ok so ive had this idea for a playdate game called gross rat cribbage club, and after watching ep 10 of death note (the tennis match) with my gf last night i really need to write some of this out.
so gross rat cribbage club is about being a rat in the sewers who who's part of a club of gross rats who play cribbage for teeth. outside of the club, having teeth (misc animal teeth that end up in the sewers) is a symbol of power. it implies that you've personally fought the things who's teeth you have. but this is a secret club, meant for rats to play cribbage against each other in order to win teeth for yourself.
mechanically this is a visual novel-esque game mixed with a card toss minigame. in the sewers, cribbage isn't played by playing cards, its played by throwing them and measuring how far they go (in rat steps). each rat has a regular hand of 4 cards like in cribbage, dealt to everyone at the beginning of the toss. the toss is executed by spinning the crank one full turn and pressing a button to release it. the speed curve over the swing is what determines the flight of the card, as well as how you move the crank afterwards. the card is tossed, the distance is measured, and the number of steps it flew is how many points you move on the cribbage board.
the main gimmick of this game is that all the rats (including yourself) and EXTREMELY superstitious. everyone acts mysterious and is playing mind games with each other, and everyone is reading way more into things than is reasonable. rumors spread, rats lie, and mythologies are created about cards and what they do/mean. of course, all the cards are literally just cards. but with everyone being in their head about them, suddenly a hand full of kings or aces will to fly smoother, or jacks are more likely to go either really well or really poorly. getting a run as your first hand signifies something about how the match will play out.
the underlying system here is one that over time, creates its own rules. every rule has a mechanic, has an origin (which rat spread the rumor that it was true), and every rat has a value of belief in that rule, which is determined by how often you witness that rule being followed. if you're told that 2s are known to fly distances that are divisible by 2, every time you see that happen, you believe in the rule more. every time you see it not happen, you don't believe in it more. the more you believe in a rule, the more the toss simulation will take it into account, and the more confident or nervous your rat feels, depending on what the rule.
by extension of this, there are mythos surrounding rats themselves that are either reinforced or subverted. if a rat tells you a rule, and you find that rule to never come true, it will directly influence how you much you believe in the mythos about that rat.
a rat's ability to toss is modeled with a structure of two parts: their body and mind. their body has parameters like strength, steadiness, and consistency. their mind has parameters for confidence (how confident they are in their ability to win against their opponents), desperation (how much they have at stake), superstition (how likely they are to believe things when they see them), all which affect a stress stat.
the confidence parameter is calculated by a base value, plus the difference between their capability stat and the average capability stat of their opponents, plus how well they are doing in the game they're playing. at the end of a game, their base confidence parameter is increased or decreased depending on how well they did in the game. the confidence parameter also affects how many teeth the rat is willing to bet at the beginning of the game.
desperation is determined by how many teeth they have and how poorly they're preforming in a game. desperation affects their superstition momentum. a desperate rat will have a hard time believing rules that work against them and their current hand, and an easier time believing rules that work in their favor. it also acts as a multiplier for how the confidence base parameter is modified at the end of a game. a desperate rat that loses by a lot will lose a lot of confidence, a desperate rat that wins by a lot will have their confidence boosted immensely.
superstition primarily serves to affect how easily they believe rules to be true. it's affected by how many times the rat sees a rule reinforced, or subverted. superstition acts as a sort of multiplier for how a rat feels about the card they are going to toss. a superstitious rat about to toss a card that's beneficial to them will significantly decrease their stress, and a superstitious rat about to toss a card that has a negative meaning to them to them will stress them out more.
ok so a bit about the throwing mechanic. the speed curve of how a crank is turned over time determines the card's general arc. assuming no superstitious rules are taken into account, here's how it works:
- start with the crank facing straight up, and turn it one full rotation
- a graph is drawn with the speed over time
- the tail end of the graph determines the angle it was thrown. a trend upwards will have it thrown upwards, a trail downwards will have it thrown downwards, and a flat trend will have it thrown straight forwards
- the first half relative to the second half determines the arc of the throw: upwards trend makes the card arc up, downwards trend makes it arc down, and flat trend makes it keep it's initial angle
- the overall speed determines how fast it's thrown, which compounds the effect the card's arc, thereby affecting how far the card goes
so a rat's body parameters affect how this graph is drawn, and how it's interpreted.
- steadiness adds random variation noise to the speed results, which disincentivizes fast throws for low steadiness
- strength is a flat bonus to throw speed
- consistency determines how much the steadiness and strength will vary for the throw something im not 100% on yet is where the rat's mental stress value will be factored in. it will either decrease steadiness, or decrease consistency, or maybe both.
this is the basic way a card's flight path will be calculated m, and it'll be calculated the moment the card is tossed. the second step of this is to factor in the superstitions, based on how much belief the rat has in each superstitious rule that applies at the given toss. all rules known to the rat will be checked for whether or not they're applicable, and then they will be factored into the toss simulation, either before or after the arc is calculated. the degree to which they're factored in depends on how much the rat believes in them. this could look either like a binary "there is a random chance proportional to the rule's belief that it will happen" or a gradient "this will happen to the degree that the rule is believed in by the tossing rat"
anyways this has been a whole lot and i need to make myself breakfast so i'm gonna leave it here for now. most of this i was just coming up with as i wrote it, so it's not like super tested or anything. when i was a kid playing tennis in tournaments, i used to get really in my head and superstitious about the smallest things, which would affect my composure and stress in a lot of the same ways as these mechanics do, so i really want to make this game a thing
