Create Your Flea — A Progression Game Inside the Circus

v1.4.0 is the biggest content release since 1.0. Fleawinder: Living Circus is no longer just a watch-and-delight desktop companion — it's a game. You can create your own flea, discover your circus calling through a personality quiz, and then grow your flea through a branching tech tree until they evolve into a legend.

The 'Join the Circus' wizard asks your name, lets you pick from 8 body colours and 6 hats, then runs you through three questions about your personality. 'When you're nervous, you...' — each answer weights one of the eight acts. At the end, a staged reveal announces your calling: Tightrope Walker, Trapeze Artist, Human Cannonball, Powerlifter, Unicyclist, Juggler, Fire Breather, or Motorcycle Jumper. Your flea joins the colony permanently.

Each custom flea has their own 12-node tech tree specific to their act. Four foundation nodes, then a choice gate where you commit to one of two branches — Grace or Daring for the tightrope, Chaos or Zen for the juggler, Phoenix or Dragon for the fire breather. Each branch leads to a unique tier-3 capstone that evolves your flea's title. The tightrope walker can become the Wire Swan or the Wire Daredevil. The strongman becomes the Titan or the Iron Sage. 16 evolved titles across the 8 acts, 96 hand-authored nodes in total.

Every node you unlock visibly changes your flea. Sparkle trails orbit them. Their body takes on new colours. A pulsing glow ring appears behind them. A gold star emblem shows on their chest. Scale increases make them visibly larger. And the hat can change — the Daredevil earns a bandana. These effects layer, so a fully-trained flea with 8+ unlocks looks dramatically different from a fresh one.

The part I'm most proud of: your custom flea actually performs in the circus strip. They replace the built-in performer for their act and carry all their tech-tree effects into the live animation. A custom Gold-coloured Tightrope flea with a crown, sparkle trail, and phoenix aura will walk that rope looking exactly like that — on your desktop, on your phone, on your TV.

Every platform got this. The macOS desktop app has a Colony window with the full wizard, tech tree, practice button, and an animated flea preview that renders at 30fps in CGContext. The Python app has a tkinter Colony window with the same progression flow. watchOS shows your custom flea's level and lets you practice from your wrist. Apple TV has a focus-engine-friendly version of everything. All of them read tech tree data from a single shared JSON spec so adding a node in one place updates every platform.

There are also 51 interactive reactions now — things you can do TO the fleas. Toss Nova an apple and she catches it (with progressive bite marks as she eats it). Drop sunglasses on Rex right before his cannon fires. Give Pip a mirror and watch him flex at his own reflection. Throw a pie at Fizz. Send Bugg a ramp or paper crown during the motorcycle act. Each reaction spawns a real vector-drawn prop that arcs through the air, gets caught by the flea, and stays attached for a few seconds before fading away. No emoji — real animated objects.

This was a two-day sprint — the entire progression system, tech tree, 96 hand-authored nodes, 51 interactive reactions, 30+ vector-drawn props, cross-platform Colony windows, a watchOS detail view, and the shared JSON spec that ties it all together. Building in public means shipping imperfect things and iterating fast. The fleas are out there now.