JesseMarkowitzandClaude Opus 5
1d4ac0fdbd
Seventeen events across the mailroom: ordinary days, Marlene Hobb and Trevor Pike, a misrouted envelope that can be delivered or kept, and a hard-times branch that fires on negative money and always leaves an ungated way out. Writing real content turned up two things the engine could not express. Per-turn upkeep (`pack.upkeep`): the MVP spec wants recurring income and costs, but effects only run when a player chooses something, and baking wages into every option would be tedious and easy to get wrong. Upkeep entries carry their own conditions, which turned out to be enough for the loan service charge to be a three-step function that escalates with the size of the debt — no multiply operation, no engine change. Upkeep changes are recorded separately from choice changes so the UI can distinguish them. Per-character starting relationships: Trevor starts below the pack default on `likes_you` because he arrived two weeks earlier and has priced that in. Characterisation as data rather than as an opening cutscene. Nobody starts feared, either — `fears_you` defaults to 10, since a midpoint default would mean every new hire arrives already intimidating. The content suite plays 60 seeded runs and asserts every event fires and every option is taken at least once. That caught real dead content: Trevor's favour chain sat behind a gate no plausible player could reach, taking two events and a hard-times escape route with it, and debt could pass 5,500 while the service charge stayed flat, so the failure spiral flattened out instead of tightening. Both fixed in the data — the gate softened and given another route up, the loan capped and its charge tiered. The validator also gained a real fix: it counted an event with a cooldown as a stage's fallback, but a cooldown can exclude it, so a stage could still run dry. 86 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §11-13, including the seeding trap that makes a correlated chooser look exactly like a content bug. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
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.
corporateladder is the default pack; a Wild West or lemonade-stand pack would
be new data and no new code.
Status
Engine and the first content pack are built and tested. No UI yet — the game is currently playable only from a test harness.
| 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 — 17 events, 2 characters | done |
| UI | not started |
| Save to local storage, export/import | not started |
| Feedback widget and log export | not started |
| Retrospective screen | not started |
Running
npm test # engine test suite (node's built-in runner, no dependencies)
npm run serve # static server on :8080 for development
There are no runtime dependencies and no build step for development. Node is used only to run tests and, later, the single-file build.
Layout
src/engine/ the game engine — imports nothing from content/
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
content/ content packs (settings)
test/ engine tests, run against a fixture pack, never real content
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.
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.<id>.<stat>, 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.<eventId>,
lastSeen.<eventId>) 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 every turn, after the choice. Corporate Ladder uses it for
wages, living costs, and a loan service charge that steps up as the debt grows.
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.