Patch notes

What’s changed, in plain terms, newest first — read live via /patch-notes/ and summarised on the entry page’s own “what’s new in COMMONS” section.

Patch 1.8 — Adventure is now a playable pixel-art runner

Sending the shared creature on an adventure now opens a short, retro pixel-art side-scrolling game — jump over logs, puddles, and rocks, dodge flying birds, playing as whichever of the five appearances the room currently has selected. The game itself is just the interaction: however the run goes, confirming “Return to Commons” produces the exact same shared, deterministic outcome adventure always has (happiness up, energy and cleanliness down), recorded in the room’s history the same way every other action is. Nothing about the game’s own score is ever sent anywhere. Works with a keyboard, mouse, or touch, and — since this is an enhancement, not a requirement — the same button still performs the adventure immediately if JavaScript isn’t available, exactly as it always did.

Patch 1.7 — a quiet suggestion of what might help next

Right next to “Last action,” the room view now shows at most one short, friendly suggestion — “A Feed might help, fullness is getting low” — read straight off the same four stats already shown as bars on the page. Never a new mechanic: nothing is stored, nothing is broadcast, and it never suggests an action the server would currently reject (too tired to play, too hungry to sleep). Disappears once nothing really needs doing, and never shows anything at all while the creature is asleep.

Patch 1.6 — Milo redesigned as a proper puppy

The original character used to read as a generic rounded creature — his ears were narrower than his own body and sat almost entirely hidden behind it. He now has large floppy ears that clearly extend past the head on both sides, a distinct cream muzzle, a small dark nose, warm brown eyes, and a happy open smile with a little tongue. Same warm color palette and style as the rest of COMMONS — just unmistakably a dog now. Purely a look.

Patch 1.5 — Simbaa face proportions, corrected

A follow-up to the lamb redesign: her face was still reading as small and dark next to her ears. The face is now noticeably larger and lighter, her eyes are a warm brown instead of near-black and sized down a touch so they’re expressive without dominating the face, and the ears are about 30% smaller — still floppy and pink-lined, just no longer competing with the face for attention. Still purely a look.

Patch 1.4 — Simbaa actually looks like a lamb now

Simbaa’s fleece used to be a smooth, rounded body with small circles dotted around the outline — reading as decorations, not wool. The silhouette is redrawn as genuine scalloped fleece (fluffy, rounded tufts, not spots), with floppy ears and warm pink inner ears, a distinct face so the expression doesn’t get lost in the wool, a soft rounded nose, and visible hooves. Purely a look — nothing about stats, levels, accessories, or care history changed.

Patch 1.3 — Five looks for Milo, and a shared level to work toward

The shared creature can now look like one of five appearances — Milo, Plip the penguin, Bella the kitten, Simbaa the lamb, or Oliver the rabbit — switched by anyone in the room. It’s purely cosmetic: switching never resets or changes stats, history, or progress, the same way wearing a hat never did. Alongside the existing room milestone count, there’s now a second shared track: a level from 1 to 5, earned by real care, that unlocks a growing set of hats, glasses, and scarves along the way, ending in a golden crown at level 5. Both tracks are room-level and unranked — nothing here is broken down by who did what, same as always.

Patch 1.2 — A welcome page that actually looks like COMMONS

The entry page’s background used to be an abstract shape that only claimed to be Milo’s silhouette — it wasn’t. The real Milo now stands in a proper welcome column alongside the room-entry panel, side by side on wider screens and stacked in a sensible order on narrow ones. A returning visitor’s “continue to your room” card now shows that room’s real, current care total and milestone, not just a link back in. And “what’s new” is no longer a tiny footer line — it’s a real section with a heading and the latest patch’s own summary, still linking through to the full history here.

Patch 1.1 — Room milestones, a redesigned welcome, and patch notes

Milo now tracks the total amount of care given in a room and marks milestones along the way — a shared goal for the room, not a leaderboard: nothing here is broken down by who did what, only how much the room has done together. The entry/welcome page is centred, wider, and has a subtle “live” background instead of sitting as a small card in the corner. And this page: a changelog you can actually read, linked from the entry page.

Patch 1.0 — Dedicated rooms

The biggest pivot this project has made: COMMONS moved from one shared Milo for the entire deployment to dedicated rooms — a visitor now enters a name and either hosts a brand-new room (getting a short code to share) or joins an existing one by code. Everyone in the same room shares that room’s own Milo, fully isolated from every other room’s. The original, pre-rooms Milo survived the migration as its own room, under the fixed code COMMONS. A server-side, non-reversible-actor-tagged event log was added alongside this, recording every care action and room event — success and rejection alike — durably, independent of how long the hosting platform’s own logs happen to be kept.