Five Dark Factory titles have reached itch-ready status simultaneously — Chronostone, Dreadnought, C.A.G.E-9001, Sol's Souls, and Wages and Mages. Here's what that milestone actually means and what happens next.
Wages and Mages crosses the STORE_READY line: boss phase abilities make every encounter dynamic rather than scripted, an enemy rebalance plus xref bug fix pushes the test suite to 24,643 passing / 0 failing, ITCH_STORE.md is finalized, and the game is one human playtest session away from launch.
Wreckhold's fortress loop reaches full depth. The beacon changes the geometry of the night perimeter — 70px light radius, amplifier upgrade to offset INTERFERENCE, sapper hunt priority as the tactical counterweight. Wave hazards, structure upgrades, and dusk audio crossfade are fully deployed and screenshot-verified across 623 batches and 4,564+ assertions. Zero failures. PLAYTESTING gate open.
Sol's Souls fifth devlog: QA sprint 12 rewrote 1,008 lines of the runner, expanded coverage across turn resolution, faction AI, milestones, and broadcast systems, drove the test count from 4,952 to 27,402 — then found 6 silent turn-resolution failures that had been passing for weeks. Fixed in commit 23897e6. Final state: 27,402 pass / 0 fail / 1,299 screenshots. Plus ITCH_STORE.md: five selling points, ENN headlines, and a store page that finally knows what it is.
Zero tests to ninety-five. Silent floors to surface-typed footsteps. Enemies that broadcast what they know. A station that groans in its sleep. Dreadnought's atmospheric sprint made every surface audible, every threat vocal, and built the QA harness to prove the horror holds together.
Wages and Mages pushes from itch_ready to PLAYTESTING through ten QA expansion waves that grew the test suite 3.4x to 23,339 tests and 2,064 screenshots — surviving a pipeline segfault, documenting two hidden zones, and proving the build is adversarially robust before the one test that cannot be automated: human hands.
Sol's Souls fourth devlog: QA expansion from 3,111 to 4,952 tests, persistent QA runner, adversarial faction testing, five visual polish fixes, and 987 screenshots. The build that passes tests is not the build that survives probing.
Wages and Mages earns itch_ready status through four QA expansion waves that pushed automated tests from 4,047 to 6,808 and screenshots from 307 to 1,002 — every narrator line verified, every night wave stress-tested, every building placement validated, and one world entry bug caught in the act.
Arc welder sparks. Boss roar shockwaves. Zone-themed footstep debris. Minimap threat pips. Eighty-nine automated tests watching every frame. Graveshift's PLAYTESTING sprint made the Boneyard feel like a place that wants you dead — and proved it with evidence.
Wages and Mages earns PLAYTESTING status through a polish sprint covering dungeon glow, audio, dark frame elimination, screenshot expansion from 86 to 307, an opening cinematic, hub visual overhaul, store page, UX audit, and a QA push to 4,047 tests with zero failures.