---
number: 25
title: Golem Hollow — the first mini-game
date: 2026-09-09
summary: West of the Village, a place with rules and an end — stone golems marching on the Grove Tree, the first spell (the Lightning Tower) found as a scroll on the ground and cast from what you have gathered, a volcano that throws fire crystals, an ice patch that grows ice, health on every creature, and a Life Seed for whoever stops thirty golems.
epic: mini-games
status: delivered
artifacts: ["docs/handoff/mini-games.md","workshop/epics/mini-games/overview.md","game/content/areas/golem-hollow.placed.json"]
cta: [object Object]
---

One long voice prompt on 2026-09-08 asked for the first **mini-game** — Kris's word for an
area with its own rules, a start and an end — and by the following evening, after four rounds
of him playing it on the phone and typing what was wrong, Golem Hollow was live. Signed off as
its own version: APK v29.

## What a player finds

Walk west out of the Village and you are in the hollow. A spawn point lets out stone golems,
one every few seconds, and they walk to the **Grove Tree** at the far end and hit it. On the
ground lies a scroll; walk onto it and you own the **Lightning Tower** spell — the first spell
in the game: one ice crystal, three stone, one fire crystal, in that order. The hollow gives
you the ingredients if you look: a volcano that erupts every minute or two and throws Fire
Crystals around itself, an ice patch that grows Ice Crystals, and the golems themselves, which
drop Stone when they fall. Cast the tower on a cell beside you and it zaps the nearest golem.

Every creature has health now, players included. Bodies block each other; a golem whose road
is blocked attacks whatever is blocking it — a tower, or you; a player standing beside a golem
swings at it. Get knocked down and you are back on your feet at full health where you came in.
If the golems fell the tree, the hollow says so and resets. Stop thirty of them and the round
is won: the golems standing crumble, and the tree drops the **Life Seed** — hexagram 27,
Mountain over Thunder, the element the very first design doc plants to grow a tree. Whoever
picks it up is told the hollow is safe, and a new round begins.

## What it is made of

Almost all of it is data. Elements, spells and the **kinds** of complex item — golem, tower,
tree, spawn point, with their stats — are three authored tables, and the things standing in
the hollow are **placed things**: a file beside the area's ground file, put there with a new
mode of the area editor, loaded exactly like the ground. A new kind of creature is a table
entry and a scene. The one-tap cast, the "You got …" reveal the first time you find a new
element or spell, a pickup toast for the rest, and the ingredient cards with the spell's slots
came out of the rounds of play.

## Also from those days

The realm now tells you when it is updating. When the server restarts for a deploy, every
player sees "The realm is updating — you'll be back in a moment" and the game rejoins by
itself, instead of the connection simply dying.