Private beta

Jev, the gnome that thinks

Jev is TypeSafe's decision model, running through OpenRouter. It is a classifier, not a chatbot: we show it everything a gnome could say next, the last few lines of chat and what just happened, and it picks. It answers in about a quarter of a second, which is fast enough to sit inside the chat loop and inside a fight.

Checking Jev…

Jev Duel

A one-on-one against a gnome called Jev. Twice a second, and again on every kill, death and heavy hit, the server hands Jev a snapshot of the fight: every opponent's distance and whether they are closing, health, weapon, whether they are in Jev's sight, facing it or reloading, Jev's own ammo, what its last tactics did, who killed it last, and the score. Jev then decides everything: who to fight, the tactic (rush, flank, hold, retreat, hunt, heal, ambush or reposition), its stance (crouch, stand or mobile), which weapon is in hand (primary, pistol or dagger), what to respawn with, and whether to talk or flip the bird. Its aim and movement are the arena's top bot setting, the same limits every bot has; nothing about its damage, speed or health is special. It only decides better, and more often. First to ten. Add more bots and Jev fights them all.

Nathan Quals

You are Nathan. It is you against four boss gnomes in three stages: La-row and Chris&HerSon together, then Doober, then Tan-yeah. Each stage opens with an entrance that gets bigger every time: the view swings to the sun, the bosses rise out of the earth in front of it and leap into the garden; the bosses leap up from behind the far wall into the middle of the sun, hang there, then come the long way down into the garden, growing the whole way; the sky gets darker with every stage while the sun keeps shining, the ground shakes harder, and the final ends with a shockwave. No boss bullet or shell takes more than 35 health and each boss's gunfire is budgeted per second (harder every stage), so the guns are pressure and the moves are the danger (a move tops out at 90); move cooldowns tighten with each stage; you recover about 3 health a second after five seconds unhurt. The bosses are tougher and faster than before, they never hide or heal, and they walk straight over blocks instead of pathing around them. Clear all three and your gnome earns the golden cape, a permanent cape with the face in gold that stays on your character in every garden and cannot be removed. Each is bigger, faster and tougher than the last, and every one of them is driven by Jev. Your guns are gone; you carry four lab weapons: the 6-channel and 1-channel pipettes, the centrifuge (a rotor of Eppendorf tubes that screams up to speed and flings the lot: the most damage of anything, the longest reload) and the pipette gun (an electric pipette controller with a huge serological pipette on the nose: one enormous shot at a time), plus a dagger. Only Nathan loot spawns on the ground: LB heals, Kan and Chlor are thrown flasks, and the rare Speaker Notes (a golden page) is the golden apple turned up: full health, then 25 seconds of harder hits from every weapon, faster firing and reloading, faster movement and iron skin. Supply crates lean toward Speaker Notes, Kan, Chlor and LB. Kan and Chlor carry a hazard label: throw them. Hold Shift (or press it twice to keep them up; on a phone, tap SLIDES) to hide behind the Slides, which have a see-through visor so you can still see the garden: a huge PowerPoint deck that soaks up 90% of gunfire from the front or sides (half of a stomp, slam or tile: those you dodge) while your weapons keep working around it; 600 points of deck, it shreds when worn down and is repaired to full after a ten-second count; a worn deck comes back a page at a time while it is down. Scope works the same way everywhere now: hold, or press twice to latch. Every boss move is readable and dodgeable: a wind-up paints its reach on the ground, a stomp or slam sends a visible ripple along the ground (even if the boss was mid-air) and you take nothing from it if you are in the air when it passes you (jump it; there is a little grace for latency), Doober's triangles mark the spot they are aimed at while they fly, and the sun beam snaps if you hit her hard enough. The bosses have moves of their own: Doober's tile is a cutscene: the camera goes to the sky, one of its faces comes loose and down to him and folds into two triangles, then you get two seconds to move before they fly at where you stand (his hat lifts off and spins the whole time, and nothing can hurt you during the cutscene); Tan-yeah's eyes glow red and the sun sends down a beam that heals her a little at a time every so often (hit her hard while it is on and the beam snaps); a stomp that leaps and crashes down on everything around them, a fist slam that hammers the floor in front of them, and a trample if they run you over. Every move shakes your screen, and Jev knows where you are, what you hold, what you are drinking, what loot you are running for and when each move is ready. Supply drops are constant and this mode has its own loot: the Bazooka, the Spear, and two flasks that hurt, Kan and Chlor. Boss health bars sit at the top of the screen. Kill Tan-yeah before the clock runs out.