Rules

The loop

The same six steps at every scale, from one oil lamp to a picture palace.

gather at a node  ->  carry the stack  ->  drop at a station
      ^                                            |
      |                                            v
 spend on the next tile  <-  sell or stage a show  <-  collect the output

• Gathering. Standing beside a node harvests it, one item per tick. Nodes deplete and regrow.
• Carrying. The stack is visible on her back up to the carry limit. Different items share a stack.
• Stations. An input pad and an output pad. Walk onto the input to unload; output piles up until collected.
• Build tiles. An unbuilt station is a floor outline with a price. Standing on it drains coins into it.
• Shows. A venue has a performer spot and seats. Standing on the spot runs the show; the audience pays when it ends.
• The arrow. One arrow always points at the next target. The player is never lost and never reads a map.

What a show is

The single most important structure in the game. Design it once and all five eras are one game; get it wrong and they are five.

Show  = { instrument, frames: Frame[], light, venue, audience }
Frame = { image, beat, spot?, facing?, cast?, seconds? }

How authoring grows

One show per era

The same record five times, so the structure above is arguable rather than abstract.

Era 3's motions

What the drawing desk draws, a cel a position. Twelve in order close the loop; the twelfth leads back into the first.

A strip of one cycle's twelve positions in order runs smooth and pays ×1. A frame out of place, a missing twelfth or another cycle's cel makes it stutter, and it pays ×0.5: at the toy seller's and in the praxinoscope theatre. A disc of the rig's photographs is judged the same way, and each frame's sharpness counts too, averaged over the disc: sharp ×1, soft ×0.75, grey ×0.25. A grey frame also stutters.

After its first loop the guild commissions a motion, one at a time: a smooth strip of it looped in the theatre pays once, on top of the show, and the next opens.a horse: 60 coins, 20 wonder · a wheel: 80 coins, 25 wonder · a bird: 100 coins, 30 wonder.

What a show pays

coins  = base(instrument) * match(audience, show)
wonder = base(instrument) * match(audience, show) * novelty(showType) * dye(frames)

Novelty starts at 1.00, steps down 0.08 each performance and floors at 0.20. It resets on any change to the frame list. Each frame is a third of the wonder, and a dyed frame's third is ×1.65; dyeing a puppet in a show changes its frame list. Coins do not decay, so an old show at its floor is still a living — the newest show carries progress, the old ones pay the rent.

Match

Subjects: animals, work, disaster, the sacred, the comic, far places, the dead, the news. Moods: wonder, fright, laughter, reverence, instruction. The same show plays differently to a fairground and to a lecture hall, which is what keeps a small film worth making.

Audiences

Currencies

Three, and only wonder opens a district.

Controls

What the slice puts on the glass

The parts era 1's first slice draws over the world, as the game reads them.

When each part first appears, and what the player has done to earn it, is on theopening page.

Automation

Replaces the player one route at a time. She is always doing the newest job by hand while everything older runs itself.

The helpers era 1 hires, each on the hiring pad beside the jetty's. A helper walks its pads in order and round again; its round is drawn on the map.

The rule of three minutes. A new station is hand-fed for2 to 3 minutes before its helper becomes affordable. Shorter feels unearned; longer is a chore. Offline, belts and helpers keep working for up to 2 hours; shows do not run, so wonder always needs her.

Upgrades

Deliberately few, all bought by standing at a post in the world.

Pacing

Roughly 8 to 10 hours of active play. Targets to test against, not measurements.