Annealight is a 2.5D thermal-routing puzzle designed for portrait mobile play. In a mountain glasshouse, players take restoration orders and move a brass-handled glass rack through three readable kiln zones: a flame-pattern hot zone, an amber soak zone, and a blue cooling zone. Before committing a Cycle, the game previews the result of the proposed move. Edge and core temperatures, direction arrows, polarized strain bands, cracks, and joined seams are driven by the same deterministic puzzle state. They explain why a move is safe or dangerous; they are not a claim of real materials-engineering simulation.
The first release contains exactly eight handcrafted orders: Clear Tile, Twin Lanterns, Thick Center, Curved Canopy, Joined Colors, Upper Draft, Mended Rose, and Dawn Window. The campaign begins with one direct adjacent-zone route. It then introduces alternating racks, a thick core that needs repeated soaking, curved glass that must be formed and locked, joined colors with different expansion behavior, a vertical kiln gradient, an old-and-new repair seam, and a final twelve-pane window scheduled in three batches. Difficulty rises through new goals, layouts, methods, hazards, and constraints rather than simple color swaps, arbitrary pane counts, longer timers, or random schedules.
The first order teaches through two real actions: drag the rack toward the highlighted adjacent zone, then press Cycle to hold the proposed temperature. A legal preview shows the expected strain change before commitment. Cooling an edge too quickly, softening a pane, stressing a seam, or using the wrong rack position leaves visible evidence and a specific next action. Stable stages produce immediate animation and sound. Completing a whole window earns Glass Seals and an Anneal Mark. Clear Temper is a fixed mastery result derived from actual cycle count, cracks, and residual strain, not from a random reward.
The Kiln Kit contains twelve tools with explicit benefits, costs, and drawbacks. Thirty-two Craft Cards preserve techniques tied to the eight authored orders. The Window Gallery is connected to the completed game state: it keeps each window's real authored shape and palette together with the player's best cycles, residual strain, peak temperature gap, cracks, tools used, and unlocked cards. Results persist between sessions. Polarized View reveals the saved strain pattern again, while Reduce Motion preserves the same information with a calm static result.
Optional rewarded advertising is limited to support choices such as restoring a Practice Pane or doubling the base Glass Seals reward. A cooled-down interstitial may be attempted when leaving selected record screens. Advertising cannot schedule a route, advance a Cycle, award an Anneal Mark, change Clear Temper, install a window, or rewrite a best result. Annealight does not include free furnace-temperature control, unlimited procedural levels, online collaboration, automatic annealing, offline high-end rendering, or real glassmaking, engineering, and safety promises.