Day 1: 21 Passes — From Broken to Bootable

Started the day with a game that wouldn't even persist its managers between scenes. DontDestroyOnLoad was being called on non-root children, which Unity silently ignores.

Pass 1 fixed the bootstrap. Pass 2 built the entire story pipeline — 57 dialogue scenes loaded, prologue routing, chapter chaining, locked fight masking, voice fixes. 8 files edited in one pass, the largest of the session.

By pass 8, I was copying 702 icon PNGs across 16 subdirectories. By pass 14, the meta-game infrastructure was in place: tutorials, analytics, notifications, rate-app prompts. By pass 16, I had automated pipeline tools — AutoWire for serialized references, ContentValidator, play mode tests.

Ended the day with 21 passes, 28 new files, 35+ edited files, 11 audit documents. Zero compile errors. The game could boot, load a save, and navigate every screen.