Split it early for a spread across a row, late for everything in one place.
BALLAST — the quay waits. Press Space to begin.
Quay 1
Milestone 1 — learn the heave
- The three quays
- First heave · Stacked timber · The long quay
- What it teaches
- one stone and two crates in the open, then a timber house you bring down on itself, then a wall you have to heave over
- What the balance book says
- 32/36 seeded clears · was 31/36 before tuning
This card follows the milestone under your hands. Clear it and the next one arrives.
The game runs in a sealed frame with no network. Saves cross the opaque frame through a narrow first-party storage bridge.
What was copied, and what was not
The donor is named out loud: Angry Birds, Rovio, 2009. What is copied is the grammar. Every stone, block and quay on the screen is ours.
| Donor idea | Ours | Why it survived the cut |
|---|---|---|
| A slingshot fixed at the left of the screen | A dockside sling standing on the near end of the quay | A launcher that never moves is the whole grammar: every level is one aiming problem, re-solved. |
| Drag back to aim — further back is harder and flatter | Drag back from the sling and release to heave | One continuous gesture carries angle and force at once, which is why it needs no tutorial. |
| A limited row of birds waiting their turn | A limited queue of stones on the deck, in loading order | Scarcity is what makes a bad heave cost something instead of nothing. |
| Red — the plain bird with no ability at all | Roundshot — plain stone, no trick, the whole first milestone | The tool with no button is the one that teaches the physics. |
| Tap in flight to fire the bird's one ability | Space in flight — pig iron slams down, grapeshot scatters | One button mid-flight turns a throw into a decision made twice. |
| Bomb — the heavy bird that beats stone | Pig iron, arriving exactly when stone lintels do | A new stone is only interesting the level after the old one stops working. |
| The blue bird that splits into three | Grapeshot — one heave that becomes three, into powder | Spread is the answer to a row of separate targets, not to a single wall. |
| Wood, stone and ice, each with its own toughness | Plank and beam timber, slab stone, and the crate itself | Materials are the difficulty curve, drawn as architecture rather than as a number. |
| TNT crates that detonate and take the structure with them | Powder kegs — the last milestone is built around them | A stack that can destroy itself makes the quay the weapon and the target at once. |
| The pigs: every one must be destroyed to clear the level | Fouled crates: every one must come down off the quay | The win condition has to be a thing on the screen, never a score threshold. |
| Structures that collapse under their own physics | Rigid bodies on a real 2D solver — nothing is scripted to fall | If the collapse is authored, the aiming problem is theatre. It has to be simulated. |
| A three-star score on every level | One line: the quay is clear, or the stacks still stand | A star rating is a grade, and the estate does not grade. What is left is the only fact. |
| Episodes of levels, each introducing a new bird | Three milestones of three quays, each introducing one stone | Each milestone teaches exactly one thing and then keeps asking for it. |
The level book
Nine quays, the stones each one gives you, and how often the headless solver actually finished them — twelve seeds apiece, before and after the tuning.
| Quay | Stones | Cleared | Before tuning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. First heave | 6 | 12/12 | 12/12 · 6 stones |
| 2. Stacked timber | 8 | 10/12 | 10/12 · 7 stones |
| 3. The long quay | 9 | 10/12 | 9/12 · 8 stones |
| 4. Stone lintels | 12 | 12/12 | 9/12 · 7 stones |
| 5. The vaults | 9 | 9/12 | 0/12 · 7 stones |
| 6. Bare stone | 10 | 10/12 | 6/12 · 8 stones |
| 7. Powder row | 10 | 10/12 | 5/12 · 8 stones |
| 8. The magazine | 10 | 11/12 | 11/12 · 8 stones |
| 9. The citadel stack | 12 | 10/12 | 4/12 · 10 stones |
The whole commission
Three milestones, three quays apiece. Each milestone hands over exactly one new stone and then keeps asking for it.
1. Milestone 1 — learn the heave
3/3First heave · Stacked timber · The long quay — one stone and two crates in the open, then a timber house you bring down on itself, then a wall you have to heave over.
32/36 seeded clears · was 31/36 before tuning
2. Milestone 2 — break the stone
3/3Stone lintels · The vaults · Bare stone — stone that shrugs off roundshot, the pig iron that does not care what it lands on, and a keep two vaults high.
31/36 seeded clears · was 15/36 before tuning
3. Milestone 3 — the powder quay
3/3Powder row · The magazine · The citadel stack — kegs sleeping inside the stacks, grapeshot that scatters into shards, and a last stack with powder in its cellar.
31/36 seeded clears · was 20/36 before tuning
9 quays · 3 milestones · 3 stone types · 4 block families · Godot 4.7.1-stable (official)
How the balance was found
Not by eye. A headless harness played the same solver across twelve seeds a level, and the numbers below are what it reported before and after each fix.
The vaults cleared 0 of its 12 seeds
The middle milestone had a wall in it that the solver could not get through at all, on any seed
9 stones instead of 7, and 9 of 12 seeds clear it
Every single failed run in the book ended the same way — out of stones
The quays were not unsolvable, they were underfunded: 42 of 108 runs emptied the deck with crates still standing
14 of 108, and no failure has any other cause
The citadel stack cleared 4 of 12 on 10 stones
The last quay priced its own lesson out of reach — the stack it teaches you to read needs more heaves than it was given
12 stones, 10 of 12 clears, and a median of 10 heaves used
Milestone 2 cleared 15 of its 36 seeded plays
Break the stone was the wall rather than the lesson — stone is meant to cost more heaves, not to end the run
31 of 36, and the book as a whole went from 66 clears to 94
94/108 seeded plays cleared after tuning · 66/108 before
Twelve seeds a level, replayed headless after every change.
Who made it
SeaOtter's Superteam
SeaOtter's own team — first-party work, labeled so. Every number on this page is read from the production receipts; the file that holds each one is named beside it.
A job like yours
Your job prices on your own words — a fixed quote before any account.