What to Test in the August 22 Build

This build goes from Rules v138 to v145 — seven versions, four of them straight out of reports you filed. It also reskins essentially every pixel of interface in the game and puts it in a new typeface, which is the kind of change that breaks small things everywhere at once. Grab the new build from the Download page before testing anything below; older builds can't submit against the current rules regardless.

The headline: you no longer have to finish a run in one sitting.

Priority this week

• Suspend and resume (GH #411). Brand new, and the highest-risk thing here. Set a descent down mid-run, come back, pick it up. I want to know if the run you get back is exactly the run you left.
• The UI reskin and the new typeface (GH #290, GH #423). New chrome, new font, retightened row spacing. Any clipped word, elided button label, or panel that runs off screen at your resolution is a bug I want to see a screenshot of.
• Your opinion of the new look — not just what's broken about it. The font, the HUD, the inventory, the splash, every other screen. I want reactions and suggestions, including ideas for things that don't exist yet. Full ask at the bottom under Opinions wanted; it's the one section here that isn't about defects.
• The charger fix (GH #420, GH #417). Chargers used to lock up against a long weapon. The fix touches how every charging creature approaches you. Tell me whether they now feel dangerous or cheap — that distinction is the whole signal.
• Depths 7–10, still. Still the least-played part of the game. Don't grind down: launch with --start-depth N and you begin there with a depth-appropriate loadout. On Windows, make a shortcut to Labyrinth.exe and append it to the Target field, e.g. "...\Labyrinth-Game\Labyrinth.exe" --start-depth 8. Those runs pool separately and never seed graves in your normal ones. The build now shows a PLAYTEST — this descent begins at depth N banner on name entry so you can't forget the flag is on.

Added / changed

Suspend the Descent, and take it back up (GH #411). Esc → Suspend the Descent sets the run down instead of ending it, and so does closing the window. Next launch, name entry offers a Resume — depth N button beside Random Name and Descend. One run at a time, consumed when you resume it, deleted on death — no save slots, and no reloading after a bad fight. The save is the run's own command log rather than a state snapshot, so a resumed run replays itself back into existence: the same seed, the same digest, the same fog of war you'd explored, and it still certifies for the leaderboard. Test: suspend at several different moments — mid-fight, mid-inventory, standing on stairs, right after a boss kill — and resume each. Note your depth, HP, gold and inventory before suspending and check them after. Suspend on a deep floor (--start-depth 8) too; the replay has more to chew through and takes visibly longer, which is expected. Watch for: anything different on resume — a moved hero, healed or damaged, missing items, re-fogged rooms you'd already explored, enemies back in their starting places. A resume that takes more than a couple of seconds. A Resume button that appears with no run behind it, or fails to appear when you know you suspended one.

Abandon the Descent. A second way out on the pause menu, beside Suspend: this one ends the run for good. No confirmation, no save, no legacy grave. It exists so "I'm done with this run" and "I'm done for tonight" are different buttons. Test: abandon a run and confirm it's gone — no Resume offer on the next launch, no grave from it in later runs. Watch for: an abandoned run still being offered for resume, or the two buttons being easy to confuse in the moment. If the labels read wrong to you, say so.

The boss announces itself (GH #291, Rules v145). The first time your run's boss wakes to you, the dungeon stops for a full-screen ink portrait — its face, its name in boss red, and its opening line. Twenty-one portraits, one per boss in the pool. Any key dismisses it. Test: reach any floor from 5 to 10 and wake the boss. --start-depth 10 gets you there fastest. Watch for: the banner firing twice, firing for something that isn't the boss, or a portrait that doesn't match the creature you're looking at. If you Hide and the boss loses you, waking it again is supposed to show the banner again — that's not a bug.

A diegetic interface, in a diegetic face (GH #290, GH #423). Panels, buttons, fields, scrollbars and bars are now dark hide and tarnished iron instead of stock Unity gray, and the lettering is Cardo rather than a modern sans. Row spacing was retightened alongside it so the taller face doesn't cost vertical space. Measuring every slot for the new font turned up two bugs that predated it: Unequip and Unwield had been silently eliding since those buttons existed, and the inventory tab strip was clipping "Weapons (0)" to "Weapons ((". Test: open everything — inventory, shop, Player Guide (?), Settings, pause menu, the death and win screens — and do it at more than one window size, including a short window and fullscreen. Watch for: any truncated word, any button whose label doesn't fit, any panel that overflows or sits off-center, text too dim to read against the new dark fill. Settings is the densest panel and the one most likely to misbehave in a short window — it should scroll rather than clip. Separately from anything broken, I want your opinion of it — see Opinions wanted below.

Inventory tabs are icons now. The tab strip's ! Potions / / Wands text labels are gone, replaced by the same class-generic item sprites loose loot uses on the floor. The label and its count moved to the hover tooltip. Nothing about identification changed — the icon names the class, never the item. Test: open the inventory and hover each tab. Watch for: a tab you can't identify at a glance, or a tooltip that doesn't appear.

The title screen is a real floor now (GH #412). The splash used to be a flat-color, empty depth-4 floor no art landing since had touched — several of you correctly filed it as the game looking older than it is. It now builds an actual populated depth-10 floor: real tiles, props, torchlight, shadows, enemies, and the boss. Test: launch a few times and watch the splash before dismissing it. Watch for: a black or empty tableau, framing that shows nothing, light bleeding through walls, or a slow appearance.

The Hollow has its own art (GH #288). Depth 11 is no longer flat-color fallback: bone-pale floors, a gold-drowned Heart chamber, and the Heart itself under a pulsing red light. Test: kill the depth-10 boss and descend — --start-depth 10 makes this a short trip. Watch for: untextured cells, gold outside the Heart chamber, or a Heart that doesn't pulse.

Props are sprites (GH #281). Doors, stairs, chests, graves, memory fragments and loose loot now draw real art instead of tinted tiles, with doors swapping between open and closed states. Test: just play — open and close doors, loot chests, cross graves. Watch for: a prop at the wrong size or offset from its cell, a door whose art doesn't match its state, or a chest that stays shut after you open it.

Fixed

The Hollow stair now opens where the boss died (GH #421, Rules v141). One of you killed the depth-10 guardian and simply could not find the way down. The stair was real, but it unsealed at the level's original exit tile, which could be several rooms from the fight — and nothing told you where. It now opens at the guardian's death site (or the nearest suitable tile), and the narration says so. Test: kill the depth-10 boss and find the way down without hunting. Do it a few times — the interesting cases are a boss killed in a corridor, or shoved into position by a knockback. Watch for: any depth-10 kill where you can't immediately see where the stair opened, or a stair that lands somewhere you can't reach.

The Trainer and Merchant are where you'll actually walk (GH #418, Rules v142). A report of five floors with no NPCs and thousands of unspent gold turned out to be a discoverability problem, not a rarity one: both rolled at the same rate as always, then stood in a random room you might never enter. They're now stationed in the down-stairs room, which every descending hero has to walk through. Their spawn chance is unchanged — this is about finding them, not meeting them more often. Related: a discovered NPC now stays marked on your map (GH #414) instead of vanishing the moment you leave the room, the way a remembered chest does. Test: play several floors from depth 3 down and count how many NPCs you find versus previous builds. Leave a shop and come back to it. Watch for: an NPC standing on the stairs tile itself, sharing a room with the floor's boss, or disappearing from the map after you've found it.

Chargers no longer stall against a long weapon (GH #420, GH #417, Rules v143). Your uploaded report — "Fenrir went back and forth without attacking" — replayed exactly: at depth 9 the boss alternated between two tiles for ten straight turns and died without landing a hit while your war spear struck it every turn. Two goals were fighting each other, and bracing with a reach-3 weapon gave the creature no ground to break the cycle. Fixed on both sides: an arrested charge now always closes at least one tile, and a charger that already has a melee approach keeps it rather than re-planning a charge lane every turn. Bracing still denies the slam, still denies the knockback, still lands the free counter-hit — it just no longer locks the charger out entirely. Test: take a reach weapon (spear, glaive) to depths 7–10 and brace against anything that charges. Fight in corridors and against walls specifically — that's where the old lockup lived. Watch for: any creature visibly ping-ponging between two tiles. Also the opposite failure: a charger that now closes so reliably that bracing feels pointless. Both are worth reporting.

Patrollers stop losing you in doorways (GH #413, Rules v139). Filed as the skeleton "losing track of the player when the player enters a hallway or doorway" — and accurate. An awake patroller's give-up timer only reset when it could actually see you, but pursuit itself doesn't need line of sight, so anything chasing you round a corner ticked toward forgetting you mid-chase. It now keeps you on a flat 10-tile leash with no sight requirement. Fixing that exposed a second bug: a pursuer separated from you by a closed door couldn't path to you at all and just waited. Intelligent pursuers now open the door — spending the turn to do it, same as you would. Test: let something notice you, then break line of sight — round a corner, through a doorway, into a corridor. Close a door behind you and wait. Watch for: anything that still gives up mid-chase while close behind you. And the new failure mode: something that follows you forever across the whole floor, or a door that opens with nothing visibly on the other side.

Wands say no out loud (GH #405, Rules v140). A mis-targeted zap used to fail completely silently — no charge spent, no turn spent, no message — which read as the wand simply not working. Every refusal now narrates its reason, without leaking anything about an unidentified wand the inventory doesn't already tell you. Test: zap at walls, out of range, around corners at things you can't see, and at empty floor. Watch for: any silent failure left, or a refusal that reveals something about an unidentified wand you shouldn't know yet.

The scroll read picker only lists what the scroll accepts (GH #419). Enchant Weapon, Enchant Armor and Recharge used to list your entire inventory with ineligible rows dimmed and inert, which read as "pick any of these." They now show only valid targets; Duplicate still spans tabs. Test: read each of those with a mixed inventory. Watch for: a valid target missing, or an empty picker while you're holding something eligible.

Stair rooms crumble like every other room (GH #415, Rules v144). Up- and down-stairs rooms always generated as clean undecorated rectangles, making them identifiable at a glance under Mapsense before you'd been near them. They now take normal edge decay. Everything that made them safe is untouched — no terrain scatter, no pillars, no enemies in the entrance room. Test: read a Mapsense scroll early and try to pick the stair room out of the layout. Watch for: decay bad enough to block the stairs, or a room still obviously rectangular.

Two fog-of-war leaks. A door closing anywhere on the level was revealing that tile — and a visible door sprite — into your map memory even in rooms you'd never entered, because enemies open and close doors regardless of where you are. And the outgoing floor's door and stairs props weren't being destroyed on descent, so they stayed floating at their old coordinates on every later floor, one floor's worth more per descent — including in fog you hadn't explored. Test: descend five or six floors in one run, ascending and descending a couple of times. Watch your map for tiles you didn't earn. Watch for: any door or stair sprite in a room you haven't been in, or a prop that isn't on anything.

Also landed

Door and stairs sprites now sit centered on their cell instead of half a tile off (GH #281); the ink art behind the death and win screens shows through the card instead of being blanked out by it; the message log no longer draws on top of the ending screens and steals their clicks; the pause menu card is centered and its report form no longer clips under the new font; inventory and shop row buttons picked up the tightened row rhythm they were supposed to get with GH #423; the Player Guide's bestiary tables show live sprite art instead of the retired map-glyph letters; and the editor-only art degradation on repeated Play sessions is fixed (developer-facing, invisible in your build).

Opinions wanted

Everything above asks you to find things that are broken. This section asks for something different, and this build it matters just as much: tell me what you think of the new look, including where nothing is wrong with it. I've been staring at this interface for weeks and I've lost the ability to see it fresh. You haven't. Reactions on all of it, please:

• The typeface. Cardo is a deliberate choice — old, bookish, of a piece with the ink and iron. Does it read as diegetic, or just as harder to read? Judge it at the size you actually play at, and especially in the Player Guide, where you'll read the most words in one sitting.
• The HUD. It's tighter than it was. Mid-fight, is what you need — HP, Mood, depth, abilities — where your eye already goes? Is anything on it you never once look at? Is anything missing that you keep opening a panel to find?
• The inventory. New icon tabs, tightened rows, new chrome. Faster to use than before, or slower? Do the class icons read instantly, or are you hovering to be sure?
• The splash screen. It's a live depth-10 floor now. Does it set the right tone for the game you're about to play — or is it too busy, too dark, or just something you want to get past?
• Every other screen — name entry, death, the three endings, Settings, the pause menu, the boss banner, memory fragments. These are the moments the game is trying hardest to land something. Do they land?

Then the open question, and the one I most want answered: what would you change? Not "this is broken" — "this would be better if." Layouts you'd rearrange, information you want surfaced where it isn't, a screen that should be doing more than it does, something another game does that you keep reaching for here and not finding. Ideas are welcome even when they're big, half-formed, or plainly not happening this month — I would much rather have the list than not.

Send them the same way as a bug — Esc → Request a Feature — or just say it in #playtesting-discussion and we'll talk about it there.

Found something broken? Esc → Report a Bug/Feature, same as always. If you filed one of the reports above, the issue number is there so you can follow it on GitHub.