This morning, I deliberately slowed down development to demystify Godot and understand what is happening behind the game. My bud Codex (Gépéto as I like to call him - yes, a man for some reason) walked through its lifecycle, scene tree, C# conventions, navigation, and the sequence connecting a gem click to combat resolution. Seeing how the editor, the running game, and dynamically created nodes relate made the project feel much less opaque.
The most useful realization was that the prototype had drifted too far toward creating its interface in code. The rules were understandable, but much of the actual game was difficult to inspect or manipulate through Godot itself. That defeated one of the main reasons to use an engine with a visual scene editor.
We began correcting that boundary with the main menu. Its visible structure, layout, text, and styling now live in an editable Godot scene, while code retains session and navigation behavior. It is a small first step, but it establishes the direction for the rest of the interface and eventually combat: visuals should be visible and adjustable in the editor; code should decide what happens.
Workbench time: 1h 41m tracked on September 13, 10h 46m total since August 29, 2026. Estimated from Codex activity with a 15-minute inactivity cutoff.
