What needs Tim — MAELSTROM landing page

This page ran the full 11-stage pipeline unattended on 2026-08-27 and passed every gate: test-reader gauntlet in 2 cycles + a targeted spot-check (page average 3.39 → 4.16, would-play 7/10 → 9/10, zero red-team criticals remaining, skimmer audit 7/7), voice metrics 14/14, quality composite 4.4. Every number and every all-caps line was verified against the shipped game's source (src/sim/tuning.ts, enemies.ts, mods.ts, rng.ts, combo.ts, game.ts), never the GDD (which describes an unshipped $7.99 Steam product: none of that is on the page). It is a preview: noindexed, throwaway subdomain, never linked from the portal. These are the calls only you can make.

Before publishing anywhere real

The permanent promises. The page says, in writing: no ads, no account, no purchases, nothing phoning home, free. Publishing binds MAELSTROM to stay that way. Sign off consciously. (The page itself ships zero trackers and zero third-party JS beyond Google Fonts, so its own network tab doesn't contradict the claim; if you'd rather self-host the two fonts, that's a 10-minute change.)
The hero footage is bot-play. The loop and stills are real frames of the real sim (deterministic probe harness, seed 11), but the player is the greedy test bot, and its HUD shows big numbers (×50 combo, six-figure score) a human's third dive won't match. Nothing is staged or composited; still, decide whether bot-play footage meets your bar for "real gameplay."
The Wordle name-drop. "If you play Wordle, you already know this shape" is nominative and fair, and it single-handedly rescued the novice persona. Remove it if you want zero third-party names on the page (it's one sentence; the section survives without it).
The portal jab. "Smaller than the thumbnail image of a game on most portals, never mind the ad networks they load before you're allowed to click anything." Unnamed, substantially true, and the been-burned persona loved it; it's still the spiciest line on the page.
"Maybe a third of the game" (touch). Editorial estimate, not a measurement. Touch handlers exist (tap = hook, two-finger = sling). If phone play is better than a third, soften it; if worse, it's fine.
The genre-fatigue open. "Somewhere along the way, these games stopped needing you" negs the Survivors-like genre without naming anyone. The comparison-shopper persona (400h of Vampire Survivors) rated it "70/30 finally-someone-said-it vs don't-tell-me-why-I-liked-it." Your name's on it.
Design lineage stays unnamed. The game's WC3-custom-map ancestry (Pudge hook, Warlock ring-outs, Battleships aiming) appears nowhere on the page, per the red team's recommendation. Keep it that way on anything public.
The em dash. Site rule is zero; the page carries exactly one, inside the game's own title-screen tagline quoted verbatim. Flagged because it's your rule.

Nice-to-haves the page is built to receive

Player quotes. "No reviews yet, so the game does its own talking" is the designed slot: when the portal's rate widget collects real comments, they drop into that quote strip with a cyan border instead of gold.
A share-score button in the game. The page's group-chat rivalry pitch is bring-your-own-screenshot. A "copy my score" affordance on the death screen would close the loop (game-side change; the skimmer persona's one unresolved ask).
A view-source invitation. The skeptic persona's last ask: one line linking the source (or just saying "view source; it's one file") would convert the final holdouts. Your code, your call.
Tested runner-up headline: "Nothing in this game has a health bar. Things die by falling off the island. So will you." One-line swap; everything else holds.

Known nuances (documented, deliberate)

Local-midnight seeds. The daily derives from the visitor's local calendar date, so cross-timezone group chats can briefly straddle two seeds. The page says "the daily resets every midnight" and never promises a global clock.
Runs branch after the start. The fairness copy claims identical starts and explicitly says runs (and mod offers) diverge with play; the expert persona verified this matches the single-RNG-stream engine exactly. Don't strengthen the claim: "everyone gets the same mod drafts all run" would be false.
"61 automated tests" is taken on faith and the page says so in its own voice. Counted from the seven vitest suites.

What this preview deliberately does not do

No custom domain, no DNS, no portal changes, no analytics, no indexing. The CTAs link to the real live game at playmoehrgames.com/play/maelstrom/, which already exists and is unchanged. Full pipeline artifacts (strategy, gauntlet cycles, red team, voice audit, scorecard) live in single-page-sales/pages/maelstrom/.

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