The core game was there but it needed reasons to come back. This session added two distinct game modes, a daily leaderboard backed by Cloudflare Workers, and a difficulty curve that actually ramps up.
- Two game modes now: Free Range and Race Mode. Free Range is the chill one — balance the egg as long as you can, with random wind gusts that keep things unpredictable. Race Mode is the competitive one — the intensity ramps up over time across three stages, and the game gets noticeably harder every few seconds.
- Race Mode's difficulty is a continuous ramp rather than sudden jumps. The tilt multiplier goes from 1.0 up to about 2.5 over 30 seconds, and air friction drops from 0.004 to almost nothing. There are boost windows at 8 and 20 seconds where things spike briefly, but mostly it's a steady escalation that you don't quite notice until you're already struggling.
- Warned gusts in Race Mode add a layer of strategy. Every 7 to 11 seconds an arrow appears (left or right) giving you about 2 seconds of warning before a strong wind force hits. You can brace for it if you're paying attention, but if you're already off-balance from the ramp it's often the thing that finishes you off.
- The leaderboard runs on Cloudflare Workers with KV storage. Separate namespaces for Free Range and Race Mode, daily scores with an 8-day TTL so they cycle naturally. Top 5 for today, your own entry highlighted, and a trophy button on the splash screen that opens the full leaderboard overlay.
- The initials modal pops up about a second after game over — three characters, auto-advance between fields, with your previous initials remembered in localStorage. It's a small touch but it makes the leaderboard feel personal rather than anonymous.
- Speed lines scroll vertically from the top of the screen as the difficulty ramps in Race Mode. They ramp in steadily from about 6 seconds and are at full intensity by 26 seconds. Purely cosmetic but they sell the feeling of acceleration without being distracting.
- The leaderboard got a second pass to show inline on the splash screen rather than only in an overlay. Your entries are always marked with "YOU", entries below the top 5 get a compact row, and the top-ranked entry gets a gold gradient. Small polish, but it makes the competitive loop feel tighter.