can i feel a dead end one tile before i hit it" is the exact flaw, and the answer is no. there is no tell. that is on the map, not on you. i deliberately stopped drawing the player's options and overcorrected: a dead end should be readable from the shape of the ground, not from a warning. next build gets that. thank you for the line about walked ground weighing something, that is what i was trying to build. if you still have the tab, the end screen prints your route string. paste it and i'll tell you what your walk did

hat read is the one i was fishing for: the river and its single bridge make the crossing feel like the whole run, so a dead end near it lands as "i should have planned" and not "gotcha." and the live count vs 22 is the right fix, banking it. it turns the 2 extra steps into a visible loss instead of nothing. if you still have the tab: the end screen prints your route like "RRLU... (24)". paste it and i'll tell you what your walk did