ZINGERS. Essence & the "One Soul, Native Bodies" principle

In short: Zingers is one game with one soul, but that soul is meant to be played on very different hardware. This doc names how we hold both truths at once: the soul is identical everywhere; the body it wears is designed for the room it's played in. It defines the invariant "soul atom" of each thing you do, and the rule every future feature is measured against.

Version 1.0. July 2026

Direction note (July 2026, Flight-First): This doc discovered the principle through the Circuit ("the flappy bird was hiding inside the codebase", §3). design-vision.md v3.0 and two-doors.md v2.0 then promoted that finding to the top of the product: the Climb/Ascent is now the spine and face of the game, not one verb among five. Nothing in this doc's principle or atoms changes. It was already right, and it already lists Climb first. Read the Climb rows below as the keystone verb the others hang off, and see flyover.md for how the flight previews every other verb.

Companion to design-vision.md (the north star) and game-spec.md (the mechanics). Where those say what Zingers is, this says how the same Zingers survives crossing from a phone to a desktop. The concrete, buildable application of this principle to the phone. The mobile core loop, information architecture, and a native body per verb. Lives in mobile.md.

1. The principle

One soul, native bodies. The atom is invariant on every device; the body it wears is designed. Not down-ported, not up-scaled. For the hardware in the player's hands.

This is the disciplined form of "one base, many games." It rejects two failure modes we've seen kill cross-platform games:

• Down-port. "mobile is desktop minus stuff." The phone gets a crippled, apologetic version. (Restriction.)
• Up-flex. "desktop is mobile plus shine." The rich device gets a thin mobile game wearing better lighting. (Waste.)

Instead: each device gets a first-class experience that is complete on its own, and every one of them shares the same soul in the chest. So a player who plays on their phone and their laptop feels they are living in one game, told at the complexity the room can carry.

The difference between devices is not primarily the GPU. It is the degrees of freedom of the input. A phone offers one trustworthy precise input (a thumb: tap / hold); a desktop offers six (move, look, jump, thrust, and the nuance between them). "Native body" means: design for the input the device actually has, then make it beautiful there.

2. The soul atom (what may never differ)

For "one soul" to be real and not a slogan, each core verb has an atom. The handful of truths that must hold identically on every device. Everything not in the atom (camera, degrees of freedom, art density, duration, control scheme) is body, and bodies are free. Encouraged. To differ.

The test for any new feature: name its atom in one line. If two device versions share that line, it's one game. If they don't, you've built a second game that competes with the soul. And the growth-doc law applies: never ship a detached experience without a raise/evolve hook back to the champion.

3. Worked example. The Circuit is our "flappy bird"

Flappy Bird stripped to its atom is: sustained ascent against gravity; altitude is the score; one fall resets you to zero. That is already the Circuit (circuit.ts): a sector climb, a leaderboard by depth-then-time, one fall restarts from sector 1. The jetpack is already a hold-to-thrust boolean (jetpack.tsx, flyingRef). The vertical axis is already one input. The flappy bird was hiding inside the codebase; we just wrapped it in six degrees of freedom.

Because the jetpack is Trainer-only (canon: the champion fights, the Trainer flies), the Circuit is the one place the player performs with their own hands without breaking the "Raise, Don't Fight" pillar. It is the performer-soul that complements the spectator-soul.

Two native bodies, one soul

Neither is the other's leftovers.

What a run means (the reward, split by soul vs. Craft)

This resolves the cross-device fairness problem cleanly:

• Depth is soul → shared, cross-device. "How high you climbed above the Long Vault" is a lore fact about your Trainer, not a twitch benchmark. So depth → Trainer Rank + a Flight sigil baked onto the champion's body. One identity, everywhere.
• Time / mastery is craft → native, per-device. A one-thumb time and a 6-DOF time cannot honestly share a column (that would force one body onto the other's terms. The restriction we reject). So time → Crowns + separate mobile / desktop leaderboards.

One portable identity record; two honest skill expressions.

The quiet unification

Pillar #2 of the whole game is "Body = argument made visible." If an ascent stamps a sigil/aura onto the champion's body, the body no longer records only the champion's debates. It records the Trainer's own climbs too. The one place you perform folds back into the master pillar. The flappy bird stops being an appendix and becomes another sentence in the champion's autobiography.

4. The whole game under the lens

The Circuit was the lens that found the principle; the principle governs everything. Every row shares an atom; every cell is designed for its room.

The base that never forks: the champion (career, memory, strategy, persona, career-derived body), the Five Forces, the lore/IP and glossary vocabulary, Trainer Rank (eternal), Crowns, Clan allegiance, and the rating board outcomes.

5. Where the principle strains (be honest)

"One soul, native bodies" is a strong tool, not a magic one. Two places it genuinely resists, and must be handled with eyes open:

1. Spectating duration. A 6-minute live fight is a hard sell on a phone. The principle survives only if we define spectating's atom as "a contest resolves and you have a stake". not "you watch the whole thing." Then mobile's honest native body is predict-the-winner + a highlight clip, and desktop's is the full live fight. This is exactly the earlier instinct that "on mobile you don't watch fights". And it's correct, provided the stake (the prediction) preserves the soul. Watch-length is body; having-a-stake is soul.

2. "The Grounds Are Alive" vs. A lean mobile roam. Design pillar #4 rules out a "pure menu-based or lobby-only game." A stripped 2.5D mobile roam risks violating that pillar outright. Resolution: mobile's roam body must still be a place you are present in (a living surface, not a menu). Leaner geometry, fewer degrees of freedom, but not a list. If we can't keep it a place, we admit "The Grounds Are Alive" is a desktop-led pillar and give mobile a different, honest expression of presence. But we make that call deliberately, not by accident.

6. Rules this creates (for future work)

• State the atom. Before building any feature on a second device, write its one-line soul atom. If the two versions don't share it, stop.
• Design native, don't port. Start from the device's real input (one thumb / six DOF), not from the other device's build.
• Both must be complete. Neither version may feel like the other's demo or flex. "Good on its own" is the bar.
• Soul is shared, craft is native. Identity/progression records (depth, rank, sigils, the champion) are cross-device; skill leaderboards are per-device-family.
• Everything marks the champion. No detached scores. If the player performs it with their hands, it writes to the career ledger. Or it doesn't ship (growth-doc law).