VELTRAILComing to iPhone & iPad
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1.0 In the game

Day one: an idea and a working core

One document described the game. By the end of the same evening, rails, pulses, sparks and bridges worked in code.

From the developer 2 min read Milestone date: Posted

Concept art: three floating islands above white clouds, joined by one glowing orange rail.
Concept art · not a screenshotConcept art: one line joining three islands — the idea in a single picture. Not a screenshot.

VELTRAIL began as a single document dated 27 September 2026. Its first line describes the whole game: a three-against-three team action game in which you lay rails of light by moving, deliver energy along them and intercept your rivals’ pulses. The short version is still on the main menu of the finished game: “Lay the path. Intercept the pulse. Light up the arena.”

Decided on page one

  • You win by delivering more pulses than the other team.
  • You change the world by building routes that carry energy, and by breaking your rivals’ routes.
  • You move fast by gliding along your own connected rails.
  • The camera looks down at an angle; you never need to turn it.
  • The world is small floating stations of ceramic, metal and glass.

The same document was careful about promises. It called its ideas hypotheses and listed how to test each of them — a habit this journal tries to keep.

One evening of code

the project skeleton
19:39
the first arena, Coil Garden
20:14
rails, pulses, sparks, bridges
20:52
couriers, combat, modules, the match
21:39

At 19:39 the project skeleton was committed: a Godot 4.7.2 project, the balance numbers kept as data rather than code, and a test runner. At 20:14 came the arena grid, the rail graph and the first arena, Coil Garden — 45 by 29 cells, mirror-symmetric, with a receiver on a central island and a bridge in two spans. At 20:52 rails, power, pulses, sparks and bridges worked. At 21:39 couriers could move and fight, the three modules existed, and a match could run from the countdown to overtime.

By then a whole match could be played out without any graphics and checked tick by tick. There was nothing to look at yet — the first match on screen came the next morning — but each part arrived with its own automated tests.

Nine days later, on 6 October, VELTRAIL 1.0 went to Apple for review.