Vacuum Lobby Guide

The Lobby is where you sign in, find or create games, choose seats, and enter as a player or watcher. This guide and the full Rules are available before login.

Accounts and recovery keys

Create Account asks for a username and password. A display name is optional; if omitted, your username is displayed. Vacuum then gives you a recovery key. Save it somewhere private: it is a credential, not a game invitation. If you forget the password, use the recovery option with that key. Creating a replacement recovery key invalidates the old one. Vacuum never prints a real recovery key in either guide.

A login session lasts 30 minutes without deliberate player activity. The yellow timer below the player name shows the remaining time and turns red below 30 seconds. Clicking it renews the session. Deliberate clicks or keyboard actions by signed-in players renew it too; passive polling, pointer movement, and watching do not. At zero, Vacuum logs the account out. While the Lobby tab is hidden or unfocused, its visual countdown and ordinary game-list polling pause; the real expiration time continues, and the Lobby refreshes immediately when you return.

Game list

Each row identifies the game, host, seating, state, current turn number, and the action available to you. The compact Turn: ### column lets you compare a listed game's progress without opening it. Your Turn opens a begun game when one of your colors is active. Not Your Turn is yellow. Waiting Room opens seating before play. The illustrated watch and game-over keycaps are still buttons even though they use pictures instead of ordinary captions.

The five Conditions—Watch Only, Free Seats, Hosted by Me, My Seat, and Begun—cycle through positive, negative, and --- (unused). All active conditions must match. Sorting and seat-count grouping change presentation only.

Use Join Game or Waiting Room for an open game. Use the illustrated Just Looking button to watch without taking a seat. A started game opens as a player when you own a seat and as a watcher otherwise.

Creating and seating a game

1. Create a game and choose two, three, or four players.
2. Seats are ordered Red, Green, Orange, Yellow. A two-player game therefore uses the diagonal Red and Green corners; a three-player game adds Orange.
3. In the Waiting Room, take or leave seats. Changes remain local until Apply.
4. When every required seat is filled and you control Red, Apply becomes the green Start Game button. One click applies any pending seat changes, starts the game, and opens the board. Filling the final seat as another color does not start the game; Red starts it.
5. Every successful Apply—including the Apply performed by Start Game—counts as meaningful activity, even if a later Apply restores an earlier arrangement.

Invite copies a direct link in both ordinary text and rich-button form where the browser permits. A signed-out invite recipient is returned to that Waiting Room after login or account creation.

Players, watchers, and abandoned games

Players with a seat may act only for colors they own. Watchers are read-only and cannot keep a game or login session alive merely by watching. Creating a game, committing gameplay, changing game metadata, or successfully applying seats resets the game’s 14-day inactivity clock. Opening, listing, spectating, and polling do not. After 14 full inactive days, the game is removed.

Loading and troubleshooting

The dark loading screen stays in place while the Lobby or game restores its state. A brief delay is normal. If a connection genuinely fails, use the displayed retry or return option instead of repeatedly opening new tabs. An ordinary refresh requests the authoritative saved board.

If a button appears stuck, wait for any loading message to finish, then try one normal reload. If a newly deployed picture remains old, close that tab and reopen the site; release-versioned picture addresses prevent an older cached keycap from surviving the next release.

Returning

The board's Lobby button returns to the game list. The Rules and this Guide open in a new tab; their Back button focuses the original Vacuum tab and closes the document tab when the browser permits. If the document was opened directly, Back uses browser history or returns to the Lobby.