What changed
Changelog
Additions and fixes, newest first.
Crystal Cavern was started on 22 September 2026 and rebuilt many times over that same day. What follows is the record of those changes.
1.5 — Number abbreviations removed
2026-09-22
- K, M, B, 万 and 億 are gone. Numbers are shown at full length. Abbreviations are shorter, but each asks the reader to know a convention, and conventions differ by language. Digits mean the same thing to everyone
- Large on-screen figures now shrink as the digits accumulate
- Prices and per-second figures wrap instead of pushing the layout sideways. This was a layout problem the abbreviations had been hiding — past about twenty digits the screen overflowed
- Separators follow the language (1,234,567 in English and Japanese; 1.234.567 in Spanish)
1.4 — Positioning fixes
2026-09-22
- Announcements were appearing in the wrong place. On a wide screen they were centred on the window rather than the cave, which put them over the building list. They now sit at the top centre of the cave itself
- The depth read-out moved back to the bottom left so it no longer collides with the hint
- The home page no longer embeds the game; it links to it. Reading and playing are calmer apart
1.3 — Tap feedback pared back
2026-09-22
- The shockwave ring on tapping was removed
- The flash of light across the crystal was removed
- Feedback is now carried by the crystal swelling and the shards scattering. Fewer effects, each clearer, read better than more of them
- The site palette was rebuilt: dark text on a light ground by default, switching to a dark scheme when the device asks for one. Both were measured for contrast
1.2 — Tap feedback rebuilt
2026-09-22
A player reported that they could not see the shards scattering. Investigated, and they were essentially invisible: counting the draw calls showed seven particles of one to two pixels. Apologies — the description and the reality did not match.
- Tap particles raised from seven to between sixteen and thirty-two, at two to three times the size
- An expanding shockwave ring was added (removed again in 1.3)
- A flash across the crystal was added (removed again in 1.3)
- The crystal's swell was raised from 9% to 18% and now widens as well as lengthens, and lingers longer
- With the system set to reduce motion, the feedback had been disappearing entirely. In that mode the shards now appear already scattered and fade in place: the motion is restrained, the response survives
- A full-screen button was added at the top right (desktop and Android)
1.1 — Event and bonus tuning
2026-09-22
- Orbs now appear every ten minutes instead of every one to two. Rarer, so each is worth about twice as much
- An orb stays on screen for fifteen seconds instead of thirteen, and drifts more slowly
- Rewarded-video hooks added, off by default. Four of them: time skip, extended resonance, summon an orb, extra cores
- Bonuses moved to a tab of their own, capped at ten a day, resetting when the date changes
- The problem-report form moved to this site; the game keeps a link and a "copy the details" button
1.0 — Released
2026-09-22
The game
- Seams extended from seven to twelve. The five past Prism open one at a time, by rebirthing at the deepest seam you have
- Bulk buying added (×1 / ×10 / ×MAX)
- Every ten copies doubles a building's output, which gives the middle of the game something to aim at
- An opening guide for first-time players, cut down to three lines
- The depth ceiling was removed. Past the deepest seam it grows 4,000 m for every tenfold increase in the total
Looks
- Crystal dust now drifts through the cave air, coloured by the current seam
- The corners of the frame darken slightly, drawing the eye to the crystal
- A line of reflected light was added to the rock the crystal sits on
Legibility
- Four text sizes, scaling every piece of text on the page
- Five colour schemes, two of them maximum-contrast
- All pale text colours lifted to at least 4.5:1 contrast
- Affordable buildings no longer marked by colour alone — a "▸" and the border say it too
- Every button raised to at least 46 pixels tall
- The instructions given headings and separated item by item
Languages
- Five languages: English, 日本語, 简体中文, 한국어, Español
- Building names, seam names, event names, the full instructions and the share text are all translated
- Number units recalculated per language (万・億 / K・M・B / 만・억)
- Switchable in place from the globe at the top right
Saving and sharing
- The save code shrank from 312 characters to 47, using base 36 and a checksum. Old codes still load
- Sharing to X, Bluesky and LINE
- Earning continues at half speed while away, up to eight hours
Fixed
- Numbers were displaying incorrectly. "300 billion" showed as "3 billion" and "12 million" as "1.2 million", because the routine that strips trailing zeros after a decimal point was stripping them from whole numbers too
- A popup's HTML was malformed. A missing closing character stopped the seam and rebirth announcements from running. The apparently separate bug where the loop counter did not advance had the same cause
- The tap target was too generous. Tapping well away from the crystal still mined; it is now limited to the crystal itself
- Depth had been stuck at 28,000 metres