Build Journal / PC · TV
Toy Fort Game Night started with a room check: can four people on a couch read the TV and work the controllers? The first game was Fog Harbor, a memory game about twin boats. Bath Time Bumpers came next, so everyone could play at once, and it was retuned after a real family night so the littlest duck had a fair fight. A stagecoach game and a moon launch followed. Then the whole box became Toy Town Fort: a bedsheet fort where a toy train carries you to each game. Two magnet games joined last, and now every game can play itself to show you how.
These updates come from the same feed as the shelf. The illustrated build history follows below.
· Lodestone Lane · Named turns
Your joined names stay on the board, with a pointer and a clear action on the current player. Card flips and shots hand off to the named seat.
· Golden Gulch Stagecoach · Clearer first turns
The board now tells you to pick your flag, then choose its new stop, with Back available at each step.
· Lodestone Lane · Clearer first turns
A striped starter band on the spring meter shows a useful place to release, with room to adjust the next shot.
· Moonwheel Launch · Clearer first turns
Card flips, hops and levers now name the player whose pad should act and highlight their seat.
· P2
Each game can now play itself as a lesson, with a live line that explains every move. All six games got clearer controls and new toy details.
See this milestone in the journal →· Lodestone Lane · LL-0
Pick a red or blue face, pull back the spring and watch magnets push, snap and set off chains. The lane keeps score and replays the big shots.
See this milestone in the journal →· Robot Rink · RR-0
Flip the map, light up the magnets and slide a wind-up robot onto the charging pad.
See this milestone in the journal →· Bath Time Bumpers · BT-2
The soap has a glossy glaze and sudsy edges. Bumps kick up spray, paddling leaves wakes, and a duck egg timer and patterned score tiles make the action easier to read.
See this milestone in the journal →· Golden Gulch Stagecoach · GG-1
Hitching posts, patterned flags, and glass jars line a wooden western board. Deputy Dot teaches the first payout, and two little horses rear when the coach runs away.
See this milestone in the journal →· Moonwheel Launch · ML-1
Follow golden bridges across a painted night sky, flip the spin card, and pull the wooden launch lever. Pip can guide your crew through its first hop.
See this milestone in the journal →· Fog Harbor · FH-3
Soft mist curls away when a boat bobs up, the lighthouse glints on the water, and matching boats sail together to the wooden dock.
See this milestone in the journal →· Bath Time Bumpers · BF-1
The Little one can choose a duck size. Matching rings and portraits help players spot their duck, and the soap now has a duck stamp.
See this milestone in the journal →· Fog Harbor · BF-1
The pelican has a perch, the name boards sit in one row, and the Tide Jar cues sit beside the jar.
See this milestone in the journal →· Fog Harbor · Tide Jar
The water rolls across the board like a painted belt. Press A to drop a pearl into the Tide Jar and watch the water rise. The jar tells you when the next drop will move the fog or flood the harbor.
See this milestone in the journal →· Bath Time Bumpers · 1.0
The little one’s duck is easier to bump off the soap now. Pick a duck and a bar, then splash around a porcelain tub with moving water and bubbles.
See this milestone in the journal →· Bath Time Bumpers · B0 Tub and Waves
A rounded soap bar melts inside a deeper porcelain tub with a faucet and drifting bubbles. Splashers can send one wave every four seconds, with a meter that shows when their next wave is ready.
See this milestone in the journal →· Bath Time Bumpers · B0 Visual Polish
The game picker has a rubber-duck badge, the tub has a bright porcelain rim, and the ducks have wings, tails and shiny eyes. A framed control card shows how to swim, bump and make waves.
See this milestone in the journal →
Nov 9 · Robot Rink · RR-0Robot Rink opens the Workshop
Nov 9 · Lodestone Lane · LL-0Lodestone Lane slides in
Nov 9 · P2Every box shows you how· M0
Before any game existed, the team checked the room. A controller page lit up a drawing for each pad, and a TV page measured overscan and frame speed. Three early ideas were also tried in bot matches: Fog Harbor, Dusk Patrol and Toot Town Express. The big TV was not connected during this run, so the TV check was marked as still pending.
· Fog Harbor · M1a
The first real game was a 20-boat memory game for the whole family. Players lifted fog and used Help flags and a Beam, and a pelican, a dolphin and Tide Swaps joined in. Three levels (Cozy, Normal, Brave) were tuned in 3,000-game bot batches, and Normal with four players won about 71 percent of the time. A deliberately broken copy that leaked every hidden boat was caught by a test on the very first turn.
Turning point
· Fog Harbor · M1a-R2
The game was rebuilt around twins. Twenty-four fogs wear patterned flags, you lift two, and matching boats sail home together. A miss drops a pearl into the Tide Jar, and a 14-step intro teaches the littlest player first. Normal with four players now won about 84 percent of bot games, and holding B skips the intro.
Turning point
· Bath Time Bumpers · B0
Bath Time Bumpers became the second game and the first one where everybody plays at once, so the littlest player never waits for a turn. Ducks bump each other off a shrinking soap bar, and a duck that falls can paddle around the tub to make waves. Three crowns wins. A typical bot night lasted about 3.4 minutes, and a broken copy with the littlest duck's rim guard turned off was caught by a test.
· Bath Time Bumpers · B0 Visual Polish
Players could not always see what was happening, so the name boards moved beside the tub and tags followed each duck's height. Waves became thick white foam rings with a splash, and every bump flashed and squashed both ducks for 0.15 seconds. Later passes gave the tub its shape and spaced the waves out with a cooldown.
· Bath Time Bumpers · 1.0
A family playtest found that several players could barely shove the littlest player's duck off the soap. Its weight was cut from 4 times an adult to 2.7 times, and in matched bot nights that duck fell first in 75 percent of rounds instead of 52. The tub also became a porcelain bathroom with a faucet and a window, and each player picked a color and a duck style.
· Fog Harbor · Tide Jar
On a miss, the jar now asks you to press A, the handle turns, the pearl drops and a glass tank fills. The jar warns "Next drop moves fog!" before a swap and "Next drop floods!" before the flood. In Normal a swap starts every second pearl, and the sixth pearl floods the harbor and ends the game.
· Bath Time Bumpers · BF-1
Each duck got a colored ring and a matching portrait on its score board, and the littlest duck's size became a choice in the picker. In 300 matched nights per size, the littlest bot won a round 0.27, 1.38 and 4.38 percent of the time as the duck grew, and the report left the choice to the family. Fog Harbor got a centered row of name boards and a pelican perch. A layout check caught a caption planted over the Beam plate.
· Golden Gulch Stagecoach · GC-0
The third game was a western. Two to four players place flags, one shared coach circles twelve stops, and everyone fills a bank jar. The littlest player honks to roll and rings the bell to bank gold, and Runaway Coach gives the player with the least gold an extra roll. In 2,000 bot games every seat won between 18 and 32 percent, and a test caught a deliberately left-behind gold pile.
· Moonwheel Launch · ML-0
Moonwheel Launch is a co-op puzzle. Astronauts hop inward across three rings of moons, and a lever counter-turns the middle ring while the countdown drops. Astronauts on a moon can tow friends off the outer ring. Bots won about 72 percent of mixed Normal games, and a broken copy where the middle ring turned the wrong way was caught by a test. It replaced the early Dusk Patrol idea.
Turning point
· F1
The box stopped being a menu. It now opens outside a bedsheet hung over dining chairs, you duck under the flap, and a toy train carries your pawns to a stop. Each toy box opens into its real board under fog, bubbles, stars or dust, and each game leaves a keepsake in town. Gold Creek was renamed Golden Gulch in this round, and a same-day touch-up added two lanterns and a rolling trail of dust behind the coach.
· Fog Harbor · FH-3
Fog Harbor moved onto the fort's braided rug. Layers of sea mist curl aside when a boat bobs up, a lighthouse lens turns and glints on the water, and twins leave wakes on the way to the Home Fleet. The rules, bots and numbers stayed exactly the same. A broken copy with the lighthouse beam always on was caught by a test.
· Moonwheel Launch · ML-1
The rings became grooved wooden tracks with chunky crater moons, raised gold bridges and eight countdown lamps. A character named Pip teaches five small steps on a staged copy of the real board, and holding B for one second skips it. A broken copy that hid the gold bridges mid-turn was caught by a test.
· Golden Gulch Stagecoach · GG-1
The coach and two wooden horses clop around a worn road, with a store, a bank, a water tower and a turning windmill behind a creek. Glass jars fill with gold. Deputy Dot offers a guided first game with a guaranteed first payout. The rules and numbers were left untouched, and a test caught two jar signs stacked on top of each other.
· Bath Time Bumpers · BT-2
Warm window light now falls on the porcelain and the soap. The water has moving light patterns, rising bubbles and slow steam, and the soap has a pressed duck stamp. Bumps ripple and spray, and swimming leaves a short wake. A broken copy with the spray emptied out was caught by a test.
· P1
The camera now ducks under a hinged cloth flap, and each toy box lid shows a picture of its real board. All four real board reveals missed the smoothness target before this round and passed after it. Text sizes were measured for couch distance. Golden Gulch now lets two winners share one gold star after a tie.
Turning point
· Robot Rink · RR-0
The fifth game is a three-round magnet slide game. Red plus and blue minus pull and push, and the littlest player flips the round's map and lights the magnets. The Workshop is a new stop in town, and the box opens under a shower of brass parts. In 1,000 full games, Node and the real browser matched on every one of 25,002 slides. ChirpSmith made nine sound effects that all passed its checks.
Turning point
· Lodestone Lane · LL-0
The sixth game has players slide magnetic pucks down a walnut lane. Red and blue pull, matching faces push, and the screen counts every puck and every Zap. The rules and bot matches were finished and committed before the board was built, and the bot gate passed all 24 setups over 48,000 games. A low-camera replay shows each snap, and the first real round teaches a scoring shot.
Turning point
· P2
All six games now teach themselves with a Watch how to play lesson played by the family's own seats on a staged copy of the real board, 142 steps in all. Holding B for one second skips it, and a live explain line names the cause of each action. The lessons, 192 tagged rules and 135 unit tests were checked against each other, and a broken copy that dropped Moonwheel's deck step was caught. Bot results and 340 saved replay files stayed byte for byte the same.
