Ongoing · private
Founder Alpha builds
Each build is installed on Windows from its own installer and walked by a player in the installed application. What a walk finds becomes the next build’s repairs.
Public development record
A roadmap that changes when the work does.
The actual TREADBOUND product and this website are both under heavy development. Features, language, requirements, and campaign evidence will change frequently. Successes and failures are recorded as they surface, and corrections remain visible. Revisit this page for the current public account of the product.
Record reviewedCurrent snapshot
What is true today.
This is a status record, not a launch schedule. A date shown as “reviewed” says when the statement was checked; it is not a delivery promise.
Ongoing · player-run
Installed walks
A repair is claimed only after an installed walk shows it on screen. A passing test suite is never reported here as a gameplay pass.
Drafting
Kickstarter campaign contract
The pitch is being revised. The exact delivered artifact, eligible recipients, capabilities, documentation, timing, evidence, support, budget, rewards, fulfillment, and risks are not yet approved.
Not publicly available
Player release
There is no public download, purchase, or account creation path. No public release date is being stated on this roadmap yet.
Roadmap framework
Every milestone will need more than a hopeful date.
Each entry carries the same fields so progress can be judged from evidence. A failed check is a useful finding and stays in the record until a later result supersedes it.
- 01
Status
Proposed, in progress, blocked, ready for review, complete, changed, or retired.
- 02
Evidence
The observable result that will demonstrate the milestone rather than a percentage estimate.
- 03
Dependencies
The unresolved work or decision that can change timing or scope.
- 04
Review record
The date the entry was checked, with failures and corrections retained when its meaning changes.
Current register
Only confirmed status belongs here.
Passed, pending, repaired-but-unverified, open, blocked, corrected, and unscheduled work are stated separately. A green test cannot silently become a claim about what a player saw.
01
Passed · on screen and in the saved record
A road, a full exit, and a return
A new character shut one of their own things inside a cupboard in a tavern, travelled away, and the application was closed completely. After it was reopened, the character walked back, opened the cupboard, and found the thing where it was left, on screen and in the saved record.
- Evidence
- Walked on September 25, 2026 in Founder Alpha 0.5.101, where the return took one attempt, and again on September 26 in 0.5.102. The first walks with a road, on September 24 and 25, passed on screen but failed in the saved record twice; those failures stay in this record. The newest build refuses one way of setting out, naming the road itself, and the next build carries the repair.
- Timing
- Passed September 25 and 26, 2026.
02
Walked September 26 · in part
The opening puts you inside a situation
The first scene now opens inside something already happening, with people in it, something at stake, and a decision to make, instead of a quiet place to look around.
- Evidence
- Two new characters on September 26, 2026. Acting on the opening physically, by grabbing, shoving, or forcing a hatch open, did not work: the people and objects in the scene cannot yet be acted on. That is the next build’s repair, and this entry changes when a walk shows it.
- Timing
- Open; no completion date stated.
03
Open defects · narrowed and measured
The Tread Master’s words can still fall back to a written line
When the Tread Master’s own wording fails the check that keeps it faithful to the record, it is now told why and asked again, and a written line is shown only if that fails too. On the most recent walk this happened to one creation line in twenty-six, and to four turns in thirty-eight during play, all four on one road for one reason the next build repairs.
- Evidence
- Counted from the walk’s own journal on September 26, 2026. On September 17 creation fell back four times in twenty. Every fallback was a wording failure, not an invention and not a provider outage.
- Timing
- Open; no completion date stated.
04
Passed · bounded evidence
Founder Alpha 0.5.102 installation, startup, and play
The Windows package installed silently from its own installer, reported the expected product and engine version, opened from the desktop shortcut to the Main Menu with the existing player store intact, and was played the same day in two new Chronicles.
- Evidence
- Observed on September 26, 2026. What that play found is in the entries above. The screenshots on the home page were taken from this build.
- Timing
- Complete for this build; repeat after a future packaged build changes the path.
05
Passed · superseded, retained as history
Founder Alpha 0.5.86 installation and startup
The Windows package installed silently from its own installer and reported the expected product and engine version, with the existing player store unchanged by the install.
- Evidence
- Observed on September 18, 2026. Startable and playable are separate claims and only the install is credited here: the build had not yet been launched when this entry was written.
- Timing
- Superseded by the 0.5.102 entry above on September 26, 2026. The build was opened and played on September 19, 2026, the first build credited as both startable and playable.
06
Passed · superseded, retained as history
Founder Alpha 0.5.68 installation and startup
The Windows package installed, launched from the normal desktop path, reached the Main Menu, and found the existing player profile with three Chronicles.
- Evidence
- Observed in the installed application on September 6, 2026. Chronicle resume, repaired opening, new action resolution, and post-turn persistence were outside this check.
- Timing
- Superseded by the 0.5.86 entry above on September 18, 2026. Kept because a status record that erases what it used to say is not a record.
07
Walked September 17 · repairs walked September 19
The creation stage, read back as a transcript
A full walk was laid out as the player read it and reviewed end to end. Sixteen rulings came back and all sixteen were built: the list of every question now comes first, the seven peoples are named rather than described, and the closing read no longer repeats the player’s own paragraph back at them.
- Evidence
- The walk on September 17, 2026 and its transcripts. The build carrying the repairs was played on September 19, and creation has been walked in every build since. Code coverage is not presented as player-experience proof.
- Timing
- Complete; creation is walked again whenever it changes.
08
Ready to record · waiting on production
Recorded Founder Alpha slice
The engine condition for a recording has been met: a build ran continuously from player intent through AI narration, engine resolution and persistent consequence, and the result survived the next build being installed over it and, since September 25, a full application exit.
- Evidence
- Walked on September 16, 2026: nine turns, each one committed, with an object placed inside a container and still there after the next build was installed over it. The road, the full exit and the return followed on September 25 and 26. No reviewed, captioned recording exists yet; that is production work, not engine work.
- Timing
- No date stated. This entry previously read as blocked by gameplay evidence, which stopped being true on September 16, 2026.
09
In progress · not an offer
Kickstarter delivery specification
Founder Alpha is the private build that exists today. The Chronicle Engine Founder’s Prototype is the intended funded deliverable, but its campaign contract is still being completed.
- Evidence
- Approved artifact, recipient, capability, documentation, delivery, acceptance, support, budget, reward, fulfillment, and risk statements.
- Timing
- No campaign launch date stated.
10
In packaged builds and on this site
Eclipse Glass identity
The website wordmark, logo masters, desktop icon, title field, and title-menu colors have been rebuilt around the eclipse, pale T, violet moving-ground arc, and deep glass established by the favicon.
- Evidence
- The version 25 website carried the new wordmark first. The application identity entered packaged Founder Alpha builds on September 7, 2026, with the wordmark reset in Centaur. On September 12, 2026 the wordmark was redrawn in Cinzel Decorative, in the application and on this site, because Centaur is not free for commercial use.
- Timing
- Website: version 25; the wordmark in Cinzel Decorative since September 12, 2026. Application: packaged builds since September 7, 2026, in Cinzel Decorative since the builds of September 12.
11
Corrected · September 26, 2026
Status copy, the Library, and provenance
The home page now states the testing stage once, in plain words, with the detail here. The Library no longer prints the manuscript’s draft stamps, now publishes the Tread Master’s Guide introduction, and sets its warning marks as notes. The provenance page names the image tool and says how today’s build stores an API key, and the wordmark entry above is corrected.
- Evidence
- This dated entry, published with the change.
- Timing
- Published September 26, 2026.
12
Corrected · site version 25
Public product and provenance claims
The site now leads with the solo player experience and living Wanderer, names Gemini through Google AI Studio as the current Alpha requirement, completes the named development-tool disclosure, and separates observed evidence from intended behavior.
- Evidence
- Version 25 source and release checks, published with this dated entry. The earlier Claude runtime claim is retained here as a corrected public error.
- Timing
- Published September 6, 2026; revise whenever product evidence changes.
13
Not scheduled
Public release planning
A public sales or download date is not being promised before the product, campaign scope, support boundary, and release gates are ready to state.
- Evidence
- A dated release entry will appear here only when there is an approved plan that can be communicated honestly.
- Timing
- No public date stated.
Update policy
Changes should remain visible.
This roadmap should be reviewed whenever a playable build changes the product claim, a campaign proof item is accepted, a support requirement changes, or a public page becomes materially outdated.
Completed, failed, changed, corrected, and retired milestones will remain identifiable rather than being silently rewritten into a cleaner history. A later success can supersede a failure, but it will not erase that the failure happened.