rimlike/docs/implementation.md

Implementation plan — rimlike

Phased build plan from clean-slate to MVP. Phases are ordered by dependency, and each ends with a runnable demo state so the project never sits in "everything's stubbed" territory for long.

Effort estimates are wall-time at focused solo pace. Scale up generously for context-switches, life, and the occasional rabbit hole. Ranges are deliberately wide.

Status	Phase
✅ scaffold landed (headless-verified); awaits editor-side green-dot check	Phase 0 — Project scaffold & foundations
⏳ next	Phase 1 — World, tilemap, camera

Use this doc as a checklist: tick boxes as items complete, and update the Status row above whenever a phase rolls over. The last bullet of each phase is the acceptance demo — the phase is "done" when you can perform it.

Refs to docs/ files are linked so each item lands in the right spec.

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Pre-implementation audit (~75 min)

The five items from memory.md Open questions / Audit. None of these need code, but several of them gate Phase 1+ (autotile drives the wall pipeline; aesthetic harmony decides whether Ventilatore stays in active use). Knock these out before Phase 0.

• Aesthetic harmony test — ElvGames Forest vs Ventilatore tile, side-by-side. Decide use-both or drop-Ventilatore. (~15 min) — needs your eye
• ElvGames autotile audit — done 2026-05-10. Findings (visual inspection):
  • FG_Houses.png is NOT autotile-solvable as-is. Pieces are pre-built decorative house compositions (4 distinct roof palettes), not modular wall variants. ~½–1 day per material to author terrain bits on top.
  • FG_Fortress.png IS autotile-solvable. 20–30 modular tan-stone-with-dark-mortar pieces — straight, corners, caps. Wang-style Godot 4 terrain works with minimal extra art.
  • Recommendation: make Fortress stone the primary player wall material. Defer custom-authored Houses walls to v2 OR keep Houses as static prebuilt-shelter art only.
  • Iconic Homestead $19.99 fallback not needed.
• Wolf sprite source — done 2026-05-10. No wolf in the bundle. EvoMonster packs are all cute/fantasy creatures (slimes, ghosts, dragons), Turn-Based RPG Monsters are humanoid-style. No 4-legged canine predator anywhere in the bundle. Action: commission a 16×16 wolf (idle + 2–4-frame walk × 4 directions) OR check Ventilatore bundle OR find a CC0 sprite. Open in memory.md.
• Grave marker source — done 2026-05-10. Retro Graveyard 16x16 Tileset [Kingdom Explorer] confirmed in Tier 3, full graveyard suite (tombstones, crosses, mounds, crypts).
• License compilation start — kick off the credits string list now; add to it as packs come in. (open across phases)

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Phase 0 — Project scaffold & foundations (~1 week)

Goal: a Godot project that opens cleanly, has all the autoloads and folder structure committed, and runs an empty test scene.

• project.godot at repo root. GL Compatibility renderer (max mobile reach; Forward+ would lock out older devices). Pixel-snap on, texture filter = nearest. Landscape sensor orientation. Viewport 1280×720 (canvas_items stretch, keep aspect).
• Re-copy addons/godot_mcp/ from /mnt/d/godot/mcp/addons/godot_mcp and enable in project.godot [editor_plugins]. ⏳ Editor-side green-dot check pending — needs you to open the editor once.
• Folder layout (cribbed from tavernkeep's idiomatic Godot pattern — co-located scripts in scenes/, autoload/ at root):
  • autoload/ — singletons (world.gd, sim.gd, game_state.gd, event_bus.gd, strings.gd, audit.gd, save_system.gd)
  • scenes/ (main/, world/, pawn/, ui/, entities/, effects/)
  • data/ (recipes/, thoughts/, events/, weather/, pawns/)
  • art/ (tiles/, sprites/, ui/, fx/)
  • audio/ (sfx/, music/)
  • tests/, tools/
• Autoloads (stubs; real bodies land in later phases):
  • World — entity registry, tile state, signals
  • Sim — tick loop owner, speed/pause state, Speed enum + factor table
  • GameState — current map, session timestamp, save_dict() / apply_dict()
  • EventBus — global signal hub (no signals yet — added per-phase)
  • Strings — i18n string table (Strings.t(key) lookup; const dict for now, .tres later)
  • Audit — debug-only logging gate
  • SaveSystem — write_save() / read_save(), version + path, JSON
• Input map: pause, speed_cycle, speed_normal, speed_fast, speed_ultra, confirm, cancel. Mobile gestures (pinch / drag / long-press) handled at script level, not as input actions — Godot's InputEventScreenTouch / InputEventScreenDrag / InputEventMagnifyGesture cover them.
• SaveSystem skeleton: version field (SAVE_VERSION = 1), user://save_slot.json, JSON serialize, mismatch warning. Smoke-test payload only; Phase 3 expands.
• .gitignore covers .godot/, .import/, addons/godot_mcp/, exports — verified.
• Smoke-test scene: scenes/main/main.tscn (Node + Camera2D + Label). main.gd._ready() asserts every autoload alive and shows the i18n-resolved hello string.
• Acceptance (headless): godot --headless --path . --quit exits 0, [main] Phase 0 smoke test online. prints, no errors. Confirmed.
• Acceptance (editor): open project.godot in Godot 4.6, hit Play — see "Phase 0 — autoloads online." rendered at 32,32. MCP Pro bottom panel shows green dot. ⏳ Needs your hand.

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Phase 1 — World, tilemap, camera (~2 weeks)

Goal: an 80×80 map with the locked camera UX. No pawns yet; just a navigable empty world.

• TileMap with 6 layers per architecture.md: 0 Terrain · 1 Floor · 2 Wall · 3 Designation · 4 Roof · 5 Fog. Set z-indices, modulate, etc.
• Tileset import: at least one terrain (grass) + one floor + one wall material from ElvGames bundle. Skip autotile for now if Phase 0.5 audit hasn't completed.
• Generate an 80×80 placeholder map (procgen later — for now, a hand-painted test map saved as a .tscn is fine)
• Tick loop: Sim runs at 20 Hz, render free-runs at 60 Hz, decoupled. Pawn-position lerping comes in Phase 2.
• Speed control: 1× / Fast (5×) / Ultra (12×) / Pause. Buttons fixed top-bar. Per architecture.md table — sim-tick queue scales by speed factor.
• Camera (per ui.md "World view camera (locked)"):
  • Pinch-zoom (smooth, between strategic and close — no fixed levels)
  • One-finger drag-pan on empty world
  • Double-tap-centre on tap target
  • No follow-cam; selection persists across pans
  • Camera reads viewport, clamps to map bounds with a small bleed
• Indoor tint shader skeleton — uniform on/off per tile, hooked up but always off (real driver lands in Phase 13)
• Acceptance: open project on phone (or phone-sized resize on desktop), pan and zoom an 80² map smoothly, hit pause/speed buttons. Speed feel matches the table in architecture.md.

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Phase 2 — Pawn skeleton, pathfinding, movement (~2 weeks)

Goal: 3 pawns on the map, click-to-move them around. No AI yet.

• Pawn scene: CharacterBody2D (or Node2D if we don't use built-in physics for movement — TBD), sprite, name label, debug state badge
• Pawn registry on World: pawns: Array[Pawn]
• AStarGrid2D over the 80² map; walkable derived from terrain passability + furniture occupancy. Update affected cells on build/destroy/door-state-change (one cell per change → O(1)).
• Walk-to-tile: pawn requests a path, follows, lerps between sim ticks for smooth render
• Click-to-move test: tap empty tile while pawn selected → pawn walks there
• Spike (~30 min): AStarGrid2D path-query timing at 80² with 6 pawns simultaneously requesting paths. Confirm sub-millisecond per query.
• Acceptance: spawn 3 pawns, tap-select, tap-destination, watch them path around walls and reach the spot. Smooth motion at all speeds.

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Phase 3 — AI core: Decision → WorkProvider → JobRunner (~3 weeks)

Goal: the 5-layer pipeline from architecture.md is real, but with one dummy work category. Save round-trip for JobRunner mid-toil state is required to land in this phase, not later.

• Decision layer: priority-ordered checks (incapacitation → forced job → status interrupt → work → idle)
• WorkProvider interface — find_best_for(pawn) -> Job?
• Job + JobRunner — multi-step toils, each toil is {action, predicate, on_complete}
• Player overrides: forced job (e.g. "go here") preempts work
• Status interrupts skeleton — only Bleeding for now (rest land at Phase 9)
• Idle behavior: stand still or wander locally (per architecture.md:72, idle is v2; MVP just stands)
• First WorkProvider: RestProvider — sends pawn to a hardcoded "rest tile". Just a smoke test for the pipeline.
• Save round-trip: kill the app mid-toil-2-of-4, reopen, pawn resumes the same toil at the same position
• Acceptance: 3 pawns idle around a rest tile; force-move one with a tap-and-hold-issue-order; suspend mid-walk and resume seamlessly.

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Phase 4 — First verbs: chop, mine, hauling, stockpiles (~3 weeks)

Goal: the foundational gameplay loop — pawns harvest things and pile them up.

• Tree entity (chop → 3 logs drop), stone-tile mining (mine → 1 stone drop), iron-ore-tile mining
• Item entity: position, type, stack size, on-floor sprite
• ChopProvider, MineProvider (subset of Construction work)
• Hauling:
  • HaulingProvider + Hauling job toils (walk → pick → walk → deposit)
  • items_needing_haul dirty set on World (per architecture.md:243)
  • StorageDestination interface (zones first; containers Phase 5)
  • No-destination fallback (locked decision): drop after 3 retry passes + passive No stockpile accepts X alert
• Floor stockpile zones:
  • Zone-paint UI (designation paint mode reuses Phase 5 paint controller — for now, a quick zone-paint button)
  • 16-chip filter grid (Wd/St/Ir/Cu/Ag/Au/Cl/Veg/Mt/Gr/Ck/Md/Tl/Wp/Ar/Co)
  • 5-priority cycle (Critical/High/Normal/Low/Off) on the zone
  • One-stack-per-tile, one-type-per-tile rule
• Carry capacity = 1 stack, 1 type (multi-type carry is v2)
• Spike (~1 hr): 16-chip grid mockup on a 720×1280 viewport — does it cram? Adjust before building.
• Acceptance: 3 pawns chop / mine / haul to a stockpile. Set the stockpile to wood-only — pawns leave stone alone. Set a second stockpile to higher priority and watch wood flow upward.

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Phase 5 — Building, walls, floors, containers (~2–3 weeks)

Goal: the player can shape the world. End of phase: build a functional cabin.

• Designation paint mode (controller reused later by stockpile-paint, no-roof, etc.) — drag-paints ghosts on Layer 3, green-if-placeable / red-if-blocked
• BuildJob queue on World, with material requirements
• Construction WorkProvider: nearest-job-first, hauls materials → walks to ghost → works N ticks → swaps Layer 3 ghost for real Layer 2 wall (autotile fixes neighbours) → updates pathfinder
• Walls: wood, stone (autotile per Phase 0.5 audit outcome — fall back to manually-painted variants if autotile pieces are missing)
• Floors: wood plank, stone, dirt-cleared
• Doors: simple swing-open furniture; pawns walk through; pathfinder treats as walkable, walls don't
• Containers (crates): furniture entity, 4 stacks, 16-chip filter, 5 priorities, all-neighbours-blocked fallback (locked: hold then drop after ~5 sim sec)
• Deconstruction (reverse build job)
• Acceptance: Player paints a 6×4 cabin outline → pawns haul wood → walls go up → floor + door → drop a crate inside → set crate filter to "tools" → tools auto-flow into it.

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Phase 6 — Production: workbenches, recipes, bills, quality (~3 weeks)

Goal: crafting chains end-to-end with the full Rimworld bill semantics.

• 5 workbenches: carpenter, smelter, smithy, cooking hearth, millstone
• Recipe registry — data/recipes/*.tres, ~22 recipes per design.md
• Recipe DSL: ingredients (with optional quality filter), product (count, type), workTime, skill (Crafting or Cooking), skillThreshold
• Bill semantics:
  • Modes: one-shot count / forever / until-N-in-stockpile
  • Ingredient quality minimum filter (e.g. "Excellent+ iron ingots only")
  • Skill threshold gate
  • Bill round-trip in saves
  • "Bill blocked" alert when no ingredients qualify (open question — drives Phase 17 alerts)
• CraftingProvider + CookingProvider (per architecture.md:559 9-list)
• Quality system (Shoddy/Normal/Excellent/Masterwork/Legendary) — additive: skill × 0.04 + RNG; multiplicative stat bonus; quality stamped on every crafted item
• Spike (~2 hr): prototype the recipe-as-Resource format. Does the bill UI fit in a single bottom-sheet? Adjust before authoring 22 recipes.
• Acceptance: smelt iron, smith a sword. Watch quality vary by smith skill. Set a bill "until 5 swords in stockpile" — pawns stop at 5, restart when one is taken.

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Phase 7 — Plants, cooking, hunger (~2 weeks)

Goal: food loop from seed to belly.

• 3–4 crops: wheat, potato, berry-bush, hop (final picks TBD; ElvGames bundle pickings audit-driven)
• Plant tile state machine: tilled → sown → growing (4 stages) → ready
• Plant WorkProvider: till + sow + harvest (matches the 9-category list)
• "Plants don't grow indoors" rule — depends on Layer-4 Roof flag, which doesn't exist yet at this phase. Stub it (always-outdoor) and revisit in Phase 13.
• Cooking: hearth recipes (raw ingredient → meal), shelf-life on meals
• Eating: pawn walks to nearest meal, consumes, hunger drops
• Hunger need + thought (design.md mood section)
• Acceptance: full grain → flour (millstone) → bread (hearth) → eat loop. Hungry pawn auto-prioritises eating.

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Phase 8 — Sleep, mood, thoughts (~3 weeks)

Goal: pawns have an interior life. Mood swings drive behaviour.

• Beds (furniture, "owned by pawn", quality affects sleep)
• Sleep need + sleep-mood gradient (placeholder numbers +5/+0/−2/−5/−8 from design.md Tunables)
• Tired status, decision-pipeline override (sleep when low)
• Mood thought registry — data-driven, ~13 thoughts per design.md
• Mood compute (architecture.md:318): base 50 + sum(modifier × min(stacks, MAX_STACKS_PER_THOUGHT)). MAX_STACKS_PER_THOUGHT = 5 (locked).
• Thoughts: persistent (state-driven) or event (decay over hours), with stacking rules
• Soft breaks — Sulking and Wandering, fire when mood < 25 sustained for 30 in-game min, recover at mood ≥ 35
• Mood UI: small mood bar on pawn portrait, breakdown in pawn-detail (Phase 17)
• Acceptance: Force-create misery (cold, hungry, no bed, sees corpse): mood plummets, pawn enters Sulking, meet needs, recovers.

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Phase 9 — Status effects + Medicine (~2–3 weeks)

Goal: the full status-driven drama from design.md Health section.

• Status registry: Hungry, Tired, Bleeding, Sick, Downed, Wet (Damp/Soaked), Cold
• Each status: trigger condition, decay rate, gameplay effect (move-speed, work-speed, mood thought, threshold-flips)
• Bleed-out timer (BLEED_OUT_TICKS = 6 in-game hours from design.md:418, locked)
• Doctor work category (already in 9-list; provider lands here)
• Medical bed furniture
• Treatment job: walk → fetch supplies → walk → treat (timed by Medicine skill)
• Doctor interrupt prioritization — Combat=Off doctors still volunteer for medicine
• Downed → rescue model: Downed pawns get a timer; doctor walks them to medical bed; if timer expires before bed, pawn dies
• Acceptance: Wound a pawn → bleeds → second pawn breaks off work → carries to medical bed → treats → recovery thoughts fire. Try with no doctor available — pawn dies, watch the death pipeline run (Phase 14 closes the loop).

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Phase 10 — Combat + Wolves (~3 weeks)

Goal: real threat, real defense, real consequences.

• 3 weapons: sword (melee), axe (melee, slow), bow (ranged) — stats per design.md
• 3 armor slots: helm, cuirass, boots
• Equipment system on pawn (carry + active slots)
• Hit math: two-roll resolution (hit roll → damage roll, armor reduces damage). Bonuses: skill ×5%, range ×5%, cover 40/20%. Numbers placeholder, tune in Phase 20.
• Cover: walls = 40%, trees = 20%. Cover lookup is per-shooter, per-target line.
• Combat priority semantics: Off ≠ "won't fight" — Off = "defends if cornered, won't volunteer" (per design.md:64)
• Friendly fire ON — bow pawns can hit teammates in line
• Wolf entity: Animal class, 4-state machine (APPROACH → ENGAGE → FLEE → DEAD per architecture.md:700)
• Wolf spawn: storyteller-driven, at map edge, in packs of 1–4, night only, season-weighted (more in winter)
• Spike (~half day): combat feel — 3 pawns vs 3 wolves on a small map. Does the two-roll resolution feel good? If not, dial numbers before Phase 20.
• Acceptance: Wolf raid at night — pawns auto-fight (or flee per priorities) — some get downed — doctor saves who they can — bodies on the field.

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Phase 11 — Day/night + Lighting (~1–2 weeks)

Goal: the world has a rhythm; night feels different.

• Time-of-day clock (already in tick loop — surface to UI)
• Top-bar clock + day counter ("Day 14, 6 AM")
• Light sources: torch furniture, hearth furniture (already exists for cooking), candle. Each has radius (max 8) and on/off state.
• light_map compute (per architecture.md:366) — recompute on light-source-change only, not every tick. Touches ≤ 200 cells per change.
• Night shader: sample light_map, brighten lit tiles, darken unlit. Smooth dawn/dusk transition (~30 in-game min each)
• "In darkness" mood thought integration — fires for pawns standing in unlit cells at night
• Acceptance: Day → dusk → night → dawn cycle visible. Indoor lit areas glow; outdoor unlit areas are dim. Pawn in a dark room at midnight gets the mood thought.

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Phase 12 — Seasons + Weather (~1–2 weeks)

Goal: 48-day year cycle with daily weather variety.

• 48-day year: 4 seasons × 12 days. Seasonal palette modulate on tilemap (subtle).
• Daily weather roll (design.md:582): clear / rain / storm / cold-snap, season-weighted (placeholder weights, tune Phase 20)
• Rain visual + ambient sfx (sourced from bundle SFX packs)
• Storm = rain + lightning flashes + dampness rate ×2
• Cold snap = winter-only, applies Cold status faster
• Wet status accumulation outdoors in rain (Damp at 25, Soaked at 60), decays indoors. Mood thought tiers.
• Cold status in winter outdoors, slower decay than wet
• Season indicator UI (top bar): "Spring 4/12", tap → forecast tooltip
• Acceptance: Run 1 in-game year, see all 4 seasons cycle. Trigger rain — watch outdoor pawns get Damp, then Soaked. They head indoors and dry off.

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Phase 13 — Rooms, roofing, beauty, dirtiness, cleaning (~2–3 weeks)

Goal: built-environment systems — your cabin matters now.

• EnclosureDetector + RoomDetector (per architecture.md:967 and 982)
• Auto-roof BFS (≤8 cells, per architecture.md:983) — sets Layer-4 Roof flag
• No-Roof designation (paint mode) — courtyards stay open
• room_too_large signal when BFS hits the cap on an enclosed area (locked decision from this session)
• DECIDE: big-room UX (open question in memory.md):
  • (a) Keep ≤8 cap, surface "split with an interior wall" banner — minimal scope
  • (b) Bump cap to ~16, banner at the new threshold
  • (c) Detect any enclosed area regardless of size — bigger architectural shift
  • Recommendation lands here; deferring past Phase 13 means bugs.
• Indoor tint driven by Roof flag — wires to the shader skeleton from Phase 1
• Plants-don't-grow-indoors rule wires up properly (was stubbed in Phase 7)
• Beauty score per cell, derived from nearby furniture × Quality multiplier
• Dirtiness accumulation, traffic-weighted, spike events (blood from combat = +20, corpse decay = +5/h)
• Cleaning WorkProvider (the 9-list category — earlier doc text said "8th"; that's stale)
• Room thoughts: clean/dirty, beautiful/ugly, ate-without-table, slept-in-room
• Spike (~1 hr): room detection on a stress map (50+ rooms). Does it stutter on rebuild?
• Acceptance: Build a kitchen → mood reflects it (table, beauty). Bloody combat in bedroom → room turns ugly until cleaned. Build a 12-cell enclosed room → big-room banner fires (per (a)/(b)/(c) decision).

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Phase 14 — Death, corpses, burial (~1–2 weeks)

Goal: close the death loop properly.

• Corpse entity + decay timer: 0–50 fresh / 50–100 rotting / 100 rotted
• Graveyard stockpile — special filter: Corpses-only chip
• Grave dig job (Manual Labor) — produces a grave slot
• Permanent grave marker entity: tap → opens deceased-pawn detail (Phase 17)
• Cremation pyre furniture + recipe (1 corpse + 5 wood → ash + brief mood thought for pawns nearby)
• Mood thoughts: "saw corpse", "buried friend", "cremated friend", "rotting body in colony" (severity scales)
• Death triggers in pawn pipeline (already wired in Phase 9) end here — corpse drops, hauler fires.
• Acceptance: Pawn dies (combat or untreated illness) → corpse on the floor → graveyard zone painted → hauler takes corpse to grave slot → digger digs → marker placed. Tap marker, see deceased pawn's portrait + 1-line backstory + mood-thought legacy.

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Phase 15 — Storyteller (~2–3 weeks)

Goal: the world prods the player without overwhelming them.

• Event registry: 25 prompts authored in design.md ported to data/events/*.tres
• Daily 6 AM roll — picks one event from a weighted pool
• Weighted pool builder: trigger predicate, per-event AND per-category cooldowns (locked: both gates must pass), tension modifier
• Cooldowns: per-event from event def; per-category from CATEGORY_COOLDOWN (3 days threats, 5 days wanderers, etc.)
• Tension model: running tension score (0–100), high tension reduces threat weight (×0.3), low tension boosts (×2.0)
• State-triggered events ("First Beds" while no beds exist) at higher weight than random
• Banner UI (ambient, dismissible, no pause) for nudges/seasonal/lore
• Modal auto-pause for wanderer/threat/disease/milestone (player choice)
• "Go there" jump-to-alert integration — every alert/banner includes the camera-pan tap (locked)
• Ghost state + Wanderer event recovery — when all colonists dead/gone, sim half-speed, wanderer fires in 3–5 days
• Acceptance: Play a full season, all event categories fire at least once. Trigger ghost state by killing all 3 pawns — wanderer arrives within the window.

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Phase 16 — Save/load full coverage (~1–2 weeks)

Goal: the save round-trip from Phase 3 expanded to every system. Mid-tick suspend safe.

• All entity types serialize (pawn, item, furniture, container, corpse, wolf, plant tile)
• Tilemap layers serialize via get_used_cells_by_id
• Storyteller state (current tension, recent-fired log per event + per category, scheduled events)
• Bill states (mid-fetch, mid-craft)
• Pawn deep state: thoughts, statuses, equipment, current job + JobRunner toil index
• Autosave on suspend (mobile platforms — NOTIFICATION_APPLICATION_PAUSED)
• "You've been away X minutes" toast on resume (no fast-forward in MVP)
• Slot management: single slot for MVP, manual save + autosave file
• Save version number; load barfs gracefully on mismatch
• Acceptance: Kill the app mid-anything (mid-haul, mid-craft, mid-bleed-out, mid-storyteller-modal). Reopen. Everything resumes seamlessly. No exceptions, no visual desync.

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Phase 17 — Touch UX completion (~3–4 weeks)

Goal: every interaction has a touch path. No desktop-only gestures.

• Work-priority matrix (9 cols × N pawns, sticky pawn-name column, horizontal scroll on phone, tap-to-cycle priority, long-press 5-chip picker, swipe-column bulk-set)
• Per-pawn / per-job views layered on the matrix
• Stockpile / container UI — 4×4 chip grid, priority cycle, allow/forbid all
• Build drawer — bottom-sheet tabs (Walls / Floors / Furniture / Production / Designate). Material-pick UI when multiple materials match.
• Storyteller event modal vs ambient banner UX
• Pawn detail screen (bottom-sheet, full-height): needs bars, status effects, current job, equipment, mood thoughts breakdown, skill table, deceased-state
• Settings — speeds, auto-pause toggles, audio volumes, accessibility
• Day-summary card — recap at end-of-day, gives short sessions a stopping point (ui.md:620)
• Alerts log + storyteller event history
• Bill UI for workbenches (created in Phase 6 stub; full UX here)
• "No stockpile accepts X" alert from Phase 4 hauling fallback wires up here
• "Bill blocked" alert from Phase 6 quality-filter wires up here
• Acceptance: every screen in ui.md "Screens still to design" exists and is touch-driven. Hand the device to someone who's never played — they can navigate without instruction.

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Phase 18 — Audio (~1 week)

Goal: the game has soundscape; not silent.

• Ambient day loop, ambient night loop (bundle music packs)
• UI clicks (tap, long-press confirm, error)
• Combat stings: hit, miss, downed, kill
• Alert stings: storyteller modal, ambient banner, raid warning, pawn-down
• Volume sliders in Settings (master / music / sfx / ambient)
• Audio mute on suspend; fade in on resume
• Acceptance: play through a normal in-game day. Sounds fire at the right moments, mute toggles work.

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Phase 19 — Onboarding & first-60-seconds (~1–2 weeks)

Goal: resolve the open question in memory.md — a new mobile player gets productive in <60 seconds.

• DECIDE: approach (open question, not enough thinking yet):
  • (a) Hint system — contextual tooltips during first session, dismissible, no replay
  • (b) Guided first-day — scripted storyteller events on day 1 walking through chop / haul / build / sleep
  • (c) Tutorial scene — separate from main game, opt-in
  • Recommendation lands when this phase begins.
• First-time-player flag persisted
• Acceptance: hand the game to a tester cold. They are doing useful colony work within 60 seconds without you saying anything.

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Phase 20 — Balance, polish, export (~2–4 weeks)

Goal: ship-ready.

• Tune all placeholders (memory.md Tunable list):
  • Sleep mood gradient +5/+0/−2/−5/−8
  • Wet thresholds 25 / 60 + accumulation rates
  • Season weather weights
  • Hit-chance bonuses (skill ×5%, range ×5%, cover 40/20%)
  • Bleed-out timer (6h)
  • Mood thought magnitudes + decay times
• iOS export setup (needs Mac/Xcode — this is the long tail)
• Android export from Linux
• Steam Deck input parity — open question (memory.md): gamepad-cursor or D-pad menus or both?
• Credits screen — every art pack, every audio pack, every font (compiled across all phases)
• Bug pass — known issues from each phase's parking lot
• Performance pass — profile on a real low-end Android device
• Acceptance: TestFlight build for iOS, signed APK for Android, Steam Deck verified launch. Credits screen complete.

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Out of scope (v2+ / explicit cuts)

These are not in MVP. Pulling any of them in adds weeks. Each is a known v2 candidate.

• Procgen maps (MVP: fixed seed)
• Multiple biomes (MVP: temperate forest only)
• Bandit raids (MVP: wolves only)
• Butchering animals for meat
• Surgery / limb damage / specific body parts (MVP: single HP + status)
• Background simulation when app is backgrounded
• Fast-forward on long absence
• Tech / research progression tree
• Pawn name / backstory generator (MVP: hand-curated list)
• Multi-pawn carry, multi-type carry
• Per-bench ingredient radius restriction
• Localization beyond English (architecture supports it; content stays EN)
• Post-launch monetization decisions (premium / PWYW / free)
• Multiplayer in any form
• Pets / tame animals
• Trade caravans
• Drugs / alcohol / festivals
• Prisoner mechanics

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Scope-cut levers

If 6–12 months calendar is too long, these are sane reductions ranked by gameplay-cost-per-week-saved:

Cut	Saves	Cost
Drop seasons & weather (keep day/night)	~2 wk	Big — kills atmospheric variety
Drop dirtiness + Cleaning category	~1 wk	Small — but loses one mood lever
Drop combat entirely (no wolves)	~3 wk	Huge — only quiet events left
Drop quality system (everything is Normal)	~1 wk	Medium — flattens late game
Drop cremation, keep burial only	0.5 wk	Tiny
Reduce skills 5 → 3 (Labor, Combat, Medicine)	0.5 wk	Tiny — tightens design
Drop room beauty score (rooms still detected)	0.5 wk	Small — loses one mood lever
Single workbench instead of 5	~1.5 wk	Big — collapses production design
Drop ranged weapons (sword/axe only)	~0.5 wk	Small — loses cover-relevance

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De-risking spikes (run before the relevant phase)

Spike	Phase	Effort	Question to answer
AStarGrid2D timing at 80² with 6 concurrent path queries	Phase 2	~30 min	Sub-millisecond per query?
16-chip filter UI mockup on phone viewport	Phase 4	~1 hr	Does it cram or fit cleanly?
Recipe-as-Resource format prototype	Phase 6	~2 hr	Does the bill UI fit a single bottom-sheet?
Combat feel test (3 vs 3 on small map)	Phase 10	~half day	Does two-roll resolution feel good?
Room detection on stress map (50+ rooms)	Phase 13	~1 hr	Does rebuild stutter?

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How to use this doc going forward

• At session start: check the Status row at top, then jump to the current phase. Read its goal + current open boxes.
• During a session: tick boxes as they complete. If the work uncovers something not on the list, add it as a new box (don't silently expand scope across phases).
• At session end: if a phase rolled over, update the Status row and add a ### YYYY-MM-DD entry to memory.md Session log noting what landed.
• DECIDE points (currently in Phases 13 and 19): when you hit one, propose options + pick before continuing past it. Don't paper over.
• Spikes: treat the de-risking spikes as bona-fide tasks, not optional. Skipping them invites the cost-per-week to balloon.

What lives elsewhere

• Game design / mechanics — see design.md.
• Tech / engine layout / pawn AI — see architecture.md.
• Touch UI / camera — see ui.md.
• Tilesets / art / license — see art.md.
• Decisions index / open questions — see memory.md.