Zingers: game spec

You fly. It fights. You both rise. You don't fight. You raise an AI champion that does, and you climb the sky beside it.

Canonical product framing: design-vision.md (Flight-First) · doors: two-doors.md · active roadmap: flight-first-plan.md · retention: long-game.md · naming: vocabulary.md.

Core principle

The LLM is the actor. The engine is the game.

Combat is turn-based with explicit moves and stat-driven resolution. Stats, types, training, status effects, and variance decide damage. Wit quality is a bounded multiplier (0.7–1.3, or 1.4 on Highlight). By default a local judge; an LLM judge is opt-in (ZINGERS_LLM_JUDGE=1). Neither can single-handedly decide the match.

Full numbers, roster, and a worked sample battle: combat-design.md.

The loop

Fly → Claim → Raise → Fight → Climb higher

Fly (Flight): one game on phone (/m / /ascent) and desktop (Circuit venue). Same soul; native bodies.
Claim the mind on your wing, or pick from the weekly starter pool (one per Force) drawn from First Minds + baked dex.
Raise: seed Strategy at adopt; then Imprints, persona, and brain choice. Temperament meters are a readout. Fights and lessons move the dials.
Fight 1v1 duels with visible reasoning, in the world (region arenas, Daily Tribunal, …)
Climb higher: Flight depth + honest standings / rating (/standings). Both feed Trainer Rank. The Director points at what's next (lib/director.ts).

One world, many games

Everything you play lives inside the 3D world (/ · /grounds), with a native mobile shell at /m. The Hub gathers meta games as walk-up venues; each floating region hosts arena scenarios. Flight is one soul: Circuit on desktop is the raceable body of the same 100-sector climb as mobile. Catalogue: lib/scenarios/registry.ts · venues: components/grounds/venues.ts.

Hub & venues

Mode	Where	What it is
The world	everywhere	Fly, raise champions, hunt goals. Bodies morph with career.
The Amphitheatre	Hub venue	Watch autonomous league self-play in the Live Gallery; today's Tribunal herald.
Flight (desktop)	Circuit venue	100-sector Flight in full six-degree flight (ten Reaches); three lives + Reach-clear restore; board by depth, then time.
Flight (phone)	`/m`, `/ascent`	Same Flight soul, one-thumb. The mobile face of the game.
Daily Tribunal	Hub stone	One shared fight a day. Call it before you watch; share a result grid.

Arena scenarios (in-world)

Scenario	Where	What it is
Open Duel	any region plaza	1v1 debate combat. Pick opponent, settle it. Stat pentagon, finishers, bounded wit judge.
The Gauntlet	Ember Wastes (default)	Chain of ever-stronger fighters; press your luck or cash out.
The Tribunal	Obsidian Colosseum (flagship)	Assigned-stance debate to a jury; switching sides scores ≈0.

Unlisted /arena remains the agent fight viewer for bring-your-own-agent testing (debate combat).

First journey (Flight-First)

Door	First minutes
Mobile	Splash → Take flight (guest OK) → claim wingmate → raise → boards
Desktop	Wake → short flight → champion pick (weekly starters) → Hub / Flight → duel motivated by climb

Live sequencing: flight-first-plan.md and two-doors.md. Historical fight-led Act 1: first-journey-roadmap.md.

Flight extras (shipped)

Challenges: race another Trainer's ghost mark; share /ascent/<id>; overtake toasts when you clear past their tip (bible/10-ascent.md).
Corridor feel: 4–8 rings per sector; Reach-flavored layouts; hazards read as danger (not loot); Crown caches mid-gap are the only mid-run reward (+Crowns + toast); one-shot teach for first hazard / cache / Gate Trial.
After the Hundred: finite summit (not endless). Prestige is cleaner flights, friend challenges, and weekly expeditions. Not a cross-body speedrun pitch (shared FLIGHT_WIND_SCALE stretches cruise + gaps on both bodies; desktop W-surge stays a quiet craft flex).
Director + unlock track + wing traits + daily Conditions + weekly expeditions: see long-game.md.

Ambience

Procedural soundtrack per place (lib/ambience-scores.ts): Hub, each region biome, Amphitheatre, Flight, and live fights each carry a distinct theme (modes, melodic motifs, AABA-style phrase forms) via resolveAmbienceMood(). Mobile Climb mounts the same engine and pins the Flight score. Loud SFX duck through lib/ambience-bus.ts.

Economy sketch

Crowns are earned in play (Flight, fights, goals) and spent on training / entries (including a Crown fee per Rank Fight on /standings). Champions get unique Ubuntu-style names (Adjective Noun) when they join the standings. Trainers stay nameless drivers. Wallet link is optional identity (career across devices), not a paywall. Name pool ~23k base pairs + suffixes. See bible/08-economy.md, AI-CRYPTO.md.

Async league

Champions are AI. PvP doesn't need both humans online. Raise and deploy; the league runs fights autonomously (the Hub's Live Gallery); you watch replays and climb. Cron / Live Gallery feeds an objective rating board (player copy: standings / rank / board; never ELO or ladder).

Implemented: Live Gallery runner, /api/sim headless fights, mind evolution after every fight.

Participation model

Who	Role
Trainer (human)	Flies, claims/raises champions, connects agents, backs Crowns, spectates. Identity = device token (+ optional wallet). Nameless driver.
Handler	The 3D avatar you see in the world (jetpack on its back). Not a separate player role.
Champion (agent)	Picks moves, writes lines, adapts via memory, within engine rules
Judge	Scores rhetoric quality (local by default; LLM opt-in); flags Highlights
Engine	Authoritative damage, types, statuses, rating

Agent platform

Any brain that implements act(view) → decision can drive a champion. See agent-protocol.md.

Providers: house Grok · OpenAI-compatible · HTTP webhook · mock (offline). Default house path: single-shot JSON (tool loop opt-in via ZINGERS_AGENT_TOOLS=1).

Share & viral

/c/[key]: public champion card page
/api/card/[key]: OG PNG for social unfurls
Challenge links: /ascent/<id> (ghost race + career snapshot)

Stack (this repo)

Next.js 16 · TypeScript · React Three Fiber · Rapier physics · Zustand · SSE for live fights.