Charybdis. She was the one you could not sail past without giving something up. This release puts a shark in the tank that notices you back, a second companion who naps on your floor, and a keyboard that finally looks like the rest of the device.
There is a shark suit, and the shark makes you work for it. Watch the AQUARIUM long enough and something big crosses the tank. Touch it and it does not get caught — it turns, and comes back at you faster. Touch it on that pass and the suit is yours: a hood with your face in the mouth, a silver body, and both arms drawn as swept fins that follow wherever his arms actually are. Once it has noticed you it stops leaving at the edge and circles for fourteen seconds, so where you touched it first does not decide whether you had a fair chance.
Catching it again still does something. Every other secret in here goes quiet once you own the costume. This one does not: the turn, the circle and the flourish play every time, and he still has something to say about it. A second catch that silently did nothing would only teach you to stop trying.
The yeti moved in. He comes down off the ski hill every minute or so, stands beside Squachy, shouts one short thing and carries on out the other side. About one visit in five he flops face down and naps instead. Squachy answers him now — in his own bubble, a beat after the yeti's line lands, or by just cracking up — and the yeti flinches when the small one next to him starts talking. He knows where he has turned up, too: snow makes him happy, fire does not, and he has opinions about flying toast.
PET became a picker. It used to be a switch for the one companion there was. OFF, VAPOR SHAGGY and THE YETI now, and a board that only ever stored the old on/off keeps its answer.
Finding a companion finally looks like finding one. A hat got a celebration card; a whole companion got one line. It gets the card now, with both companions on it — and it tells you where the menu is, because earning the pet makes a settings row appear that was not there before.
The WiFi keyboard got its chassis. Its keys were always the payphone's, but they floated on black because the steel they sit in lived in a file that only exists on mesh builds. It is shared now: the same panel, the same bevel, and the password field is the payphone's readout — sunken bezel, black screen, green text.
Settings stops at the bottom. The list would scroll on into empty space with the rows you wanted somewhere above the fold. It now stops with two rows of air under the last item, measured from the end of the list rather than counted, because the rows are not all the same height.
An unfinished hunt survives a restart. The starfield wants two big eyes caught in a row, and big eyes are minutes apart — so a restart in between used to throw the first one away and nothing said so.
BINGO asks before it deals. NEW now tells you how much of the card you would lose, and the way out goes back to the screen you came from rather than somewhere generic.
One background retired. WIREFRAME TUNNEL is gone. A tunnel's whole picture is its vanishing point and Squachy stands exactly there, so it only ever showed its corners — and STARFIELD is already a seven-sided wireframe tunnel, and a better one. Ten rebuilds were drawn and measured before it was dropped. A board that had it saved comes up on SYNTHWAVE.
One more plate reader learns its name. A fifth Motorola Solutions block, read out of the IEEE registry, which was missed because it belongs to the Malaysian subsidiary rather than the US parent.
The actually-useful part
Added
- SHARK SUIT, earned by catching the aquarium shark twice over — the first touch only turns it.
- THE YETI as a second companion, with naps, his own lines per background, and Squachy answering him.
- A PET UNLOCKED card that shows both companions and points at the settings row it just created.
- A confirmation before BINGO deals a new card.
- A fifth Motorola Solutions OUI (B8:E2:8C).
Changed
- PET is a picker — OFF / VAPOR SHAGGY / THE YETI — instead of a switch.
- The WiFi password keyboard is set into the payphone's steel, with its readout.
- Settings stops scrolling two rows past the end of the list.
- Earning a companion no longer announces itself with a single line.
Fixed
- An unfinished starfield eye hunt no longer forgets itself on a restart.
- WIREFRAME TUNNEL retired; boards that had it selected move to SYNTHWAVE.
- The WiFi keyboard left a band of bare panel above the keys in portrait.