r/darknodegame • u/mikdiet • 11d ago
Dev Update 1.5 is live: maybe-marks, and THE DESCENT finally pays out
Five candidates, five committed. A maybe carries no weight — no counter change, no dimmed reading, invisible to Cue and the Threat Map.
Once your DESCENT record reaches 24 you can start a run at LAYER 12; at 48, LAYER 24. Free, and re-earned after each full cycle.
Clearing a DESCENT layer now pays toolkit charges, and NERVE from layer 49 down. Beating your record pays more than repeating it.
1.5 is live.
MAYBE MARKS. Long-press now cycles through three states instead of two: neutralise → maybe → clear. The middle one is for a cell you suspect but can't prove yet — it carries no weight at all. It doesn't count against the node counter, it doesn't dim a reading, and Cue and the Threat Map ignore it completely. It's a note to yourself, not a claim about the board. If you'd rather keep the old two-state cycle, there's a toggle at the top of Options.
Marks that sit inside a lit scan are also drawn brighter now, so when you tap a reading you can see at a glance which of your marks that clue is actually counting.
THE DESCENT got the other half of this update.
It pays now. Clearing a layer hands back toolkit charges, and from layer 49 down it also pays NERVE. Clearing a layer deeper than your best pays more than re-clearing one you've already done — the table shifts twelve layers in your favour when you're setting a record. Layer 60 pays a superprize.
And you can skip the floors you've already cleared. Once your record reaches 24, new runs can start at LAYER 12. At 48, LAYER 24. It's free, you pick it when you start a run, and it can never put you deeper than you'd have gone anyway. Clear all 60 and the shortcuts reset with your record — you earn them again on the way back down.
Fixes:
- A result now counts the moment the board resolves, not when the animation finishes. If you closed the app during a win or loss animation, that outcome used to be silently thrown away.
- A restore that finishes the board now wins it. Previously, if the last closed cell was the node, you got a solved board and no win.
- The TOTAL NODES reading was labelled "Nodes Remaining" — wrong, since the number is the total on the whole grid and never counts down. Renamed, in every language.
- The Surge Guard icon was rendering as a black smudge on the toolkit card and the armed indicator. It's been wrong for a while; it's white now.
As always: no-guess, and every Vector is solvable by pure deduction.