Let me tell you what I hate about leaderboards: they're spreadsheets.
Rows, columns, numbers. Accountant stuff. And if you're not in the top ten, a leaderboard has exactly one message for you: you are row 4,072, please scroll. No six-year-old ever dreamed of being row 4,072.
But my kid loves fireflies. So I threw out the spreadsheet and painted the whole flock as a night sky instead. It's called the Jungle, and every single pilot in Sky Peck is a light in it.
Here's how the sky is organized. Every thousand pilots make a tree — your tree is your neighborhood, the block of fliers scoring around your level. Zoom in and you find your branch: the five birds just above you and the five just below. Those are your real rivals. Not the world champion — the kid two perches up. And way at the top, ten lights burn brighter than everything else: the kings of the jungle.
One honest detail I love: a "pilot" isn't an account, it's a nickname. One family license can field several kids, and each of them gets their own firefly. Dad, big sister, and the six-year-old all glow separately — which matters, because beating dad is the whole point.
And yes, I'll be honest about the other thing too: right now the sky is cozy. The first flock is invite-only, so we're a constellation, not yet a galaxy. But everything underneath is built for millions of lights — when the sky gets crowded, it samples down to a few thousand fireflies and keeps the shape honest. I'd love nothing more than for you to make that necessary.
One more confession while I'm at it: I'm 100% sure I did some of this wrong. Trees of exactly a thousand? Five neighbours, not seven? Guesses, all of it. We'll have to look at it as it flies — so tell me what feels off, and let's change it and grow it with the flock.
As for the old leaderboard — the spreadsheet's days are numbered. We're ditching it shortly. The accountants had a good run.
But at night, after the last playtest, I open the Jungle and just look at it.
Go find your firefly. And if you don't have one yet — the sky has room.