CINDER CROWN

A stratovolcano is coming apart under you. Six survey pylons ring the crater rim. Arm all six before the rising lava lake climbs over the crown.

One continuous run — about a minute and a half if it goes well, less if it does not. Third person, one 288-metre mountain that is both the level and the enemy. There is no hub, no menu, no second level. Just the climb.

How to play

Control	Does
W A S D	Move
Shift	Sprint — you will need it
Mouse	Look. The camera decides which way "forward" is
Space	Jump. Also the thing that frees you when the slope catches you
R	Restart the run, from any end state

1. You start on the flank, below the crown, facing downhill. Turn around and run up.
2. Six pylons stand on the crater rim. Stand inside one and hold position. A charge meter fills over about two and a half seconds; stepping out bleeds it back down, though a short dodge costs you almost nothing.
3. A pylon that fills arms — a cyan beacon lights above it, readable from anywhere on the crown, and the objective list ticks up.
4. The vent throws lava bombs at where you are about to be, faster as the eruption climbs. Each one paints a growing marker on the ground before it lands. Three hits and you are done.
5. The lava lake rises on a fixed clock and ignores you completely. It crosses the rim crest at about 82% of the eruption. Every second you spend charging is a second it climbs.

Win — six pylons armed before the eruption peaks. The card reads THE CROWN HOLDS. Lose — the lava reaches you, three bombs find you, or the clock runs out.

Why it is worth two minutes

The whole game is one squeeze, and it is legible the entire time. The eruption meter, the lava height in metres against the rim height in metres, and the six objectives are all on screen at once, so you always know exactly how much of your remaining time each pylon is going to cost. The interesting decision is never "which button" — it is whether to commit to the pylon you are standing in or break for the next one while the lake is still below the crest.

Running the crater rim is genuinely awkward, and that is most of the difficulty: the inner wall is a 70-degree drop into the lake and the outer flank is 40-plus degrees, so the walkable band is narrow and unforgiving. Overshoot inward once and the run is over.

What is rough

This is an honest list. The game is playable and finishable — both a win and a loss are in the clips below — but it is not polished.

• Traversal is the weak point. The flank stands at 45-48 degrees and the character controller intermittently wedges on it: the avatar stops dead with full input held, and a jump frees it. If you stick, press Space.
• The armed-pylon beacon is a dense particle column and reads as a flat cyan slab from some angles rather than a beam.
• The look is warmer than intended. The brief asked for black basalt at ash-choked dusk; the low red sun lifts the flank toward brown. The albedo is right — the grade is what is warm.
• The lava lake is a slab, so from outside the crater you can see its flat edge hanging above the rim rather than a filled caldera.
• The plume and ember fall photograph well at mid and long range but barely reach the frame from the spawn viewpoint.
• The ash plain is a finite 288 m plate, so its square edge is visible from the lower flank.

Media

Six gameplay frames and three ten-second clips are in the world at /source/design/shots/ and /source/design/clips/:

• 01_climb_the_flank.mp4 — the opening: spawn on the flank, sprint up to the first pylon on the crest.
• 02_arming_a_pylon.mp4 — running the rim, entering a pylon, the prompt, the charge, the arm.
• 03_the_sixth_pylon.mp4 — five armed, the eruption at two thirds, the last pylon, and the win card.

How it is put together

Nineteen entities are hand-placed in scenes/main.scene. Everything else — lava bombs, ember fall, the plume, the crater light, the HUD, the cards, the camera shake, the audio — is created at runtime by four components on a single GameRoot entity, which is why a hot reload rebuilds the world instead of doubling it.

Piece	Owns
libs/@me/cinder.module	The shared contract: tunables, the analytic mountain, pylon sites, game state, the event bus
libs/@me/CinderDirector.component	The clock, the lava lake, damage, win/lose, restart
libs/@me/CinderPylon.component	One per pylon: proximity charge, bleed-down, arming
libs/@me/hazard/	Lava bombs and a subscription registry that survives a reload
libs/@me/CinderAmbience.component	Sky, sun, fog, emitters, crater light, bomb dressing
libs/@me/CinderHUD.component	The head-up display, the cards, the feel components
libs/@me/art/	The basalt, molten and instrument shaders, and the CALM/PEAK grade

The terrain is a 129x129 heightmap baked from the same analytic function the gameplay places against, so where the pylons sit and where the ground is can never disagree.

The whole look is one file of numbers — libs/@me/art/look.module. Re-grading the game touches nothing else.