# DEAD AGAIN — PROJECT HISTORY THROUGH 1.25 GOLD CANDIDATE Developer: **fisheggs** Project: retro browser puzzle-platformer inspired by the simplicity and immediacy of Dangerous Dave, but built around a unique mechanic: each death leaves a replaying prior Dave that can become part of the solution. This document exists to preserve the design/development history for future work. ## Origin The brief was a browser-based retro game that should feel simple, addictive, difficult to fully complete, and at home both on a phone used like a handheld and on a computer used like an old DOS game. The selected concept became **DEAD AGAIN**: Dave's previous lives replay their inputs in the current room, allowing death itself to become a puzzle resource. Developer identity was fixed as **fisheggs**. The supplied Fisheggs logo became part of the website identity and an in-game Easter egg. ## Early build and presentation The game became a static GitHub Pages build suitable for `deadagain.fisheggs.au`. Two shells were developed: - desktop: battered VGA/CRT DOS-machine presentation - mobile: dedicated Fisheggs handheld with touch controls The real-user feedback that shaped subsequent work was important: - touch buttons worked - movement was smooth and not laggy - the original Level 1 was impossible - landscape phone presentation was too small/awkward - the original protagonist read too much like Pac-Man rather than a human That led to the explicit rule: **do not casually change the movement/input feel that already works; repair level geometry and presentation around it.** ## Human Dave The protagonist was redesigned as a tiny human silhouette with head, face/nose, torso, arms, separate legs and oversized boots. He gained readable run/jump/fall/landing/victory poses while remaining deliberately chunky at 320x200. Ghosts use the same human silhouette so a room full of previous lives reads as accumulated dead Daves rather than arcade mascots. ## Solvability crisis and adversarial QA Level 1 exposed a major problem: authored geometry had been designed against an imagined jump envelope rather than the actual engine physics. The actual movement constants were audited and the campaign received conservative human-margin rules. Static adversarial reviewer swarms then attacked: - spawn safety - objective bounds - switch/door/platform references - jump margins - buried hazards - moving-platform bounds - campaign/secret structure The project deliberately distinguished simulated reviewer personas from real human testers. ## Robot Dave Static audits were not enough, so **Robot Dave** was built as a headless executable player that imports and drives the actual `Game` class rather than a fake physics clone. Robot Dave grew several solving strategies: - heuristic platforming - deliberate Ghost Anchor planning - moving-platform boarding/riding - support-aware routing - bunny-hop traversal - evolutionary macro search - beam/state-space search - timing-aware world-state search Robot Dave uncovered defects static review could not: - physically unoccupiable switches - ghost-required levels accidentally bypassable with zero deaths - teaching machinery with overly tight boarding windows - incorrect PERFECT death counts - pressure plates hidden under architecture - a self-locking door dependency in BACKWARDS - anchors exposed to enemy patrol lanes - machinery displacing its own power anchor - moving-platform travel corridors intersecting static solids - search/timing distinctions involving enemies, electrics, crushers and ghosts The campaign was repeatedly repaired and re-certified. ## 45 / 45 certification By 1.16, Robot Dave had executable real-engine solutions for **all 45 levels**. The certification standard became: - actual engine inputs - required ghost interactions execute - machinery can actually be used - key is collected - exit is entered - PERFECT claims are demonstrated or corrected This was not represented as mathematical proof of minimum deaths; it was executable solvability proof. ## Speedrunner Dave / Time Attack Robot Dave then attacked the designer rather than merely proving solvability. Speedrunner mode searched for: - fewer-death solutions - sequence breaks - skipped switches - machinery exploits - alternate routes Some boring skips that destroyed the intended lesson were patched. Some clever world-consistent skips were deliberately canonised rather than sterilised. Time Attack introduced: - PERFECT TIME: fastest run at best-known death count - ANY% TIME: fastest completion regardless of deaths Robot benchmark runs became visual race ghosts. ## Ghost Race and Rival Mode Robot Dave's benchmark traces were added as non-physical visual ghosts so they cannot press switches, attract enemies, collect objects, alter doors or interfere with player ghosts. Rival Mode then allowed a qualifying player's clean PB trajectory to become a personal ghost. Race order became: OFF -> ROBOT -> RIVAL -> OFF (when a Rival exists). Robot and Rival ghosts were visually distinct. ## Critics' Cut A simulated specialist panel reviewed the game aesthetically: - DOS/shareware platformer critic - pixel-art critic - game-feel critic - mobile critic - chiptune critic - sound-design critic Their implemented conclusions included: - restore/strengthen the battered CRT and handheld website shells - reduce the obstructive level-intro banner - make exit locked/live state legible - stronger pre-telegraphing for electric floors and crushers - sparse procedural music identities for each zone - tighter SFX and persistent mute control - preserve movement physics ## Second Critics' Council and Critics Deathmatch A larger second panel warned that **feature accretion** had become the biggest risk. A 21-critic editorial deathmatch forced competing proposals to survive objections from other specialists. The strongest implemented decision was UI austerity: - Robot/Rival/PB systems remain - permanent stats/medal-dashboard presentation was reduced - race information appears contextually - the playfield remains primary Ideas killed in the deathmatch included more music layers, more saturated UI, animation for animation's sake, speculative level redesign, new meta-controls and movement-physics changes. Editorial rule established: > New work must either remove friction, improve comprehension, or deepen atmosphere without obscuring play. ## Story Deathmatch Twenty simulated narrative critics reviewed all 45 level names/hints, secrets, mechanics, zones, visual/audio language and ending. Their winning internal model: **The facility can repeatedly instantiate Dave, but cannot completely discard a previous execution. A death ends that Dave's active run; another starts while the previous one remains as a replay. The machinery was built around this property. Dave escapes because the machine cannot forget him.** This is designer knowledge, not exposition. The five-act reading became: - THE ESCAPE: death changes from failure to usefulness - THE WORKS: death becomes labour; the machine expects prior Daves - THE MIRROR: identity, manipulation and sacrifice - THE BLACK: death has become routine; hints disappear - THE BELOW: accumulated selves become the subject - ALIVE AGAIN: survival becomes extraordinary again Environmental continuity was added without changing collision geometry. THE BELOW intentionally recombines earlier visual languages incorrectly. The ending was revised to: ALIVE. AGAIN. EVERY DEATH REMEMBERED. EVERY MISTAKE USEFUL. THIS ONE IS YOURS. No lore logs, scientists, corporations, narrator, simulation reveal, clone exposition or story boss were added. ## 1.25 — The Undertakers / Gold Candidate The final simulated release-review panel was forbidden from proposing features. Findings were limited to FIX, CUT, SIMPLIFY, LEAVE ALONE, or EXTERNAL RELEASE GATE. Implemented release fixes: - compact Rival trajectory persistence with backward-compatible save loading - core progress protected ahead of optional Rival replay data under storage pressure - corrected 404 redirect behaviour - added `CNAME` for `deadagain.fisheggs.au` - bumped service-worker cache - separated clean public shipping package from full development archive Full current-engine campaign regression: **45 / 45 executable**. The only intentionally unresolved release gate is real physical-device and blind-human testing. Simulated critics and Robot Dave are not represented as substitutes for that. ## Persistent design principles 1. Dave is a little human, not a mascot blob. 2. Movement/touch feel that real users liked should not be changed casually. 3. Difficulty should come from reasoning, choreography and execution—not unreadable rules or microscopic standing precision. 4. Fun, world-consistent exploits can survive. 5. The 320x200 playfield outranks surrounding UI. 6. Story is carried by mechanics, level sequence, names, environment, silence and implication—not exposition. 7. Robot Dave proves executability; humans decide whether a level feels good. 8. Fisheggs is the developer identity. 9. The game should remain small, strange, mean and comprehensible. 10. Once Gold is reached, new features require unusually strong justification.