# The Ladder A turn-based career simulation game that runs entirely in the browser. You start at the bottom of an organisation and play turns — a day at a time — making choices that move your money, your skills and your standing with the people around you. There is no win state and no game over: a bad run means worse options, not an ending, and you can stop whenever you like and read the retrospective. The engine knows nothing about offices, mailrooms or bosses. A **setting is a content pack** — characters, events, choices, stat names and tuning, all data. Two ship: **Corporate Ladder**, a modern office and a mailroom, and **The Frontier**, a freight yard at the end of a stage line. They share every line of engine code and no content at all. ## Status Engine, interface and two content packs, all built and tested, and played in a real browser. | Piece | State | | --- | --- | | Path-addressed state, conditions, effects | done | | Seeded RNG, save/resume | done | | Event selection, option gating | done | | Turn loop, per-turn upkeep | done | | Content validator + reachability tests | done | | Corporate Ladder pack — 31 events, two tiers | done | | Turn screen, retrospective, feedback widget | done | | Local-storage save, file export/import | done | | Single-file build | done | | Calendar, scheduled wages and rent | done | | Promotion from the mailroom to Dispatch | done | | Repetition analytics (`npm run analyze`) | done | | Version and build shown on screen | done | | Keyboard play (Enter / Tab) | done | | Second content pack — The Frontier, 29 events, two tiers | done | | Setting picker, one save slot per pack | done | | Pack conformance suite (every pack, every check) | done | | Played in a real browser | Corporate Ladder yes, first playtest 2026-09-09; **The Frontier not yet** | The first playtest confirmed the interface, saves and the exported log all work in a real browser. Its findings — an unexplained daily drain, no sense of the week, and an economy nobody could get ahead in — are what the calendar and the retuned economy are for. Note that the development machine has no browser that can render a page, so the UI tests drive the real modules against a minimal fake DOM. That covers wiring, not layout: **styling and dark mode are only ever verified by a human opening it.** ## Playing it ```sh npm run serve # then open http://localhost:8080 ``` The game plays from the keyboard: Enter takes the focused option, Enter again moves to the next day, and Tab / Shift+Tab pick a different option. The top of every screen names the game, the pack, your current title, and the build — `0.3.0 · dev` when running from source, and the commit it came from when built. A server is needed during development because browsers refuse ES module imports over `file://`. If port 8080 is taken, run `python3 -m http.server ` instead. To hand the game to someone else: ```sh npm run build # writes dist/theladder.html ``` That is one self-contained file with the stylesheet and every module inlined. It plays by double-clicking it — no server, no network, nothing installed. ```sh npm test # 149 tests: engine, both packs, UI wiring, and the build ``` Tests are in three layers. `test/conformance.test.js` runs over **every pack in the registry** and asserts only what is true of a pack because it is a pack — validity, no dead content, the declared economic baseline, variety, replay from seed, a way out of every event. `test/content.test.js` and `test/frontier.test.js` hold each pack to its own tuning. The engine suite runs against a fixture pack, so tuning a setting can never break it. To see what a playtest actually did — turns against distinct situations, how often each recurred, which locked gates players kept meeting, and anything they typed into the feedback box: ```sh npm run analyze # the newest export in logs/ npm run analyze -- # a specific one ``` Drop exports into `logs/`. They are gitignored — a log is a record of what a real person did, including anything they typed into the feedback box. There are no runtime dependencies and no build step for development. Node is used only to run the tests, the single-file build, and the log analyser. ## Where things stand The MVP is complete and has survived three playtests, and a second setting now exists to prove the engine/content split holds. Adding it required **no engine change** — and three interface changes, two of which were latent defects a second pack made visible (a single global save slot, and the one place the UI still named a setting). See DECISIONS.md #34. Open questions, in the order they are likely to matter: - **The Frontier has never been played by a human.** Its economy is asserted by the conformance suite and exercised by six archetypes, and that is exactly the evidence that was not enough the last two times. It needs a session before its numbers are believed. - **Standing costs money to keep, and the Frontier's version is unplayed.** Each setting has a `lifestyle` tier bought on the second rung and charged for every cycle after, a standing penalty for lagging behind what the job expects, and a charge levied by standing itself that no purchase ever ends. Corporate Ladder's has had one 96-turn session: both purchases were found and taken, and the standing pressure worked, but the run arrived at the top with nothing left to spend on — which is where the never-stopping charge came from. The Frontier carries the same system at its own scale and has never been in front of anyone. See DECISIONS #36. - **Dispatch is eleven events against the mailroom's nineteen.** It passes the variety guard, but it has had far less play than the mailroom. Waits on more playtesting. - **A third tier in either pack.** Two rungs is what both settings have. The split is now proven across settings; it is not proven across a long ladder. Waits until the Frontier has been played. Settled, and not open: Corporate Ladder's negotiation gate stays as it is, and the feedback widget stays as it is (DECISIONS #35). Money mattering late is built rather than open (DECISIONS #36). ## Layout ``` src/engine/ the game engine — imports nothing from content/, or from src/ui/ paths.js dotted-path get/set over state conditions.js generic predicates: { path, op, value }, all/any/not effects.js generic mutations: add/set/push/remove, with clamping state.js pack -> schema and initial state select.js which event fires this turn, which options are available game.js the turn loop rng.js seeded, serializable RNG validate.js load-time content checking src/ui/ screens, formatting and the app controller app.js the only module that knows there is more than one pack screens/ the turn screen, the retrospective, the setting picker format.js state paths and conditions rendered as English src/io/ local-storage save (one slot per pack), export/import, feedback log content/ index.js the pack registry — the only list of settings corporateladder/ a modern office and a mailroom frontier/ a freight yard at the end of a stage line tools/build.js flattens everything into one self-contained HTML file test/ engine tests against a fixture pack; conformance, per-pack, UI docs/ DECISIONS.md — why things are the way they are Planning/ the original design documents ``` **The rule that keeps this honest: nothing in `src/engine/` may import from `content/`.** The engine names no stat, no character and no setting of its own. ## How content works A pack declares what state exists and what it starts at, the relationship stats every character carries, the characters, and the events. Everything else falls out of that. ```js export default { id: 'corporateladder', startingStage: 'mailroom', state: { 'money': { initial: 1200, min: -5000, max: 1000000 }, 'skills.negotiation': { initial: 1, min: 0, max: 100 }, 'flags.took_loan': { initial: false }, }, // Expanded per character into relationships.., so adding a // character adds its relationship state automatically. relationshipStats: { likes_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 }, fears_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 }, wants_to_help_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 }, }, characters: [ { id: 'boss', name: '...', role_type: 'boss', description: '...' }, ], events: [ { id: 'mail_run', stage: 'mailroom', weight: 100, // relative likelihood among eligible events description: 'A cart of mail and two hours to move it.', options: [ { id: 'hustle', label: 'Get it done fast.', requires: [{ path: 'skills.negotiation', op: '>=', value: 3 }], effects: [ { path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 40 }, { path: 'relationships.boss.likes_you', op: 'add', value: 3 }, ], }, ], }, ], }; ``` An event may also carry `once: true`, a `cooldown` in turns, and `requires` conditions of its own. There is no separate notion of a random event: every turn draws from the whole eligible pool by weight. Conditions may read engine bookkeeping (`turn`, `stage`, `seen.`, `lastSeen.`) as well as pack state. Effects may not write it. A pack also declares `upkeep` — a list of `{ label, requires?, effects }` applied at the end of a turn, after the choice. Adding `every` and `offset` makes an entry periodic rather than daily: Corporate Ladder pays wages on alternate Fridays (`{ every: 14, offset: 4 }`), charges rent every Monday, and adds a loan service charge that steps up as the debt grows. A pack may also declare a `calendar`: ```js calendar: { cycleLength: 7, cycleName: 'Week', unitNames: ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday'], }, ``` The engine derives `calendar.index`, `calendar.cycle` and `calendar.name` from the turn number before each event is drawn, so content can require a Friday and the interface can title the turn. Declare no calendar and there is no week. Run `validatePack(pack)` when loading in development — it catches undeclared paths, unknown characters, unusable ids, unreachable events and stages with no fallback event, all of which otherwise fail silently mid-playthrough.