Change Set 12: Everything In Its Place

A readability-and-structure pass, mostly. The HUD stops hiding things, the menus stop repeating themselves, and the galaxy’s least-glamorous garbage hauler picks up a couple of new problems to solve.

The HUD tells the whole story now. Every powerup — Triple Shot, Rapid Shot, Magnet, and the Scoop — keeps a permanent spot on the display. When you don’t have one, its ring sits there muted with a zero, so an empty slot reads as “go find this,” not “wait, what used to be here?” A small change that quietly removes a lot of guesswork.
The Scoop is a gauge you can read at a glance. Its ring is now cut into five wedges that fill as you build the upgrade and drain as you take hits. Losing a wedge lands harder than watching a number tick down ever did — which is exactly the point.
Saucers get sharper the deeper you go. UFO fire felt just right on level one, so rather than touch that, their accuracy now climbs gradually across waves on its own curve. Early levels stay friendly; late runs make you genuinely wary of the saucers. The ramp is intentionally gentle — slow-building pressure, not a wall you smack into.
A trophy for the haul that shouldn’t make it. Getting a full maximum tow to the recycler in one piece is brutally hard, so pulling it off now unlocks a lifetime achievement and a MAX HAUL celebration. If you’ve ever threaded a full chain past a waking Hunter, you’ve earned the fanfare.
An optional safety net, with a price. A new Difficulty setting lets your shields snap on automatically the instant you take a hit at critical hull. That’s strong, so it isn’t free — every automatic save costs 500 points, and we’ll keep balancing that knob in the next set.
Menus that finally agree with themselves. The Menu, Options, and Paused dialogs had drifted apart, with Achievements somehow living in two places. They’re reorganized around a single Options hub now, so wherever you open your settings from, everything is where you’d expect it.

Under the hood, this one is version 1.0.0.12.