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GAMEPLAY.md

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Gameplay

How to play

Start a run

  1. Pick a preset (Junior Mid / Senior / Staff / Principal), then press Start.
  2. Place components, link dependencies, upgrade, and fix tickets to keep the app alive.

Scoring

  • You earn Score continuously while the run is alive.
  • Score rewards stability (low failure rate / ANR risk / jank / latency) and “realism” metrics (privacy, security, accessibility, regional compliance).
  • Architecture debt reduces scoring (because messy graphs are expensive in reality too).

Incidents, tickets, and postmortems

  • Incidents are appended to the Incidents log.
  • When a run ends, a Postmortem appears with a brief summary, key metrics, and a grade letter (S → D) that rolls up time-to-mitigate, root-cause alignment, and prevention signals from the run's event stream.
  • Use Copy run JSON to export a structured run report (seed, duration, score, end reason, etc.).

Tickets and the cross-check gate

  • Signal-driven tickets (crash spike, jank, heap, etc.) now run through a cross-check gate. A ticket fires when its primary signal is corroborated by an independent signal (coverage drift, OBS tier, region pressure, etc.) or when the primary signal has been sustained for a preset-specific debounce window (3 ticks on Junior/Mid, 2 on Senior/Staff, 1 on Principal).
  • Severity-3 signals (crash spike, ANR risk, security exposure) keep a direct escape hatch — they fire immediately on the primary signal.
  • OBS tier ≥ 2 lowers the corroboration bar by one signal, so observability investment keeps paying back into incident response.
  • Every gated ticket carries a human-readable reason string the UI can surface on hover.

Deterministic seeds (reproducible runs)

  • Set a Seed (number) and press Reset to start a deterministic run.
  • Press Daily to use a deterministic UTC date seed so multiple people can compare the same challenge.
  • The current seed is shown next to the controls.

Local scoreboard

  • The game stores top runs in your browser (localStorage) under asr:scoreboard:v1.
  • The Scoreboard (local) card shows your best runs (final score, preset, debt, rating, duration, seed).
  • Use Clear to wipe it.

Profile and achievements

  • Open Profile to view your achievement progress per preset.
  • Achievements can be visible or hidden (shown as “Hidden achievement” until unlocked).
  • Achievements use tiers: Bronze / Silver / Gold. Higher tiers require tighter constraints and cleaner stabilization.

Capacity and pacing

  • Capacity recovers faster mid-run to avoid “stagnation valley” after the first incident waves.
  • Under heavy backlog pressure, recovery improves slightly to prevent runaway death spirals while still punishing neglect.
  • Tactical purchases exist to recover from spikes, but they are designed as utility (bounded, non-stacking, scaling cost) rather than permanent compounding power.
  • Burnout: if capacity is crushed to zero three or more times within 90 seconds, a BURNOUT ticket spawns and saps regen until it is fixed. Treat it like any other ticket — fixing clears the penalty and grants a short adrenaline burst. This creates a real triage decision in incident-heavy runs.

Unlockable shop items (achievement-gated) Some shop items are unlocked via achievements and are tuned to avoid snowballing:

  • Energy drink: temporary regen boost, non-stacking, with increasing cost per use.
  • Incident shield: single charge max, expensive, mitigates the next incident spike rather than deleting risk entirely.

Scenarios (Release Trains)

  • Release Trains are scripted shifts that pin seed + preset + an incident timeline. Two players running the same scenario see the same incidents at the same ticks.
  • Three launch scenarios ship with v0.3.0 — see SCENARIOS.md.
  • Completed scenario runs earn a bonus multiplier (1.35×–1.45×) and are saved to localStorage under asr:scenarios:v1.

Challenges (daily and weekly)

  • Daily challenges rotate by UTC date. Each has a fixed seed, preset, and constraint (e.g. "no refills", "zero debt at end", "rating >= 4.5"). Completing the constraint earns a bonus multiplier (1.15x-1.30x).
  • Weekly challenges rotate on Mondays with harder constraints and higher bonuses (1.35x-1.40x).
  • Click "Start daily" or "Start weekly" in the Overview tab to begin. Results are persisted locally.

Combo multipliers

  • Fix 3 tickets within 60 seconds to trigger a combo.
  • While a combo is active (30 seconds), score per tick is boosted by +20%.
  • A "COMBO" indicator appears next to the score display.

Asymmetric scoring

  • Failure penalties: Budget depleted = 0.70x multiplier. Rating collapsed = 0.50x multiplier.
  • Preset-specific bonuses (shift complete only): Junior/Mid +15% for surviving, Senior +20% for zero refills, Staff +25% for zero debt, Principal +30% for flawless (zero incidents + rating >= 4.8).
  • Universal bonuses: Clean desk (zero tickets) +10%, High rating (>= 4.8) +10%.

Tamper protection

  • Scoreboard and achievement data are signed with HMAC-SHA-256. Editing localStorage entries directly will trigger a "Tampered" badge next to the scoreboard.
  • Modifying game state (budget, score, rating) via the console while paused is also detected.
  • Score sanity checks verify the final score does not exceed the theoretical maximum.

Architecture rules, debt, and refactors See ARCHITECTURE_RULES.md for the layer rules, architecture debt, refactor quests, and the refactor roadmap.