Some nice ideas there Herby, thanks for sharing these
To begin with, I suggest that perhaps we start by finding a way to visually represent the "chink" sound for Builders et al, and also look at how we might be able to show off-screen deaths visually.
At this point, Herby's idea of using symbols such exclamation marks, dots and clocks rather than words seems like a better idea than using the WinLemm text graphics (which are a bit clunky-looking IMHO). I also still think the idea of a simple 3 lines for Builder bricks works nicely, and this could potentially be added to the existing Builder animation sprite rather than displayed as a separately-rendered graphic:
These lines could then be displayed at the side of the screen, maybe slightly larger for increased visibility, when the Builder is off-screen. And similarly, maybe we can use Herby's exclamation mark idea for off-screen deaths:
If I can figure out a way for the game to know whether or not the action is happening outside of the currently-visible screen area (by no means trivial, if even possible), then all that's needed is to display the relevant graphic at the side of the screen (also not trivial, but definitely possible) - this would then sufficiently alert players that something is happening that needs attention, and whereabouts it's happening.
Technical concerns aside, this feature definitely seems worthwhile and clearly has a decent amount of support. The topic will remain open and I'm more than happy to continue discussing ideas, but it might be a while before we see it. It feels important to get this one right.