S1
Boop or Goop
Three verbs — Move, Goop (a directional summon), Boop (launch the goop 3 tiles out). Capture is by goop: a struck Potuh burrows into the sod. Ships with the three leaderboards + the empire gauge.
SOD
TORI
Turn based potato combat!
Section 01 · proposed
Brand Overview
The Torus Principle: every potato emits a torus-shaped energy field. Sod is the soil; Tori are the fields. And every field ends at the horizon.
Sod Tori is a series. Game i is a derivation of chess so clear that anyone can pick it up; game x is the full engine — types, seasons, weather — hyped the whole way there. Each roman numeral ships exactly one new mechanic, and no numeral opens until the one before it is fun with real players.
"Everything is a pawn — but pawns can summon potatoes. Boop an adjacent Tato to launch it and capture on contact; Boop an adjacent Potuh to capture it outright; or launch your own pieces."
- Mission
- The game you get better at for a decade. Depth from simple primitives, revealed one numeral at a time.
- Vision
- From a link you send a friend, to Tato coins on real tables — a collected-pieces institution feeding the annual Hot Potato Games tournament.
- Audiences
- Strategy-first players · board-game tables · collectors, later. Derived as facets of James / Ike / Horatio (the HPG ICP arc).
Personality
- Deliberate
- Moves are chosen, not mashed. Thinking time is the game.
- Simple
- Simple to play, difficult to master. The floor is two verbs; the ceiling is the product.
- Earthy
- Sod first — soil, browns, living greens. The board is a field.
- Horizon
- So you've mastered the basics — what's next on the horizon? There is always a next numeral, a next rank, a next line. The shimmer is that promise made visible.
- Strategic
- Chess-like on purpose. Position, tempo, sacrifice — the thinking is the fun.
The Decade Plan · declared 2026-08-05
The Numeral Series
i through x. Each numeral ships one mechanic. The full engine already exists — it waits at the end as x.
The rule of the rings
A numeral does not open until the one inside it is fun — verified with real, non-Brett players who finish a match unaided and ask for another. Every numeral re-asks the five GAMES questions (Good? Aggressive? Marketable? Entertaining? Simple?). Profitable by iii.
The physical floor: the simplest Sod Tori is a board game — an 8×8 grid, pieces, and secret intentions. The collected physical pieces are Tato coins: the mark in section 02 is the face of that coin. What genuinely needs a computer — chain bookkeeping, room codes, replays — stays digital. Everything else must survive a kitchen table.
What already exists — sod_tori_x, held as inventory
| System | State |
|---|---|
| 6-phase combat resolver · dynamic grid · 21 types · 62+ attacks | WORKING |
| Classic mode — 16v16 earth-line chess on 8×8, claim-KO promotion | WORKING |
| Multi-mon battles · general evolution · overworld/story · AI strategy | PARTIAL |
| Online PvP · capture · economy · progression · session telemetry | STUB |
78,275 lines of Dart, a 698-line mechanics bible, a 22-page print-to-play manual. The problem was never invention — it's sequence. The series below is the sequence. None of x's inventory carries market weight until the numerals earn it an audience.
Two constraints hold the early years steady.
- Chessboard-playable through ST I. Nothing that couldn't run on a physical 8×8 with coins until ST II. Binds Seasons 1–4.
- No Potuh evolution until ST III. Leveling waits two full years. Binds Seasons 1–8.
One spec sheet per numeral — tap to open. Each ships exactly one new mechanic; none opens until the one before it is fun with real players.
The rule of this numeral, up front: everything is a pawn — three verbs, one hit, one counter. No levels, no types, no redirect. The whole game is Boop, Goop, Move on an 8×8.
sod_tori · i
The Pawn Game
- 8×8, one row of eight each — bottom vs top, chess.com familiar
- Three actions: Boop (launch & capture) · Goop (summon) · Move (one step, any direction)
- All hits capture (1HKO) · momentum resets on contact · blocked = no launch
- The goop counter — every summon banked; defeat an opponent, take their match goop
- Four doors: Tutorial · Play · Practice · Compete (matched by goop, W/L tracked)
strangers finish a match unaided and ask for another
The four seasons of I — one rule each
Everything travels in straight cardinal lines; nothing turns mid-flight.
S2
Walk into the goop
A choice: boop it (3 tiles) or walk into it — step 1, then send it 3 from the new tile (4 total). The extra tile costs a step of commitment.
S3
Boop your own
The tori may boop their own fellow Potuhs — a friendly launch, for repositioning and transport.
S4
Walk into your own
The tori may walk into their own Potuhs as well as boop them. Still 100% linear.
The Rulebook — game i, complete
Twelve rules, declared up front — the spec the whole app resolves against. Where Brett hasn't ruled, the rule is marked ▸PROPOSED — accept or strike, and the spec is closed.
The Law of the Sod · I–VI
I The Board
8×8. Eight Potuhs each, on the back rows — yours on the bottom, theirs on the top. Nothing else exists at setup.
II First Move
▸PROPOSED — the Tato coin is flipped; the flip's winner moves first. Friend games animate the flip; Compete lets the server flip.
III The Turn
Exactly one action with exactly one Potuh: Boop, Goop, or Move — the three buttons, in that order. Then it is their move.
IV The Move
One square — up, down, left, or right — onto an empty square. All four directions. Never diagonal.
V The Goop
Summon a Tato onto an empty adjacent square of your choice. ▸PROPOSED — one live summoned Tato per Potuh. Every summon: +1 to your forever counter, +1 to the match pot.
VI The Boop
Strike an adjacent piece. An enemy Potuh is captured outright. Any Tato is launched away from you. A friendly Potuh is launched away from you — repositioning at launch speed. Direction is always the line away from the booper.
The Law of the Sod · VII–XII
VII The Launch
A straight cardinal line, tile by tile, up to three squares. Stops on contact or at the board's edge. The edge is safe — the piece rests on the last square.
VIII Contact & the Chain
All hits are 1HKO on hostiles. ▸PROPOSED — strike an enemy Potuh: captured; the mover takes the square. Strike any Tato: it flies the same direction at fresh full distance — momentum resets; the chain. A friendly Potuh stops you one square short, harmless. Each link resolves fully before the next.
IX Legal Directions
Every verb works all four ways; only legal directions are offered. Move needs an empty step. Goop needs an empty tile. Boop needs a launch of at least one tile ▸PROPOSED: or immediate enemy contact. Illegal directions grey on the pad and never light on the board. From the starting rows every sideways Boop and Goop is grey — the opening teaches itself.
X Victory
▸PROPOSED — capture all eight enemy Potuhs. Resign is always available. No legal action passes the turn. Board Tatos are worth nothing at the end.
XI The Goop Economy
The counter is forever and never decreases. Every summon: +1. Beat a human: gain a copy of their match-pot summons — they keep theirs. The number only goes up. CPU matches: summons count; no pot, no record.
XII Honesty
Self-play, bot loops, and farmed matches are tagged and excluded from steals, records, and sessions. If the number can be cheated, the number means nothing.
The rulebook is the test plan. The engine (pure Dart, no Flutter imports — see Build & Deploy) carries one test group per rule, RB-1 through RB-12. The preview, the resolution animation, and the stored match are the same engine — divergence anywhere is a bug. The print manual and the in-app Tutorial both derive from this sheet and section 11's mechanic slides.
The one new rule: redirect. A teammate can re-aim an incoming Tato — linearity finally bends.
sod_tori · ii
The Hot Potato Rule
- Redirect: a teammate re-aims an incoming Tato
- Full standard distance in the new direction
- Once per Tato per turn — no infinite loops
chains get shared — clips leave the game
On the ladder
- When
- Year 2 · Seasons 5–8
- Ships
- Redirect. Walking into a thing lets you choose its direction — linearity breaks, and chessboard-hard features begin.
- Constraint lifts
- The first mechanic that can't run on a plain physical 8×8 with coins.
The one new rule: levels. Knock out a Potuh and the knocker evolves — identity enters the game.
sod_tori · iii
Levels
- Knocking out a Potuh levels the knocker: i → ii → iii
- Launch reach 3 / 5 / 7 · level ii fields 3 Tatos
- Potatyke → Potatot → Potatohr — the ranks made visible
- Profitable here — identity enters the game
a player keeps a favorite piece on purpose
On the ladder
- When
- Year 3 · Seasons 9–12
- Ships
- Levels. Knockouts evolve the knocker i→ii→iii. Profitable here.
- Constraint lifts
- Potuh evolution — held back two full years — finally turns on.
The one new rule: the set board. A chess-style opening with leveled pieces at the back — the first non-flat starting position.
sod_tori · iv
The Set Board
- Chess-style setup: level iiis at K and Q, back row iis, pawn row is
- Level iiis cannot Boop their own level is
- Level iis are launchable by level iiis
the two modes trade players, not split them
On the ladder
- When
- Year 4 · Seasons 13–16
- Ships
- The Set Board. Chess-style opening; leveled pieces at the back.
- Where a 6×3 board could first appear
- Only here does the field stop being a plain 8×8 of pawns — never in I–III.
Reserved rings. Each is named only when it opens — the mechanic is chosen when the numeral before it is proven, not before.
sod_tori · v–ix
Reserved
- Board resize + compression resolution
- Fire, water, air (all current pieces are EARTH)
- Health, if types demand it — or rebalance
- Named only when their ring opens
each numeral survives the GAMES questions
On the ladder
- When
- Years 5–9
- Candidates
- Board resize, fire/water/air types, health if types demand it.
- Rule
- A candidate becomes a spec only once its ring is next — inventory, not product.
The end of the series: the full engine. It already exists — types, seasons, weather, 166 species — held as inventory and shipped last, once the numerals have built its audience.
sod_tori · x
The Full Engine
- Types · seasons · weather · celestial phases
- The 166-species collection, the story, the world
- Kept intact and runnable today — hyped throughout
- The Potato World Saga opens beyond it
the audience the numerals built arrives home
On the ladder
- When
- ~Year 10
- Ships
- The Full Engine. Types, seasons, weather, 166 species, the story — the preserved repo, shipped last.
- Already built
- 78,275 lines of Dart, a 698-line mechanics bible, a 22-page print-to-play manual — see the inventory table above.
Every (numeral × season) stays live forever. Players say “ST I, Season 1” or “ST III, S3” to pick the mode they’re in the mood for — the ladder is a permanent menu, not just a timeline.
Section 02 · proposed
Logo System — the Tato Coin
The mark is a Tato on a coin. One day it is a physical piece on a real board; today it is the pixel identity.
The mark is the Tato coin — the pixel Tato, struck like currency. It renders pixelated on purpose: never smooth it, never upscale it with interpolation. It ships on transparency — the white-plate export is retired (2026-08-05); the coin sits directly on the night, on loam, or on the shell.
a wordmark to pair with the coin — undrawn; the box lid and the app header both need it
clear space, minimum sizes, coin-back variant — unset until the wordmark exists
Do
- Render the coin with image-rendering: pixelated
- Use the transparent export — the coin sits on the surface itself
- Treat the coin as the future physical piece — it is product, not just mark
Don't
- Ship the white-background version anywhere — retired
- Smooth, blur, or vector-trace the pixel art
- Set it over busy art without a quiet surface behind it
Section 03 · declared 2026-08-05
Color
Dark mode is the brand: earth browns and living greens under a dark sky — and the signature orange-gold shimmer where they meet. Never black-and-white chess.
Surfaces & text — the dusk field
The horizon & the shell
horizon · the core theme — the shimmer where sky meets sod. Section rules, the cover, loading moments.
shell · 135° · the Potatuhs tri-orange. Hype surfaces and the coin's frame — never the game board.
Sides & vitals — unchanged game colors
The element bench — sod_tori_x inventory
fire
water
earth
air
body
mind
soul
heart
solar
lunar
ecliptic
seasonal
dream
nightmare
lucid
prophetic
Game i is all EARTH — no types. The bench waits with x; fire, water and air enter in the reserved numerals.
prophetic's hex is malformed in theme.dart (#DAAEF50 — seven digits) — renders ecliptic slate here until the reingest fix
Pairing & contrast — measured, recorded honestly
| Pairing | Ratio | WCAG AA |
|---|---|---|
| Wheat on Night | 15.4 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Wheat on Loam | 12.7 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Straw on Night | 9.9 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Straw on Loam | 8.2 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Gold on Night | 11.3 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Orange on Night | 5.4 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Fern on Night | 5.1 : 1 | PASS — all text |
| Dust on Night | 5.3 : 1 | PASS — captions |
| Player on Night | 4.5 : 1 | PASS — at the limit |
| Enemy on Night | 3.5 : 1 | indicators / large only |
Rule: prose is Wheat on the dark earth. Side colors and the bench carry state — chips, tints, coins — never body text. The shimmer belongs to the horizon: section rules, the cover, victory. Spend it like it's rare, because it is.
Section 04 · proposed
Typography
Monospace is the voice. The whole game speaks in fixed-width — like the rulebook it is.
A/B — the parent display face (Bungee) instead of the all-mono voice:
BOOP
hero · mono 700 · clamp(2.4rem → 4.4rem)
Your move — the board is listening
h1 · mono 700 · letter-spacing 0.06em
Potatyke boops the Tato!
h2 / battle text · mono 700
Document prose sets in Outfit for reading comfort — a documentation-layer choice, not an app face. Everything the game itself says is monospace.
doc body · Outfit 400
launch 3 → contact e5 → capture · momentum reset
data · mono · all stats and IDs
The GBA scale — inherited from x
xs 8
sm 10
md 12
lg 14 · header
xl 18
Five sizes, one family. The scale is deliberately tiny — handheld truth — and the app renders it crisp. Game i, mobile-first, keeps the same discipline: few sizes, one family, weight carries hierarchy.
Do
- Monospace for everything the game says — rules, stats, battle text
- Weight and size carry hierarchy, never a second family in-game
- Outfit for long-form documentation prose only
Don't
- Introduce a display face in-game without a lock here first
- Anti-alias the pixel UI into softness
- Set battle numbers in anything proportional
Section 05 · declared 2026-08-05
Iconography
The twelve marks that actually ship in game i — the verbs, the doors, and the coin.
BOOP
the hit
the hit
GOOP
the summon
the summon
MOVE
one step, UDLR
one step, UDLR
LAUNCH
full distance
full distance
CAPTURE
1HKO
1HKO
GOOP BANK
the counter
the counter
TUTORIAL
PLAY
PRACTICE
COMPETE
ROOM CODE
YOUR MOVE
The two verbs and the goop bank render in the coin color — precious things are amber. Everything else is wheat line-work, stroke 2, rounded caps. Alongside the set: the Tato coin itself (section 02) and the codex numbering — every species is N-name.png, a collector-grade convention protected from day one.
| System | Unit | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Game-i icon set | 24px stroke-2 SVG | the two verbs, the four doors, board marks |
| The Tato coin | 16×16 pixel mark | identity, favicon, future physical piece |
| Codex numbers | N-name | species identity, collection order |
| Element marks | 16px color chip | x inventory — types wait for their numeral |
Section 06 · proposed
Photography & Illustration
Pixel-true illustration at dusk; photography of people playing — at the table, once the table exists.
Illustration
- Pixel-true
- Sprites and pieces are pixel art, rendered crisp. Never smoothed, never upscaled soft.
- Dusk palette
- Dark earth browns and living greens under a dark sky; the horizon shimmer is the light source. Element colors are the exceptions that read as magic.
- Silhouette first
- If a piece doesn't read at coin size against the night, it doesn't ship.
Inventory (x-era): 175 codex portraits · 12+ NPC sprites · 7 tilesets · 15 maps. Game i draws from the earth line only.
Photography
Inherited from the parent (answered 2026-08-03): photography is always people playing — and Sod Tori is the brand where that means a table. Two phones and a couch. Later: Tato coins in hands, the lean-in before a launch, the victory face after a chain.
no real photography exists yet — first collection lands with game i's kitchen-table alpha; the concepts below are generated stand-ins
Generated concepts — 2026-08-05
AI-generated (gpt-image-1, disclosed per §13) — direction targets, not final art.
Section 07 · declared 2026-08-05
Mascots & Characters
Two words carry game i: Potuhs and Tatos. Everything else in the canon waits its turn.
The Potuh ranks — Potatyke is the first Potuh
In series iii, knocking out an enemy Potuh promotes the knocker up this line — the character system and the chess system are the same system. The Tato is the other character: summoned, launched, redirected — and struck on the coin. On game i's board, Potuhs and Tatos both render as coins — 2D faces until each earns its 3D geometry.
- Potuh
- Your pieces — the pawns. Everything is a pawn; that's the point. They move in a T, summon, Boop, and launch.
- Tato
- The summoned potato. Projectile, shield, currency, coin. The whole physical product line is Tatos.
- Goop
- The summon, and the loot. A Potuh focuses with such intensity that the earth answers — goop, in the form of a Tato. Every summon banks on your goop counter; defeat an opponent and their match goop is yours. The game for people who like the number going up.
- The sleeping words
- They were called Ouips before, and one day they may be again — Ouip, Zeep, Cheep and the 166 species belong to sod_tori_x. That world exists in code, holds no market weight yet, and is not spoken by game i.
- The village cast
- Root Farms Village canon: Carpenter · Engineer · Merchant · Trader · Guide · Elder · Rival. Written, waiting with x.
Section 08 · proposed
UI Components
Loam cards on the night, bark lines, one honest shadow — a board read by dusk light.
Cards & buttons
The card is the atom: loam fill, 2px bark line, 12px radius, the 3px opaque shadow. A highlighted card thickens its border to 3px in the accent and lifts. Buttons are the same card, pressed — hover lifts gold, press collapses flat.
State chips & vitals
PLAYER
ENEMY
GOOP 47
Side colors mark ownership everywhere: chips, tile tints, territory. Game i is 1HKO — no health bars on the board. The HP system stands ready in inventory for the numerals that need it.
In situ — the stage, game i tokens
YOU
GOOP 47
Game i is 8×8 — chess-sized, always. Same tokens as the components at left: loam card, bark line, one honest shadow, ownership by side chip. No territory tints, no overworld grid — that machinery is x inventory, dark until its numeral opens.
App surfaces — game i, visualized
The whole app, chess-app simple: four doors off the home screen, and the board. A swipeable prototype — mockups, not implementation; the scaffold reads these.
SOD TORIGOOP 47
BOOP OR GOOP
TUTORIAL
PLAY
PRACTICE
COMPETE
← TUTORIAL1/5
THE RULES
01Everything is a pawn
02MOVE — one step, any direction
03BOOP — launch & capture
04GOOP — summon a Tato
05Chains — momentum resets
NEXT
← PLAYGOOP 47
PLAY A FRIEND
CREATE GAME
— or —
ENTER CODE
the link is the game
← PRACTICE1/4
SCENARIOS
Your First Boop✓
Goop & Guard·
The Two-Chain·
Corner Trap·
nobody watches practice
← COMPETE12W · 8L
MATCHED BY GOOP
YOU47 goop
vs
SPUDNIK_952 goop
FIND MATCH
YOUR MOVEGOOP 47
BOOP — PICK A TARGETGOOP 47
← swipe the prototype — the coin rolls the rail →
The preview — see the future before you commit
While aiming, the first tap on a lit target doesn't commit — it previews. The preview runs the real resolver ahead of time: amber dots for the path, dashed ghosts where things land, dim ✕ where things die — chains included. Second tap makes it happen, exactly as promised.
Preview · the plain launch
Boop right: the path lights, and the dashed ghost is exactly where the Tato will rest. No surprises, ever.
Preview · the chain, foretold
The launch will strike a second Tato — so the preview shows that one flying too, fresh at full distance. The whole cascade renders before you commit.
Preview · boop your own
Fellow Potuhs are boopable — repositioning at launch speed. The ghost shows your teammate's landing before you send them.
Preview · the capture
The Tato will reach the enemy Potuh: the dim ✕ marks the capture that will happen — and the goop you're about to take.
← swipe the previews →
Section 09 · proposed
Shadows & Borders
One shadow, bark borders, four radii. Handheld flatness is a discipline, not a deficiency.
| Token | Value | Job |
|---|---|---|
| --sh-card | 3px 3px 0 black | every card at rest — opaque, no blur |
| --sh-lift | 5px 5px 0 black | highlighted / hovered |
| (pressed) | none | press collapses flat |
| --border | 2px solid bark | cards, inputs, chips |
| --border-panel | 1px panel line | separators, quiet dividers |
| --r-sm / md / card | 4 / 8 / 12px | chips / controls / cards |
The rule: shadows are pure black, offset, and never blurred — a piece sitting on the board, not a glow. There is exactly one elevation story: rest, lift, pressed-flat. Nothing floats. The only glow permitted anywhere is the horizon's.
Live
rest
lift
pressed
Radii
4
8
12
pill
Section 10 · proposed
Motion
The chain is the identity: launches resolve tile by tile, one readable beat at a time. No juice before correctness.
Sod Tori's motion is not bounce — it is procedure. A Boop launches a Tato; the Tato crosses the board one tile per beat; contact captures; momentum resets and the chain continues. The player watches every step land. Motion serves the question what just happened? — never spectacle. The one indulgence: the horizon shimmers.
| Token | Value | Job |
|---|---|---|
| step | 400ms | one resolution beat — long enough to read |
| fast | 120ms | press feedback |
| snap | steps(1) | state changes — no tween between states |
no measured motion values exist — game i sets them fresh; x's Flame layer remains unsurveyed
Live — one chain, step by step
01 Potuh boops the adjacent Tato
02 Tato launches — 3 tiles, tile by tile
03 Contact: enemy Potuh captured
04 Momentum resets — full distance again
05 The chain continues into the next piece
06 Board settles — their move
Each beat is one --dur-step. Under reduced motion the whole chain renders at once — the log IS the fallback.
The two verbs, on screen
The virtual game must show what the physical game implies. This is the declared animation contract for each verb.
GOOP — the summon
Press GOOP → the summoning Potuh holds focus → the target tile warms flat amber (a tint, never a gradient) → a tiny russet circle swells from the soil (one beat) → it reveals as the golden coin — a snap, not a fade (one beat). The goop counter ticks up on the reveal. Two beats, then play continues.BOOP — the launch
Press BOOP → the Tato glides — one smooth, eased gesture with a breath of overshoot that settles exactly on the square the state machine expects. The engine still thinks tile-by-tile; the motion doesn't. Contact: the struck piece pops on impact. Momentum resets — each chain link is its own clean glide.Section 11 · declared 2026-08-05
Layout — the Board
The layout IS the board: 8×8, one row each, thumb-reach first. Everything else arranges itself around it.
The start: chess.com-familiar. One row of eight each, portrait, board full-width, verbs at the thumb. The horizon sits above: sky, shimmer, sod.
The mechanics, one slide each
Goop — the summon
The Potuh focuses; the earth answers. A Tato coin rises on an adjacent tile. The goop counter ticks up — forever.
Boop — the launch
Boop an adjacent Tato and it flies — full standard distance, tile by tile, cardinal only. Blocked target = no launch.
1HKO — one touch
Contact captures. No health, no chip damage, no second chances — every piece on the board is one touch from gone.
Momentum resets
The physics cheat that makes the game: a hit doesn't dampen — whatever moves next moves at FULL distance again.
The chain reaction
One Boop, two captures. Launches resolve fully, one at a time, tile by tile — the whole chain is readable, then it's their move.
Resolution order
Select the Potuh → Boop or Goop → everything your move caused resolves to stillness → their move. No overlaps, no ambiguity.
← swipe the mechanics →
Section 12 · declared 2026-08-05
Voice & Tone
Silly, and entirely about the goop. The rules stay exact; everything around them is delightfully unserious.
Sod Tori's voice is silly on purpose, and it is all oriented toward one thing: the goop. Menus talk about goop. Victory talks about goop. Defeat consoles you about the goop you'll earn back. The one place silliness stops is rules text — a rule states facts, monospace, no vibes — and then the very next line is about goop again. Chess words are worn proudly (pawn, capture, board); external marketing defers to Butter (smooth, brief, never winks — even about goop).
Samples
"BOOP OR GOOP!"
"GOOP GET. The earth provides. (+1 goop)"
"Victory! Their goop is your goop now. That's 12 goop. Goop."
"Defeat. The goop remembers. The goop always remembers."
"Tato launched — 3 tiles. Contact. Capture." (rules text: exact, always)
Words we use
- Potuh — your pieces, the pawns of the game
- Tato — the summoned potato; the coin; the projectile
- Boop — the adjacent hit: launch a Tato, capture a Potuh
- Goop — the summon, and the loot it banks
- Pawn, capture, board — chess words, worn proudly
Words we hold (and words we never use)
- Ouip · Zeep · Cheep — sod_tori_x vocabulary; asleep until its numeral
- Pokeball, Pokémon, trainer, catch — the world never borrows
- Vibes-y hedges in rules text — rules are exact
Section 13 · proposed
AI Policy
AI-assisted, human-directed — and the CPU fights aggressive, not strategic. That's doctrine.
AI builds the game. The CPUs never stop training. You can always vs one.
| Surface | Rule |
|---|---|
| Game code | AI welcome, directed live, human-reviewed before ship |
| The CPUs | Training constantly against each other to find the best strategy — and one is always available to vs. Beat today's best and it learns from the loss |
| Rules & balance | The rules docs are authored and human-owned; AI proposes, the bible decides |
| Session data | CPU matches are tagged CPU; never counted as human sessions or goop-farmed |
| Playtest feedback | Only what players actually said — no generated entries |
| Player data | Never enters third-party AI tools |
The always-open dojo. Somewhere, the CPUs are playing each other right now, working out what the best strategy even is — and you can always walk in and vs one. Disclosure is the default: Sod Tori is built in the open with Claude Code, the rules are a bible, not a black box, and every resolution is explainable.
Section 14 · declared 2026-08-05
Sub-brands & Ecosystem — the Ten Games
Sod Tori is ten games wearing one name. Here is the whole shelf, including the nine that don't exist yet.
| Game | The one mechanic it adds | State |
|---|---|---|
| sod_tori i | Boop or Goop — the pawn game | SCAFFOLDING |
| sod_tori ii | The hot potato rule — teammate redirects | DECLARED |
| sod_tori iii | Levels — KOs promote; reach 3/5/7; profit | DECLARED |
| sod_tori iv | The set board — chess-style ranks | DECLARED |
| sod_tori v | reserved — board resize is the leading candidate | SEALED |
| sod_tori vi | reserved | SEALED |
| sod_tori vii | reserved — fire, water, air enter somewhere here | SEALED |
| sod_tori viii | reserved | SEALED |
| sod_tori ix | reserved | SEALED |
| sod_tori x | Everything — types, seasons, weather, the world | EXISTS TODAY |
A numeral unseals only when the one before it is fun with real players. x is the strange one: built first, shipped last.
- Parent chain
- Potatuhs → Hot Potato Games (Clubs) → Sod Tori. Where this spec is silent, the HPG book and then the umbrella govern.
- Siblings
- Explore The Cell (the launch artifact) · Tater Dash (iOS runner). Sod Tori is the mastery pillar among them.
- Sub-products
- The Tato coin line (the collected physical pieces) · Plate Edition (print-to-play). "Tori Chess" retires into x's Classic-mode label; the series carries the public name now.
The Potato World Saga. The repo carries a seven-game franchise arc (docs/POTATO_WORLD_SAGA.md). It is architecture beyond x: nothing in this book budgets for it before the numerals are fun — but the brand is built knowing it's there.
Shared hard core inherited from the deck: the tri-orange shimmer, honest sessions, the GAMES questions. Sod Tori's own deviation, recorded: the dark-horizon surface system and the all-mono voice.
Section 15 · proposed — Brett rules on the prize
Governance — the Goop & its Prize
If the whole game is about the goop, governance is one question: what does the most goop win?
The prize — proposed, unruled
Proposal: each season, the player holding the most goop is struck a physical Tato coin — real, numbered, one per season, never sold — and a named seat at the annual Hot Potato Games tournament. The digital number buys the physical object: goop becomes the coin it was always a picture of.
Alternatives on the table: a goop-leaderboard title (silly, loud, expires with the season) · naming rights to a Practice scenario · the season's board skin. The rule that matters: the prize must be worth wanting and impossible to buy — goop is earned or taken, never purchased.
Goop integrity
The counter only counts if it can't be cheated: CPU matches earn no stealable goop · self-play and bot loops are tagged and excluded (the honest-sessions doctrine) · Compete steals require a completed, real match. If the number can be farmed, the number means nothing.
| Authority | Governs |
|---|---|
| DESIGN.md (this book) | brand: color, type, surfaces, voice, the numeral sequence |
| _status/sod_tori.md | the series status board — goals, numerals, gates |
| docs/MECHANICS_BIBLE.md | x's rules — human-owned |
| docs/GAME_CANON.md | lore: the Torus Principle, the village, the vocabulary |
| theme.dart (per game) | app tokens — mirrors this spec after reingest |
the prize is UNRULED — the proposal above awaits Brett's yumutsu
session telemetry lands with game i (gameId sod_tori_i, SESSIONS-CONTRACT.md)
Asset naming stands: {brand}-{category}-{label}-{season}.{type} · codex N-name.png. Registry: brands.potatocore.com. Lock here → reingest → QA in-app.
Build & Deploy · Flutter + Firebase — locked 2026-08-05
Build & Deploy
The handoff sheet: stack, data model, protocol, and the ship script. Full pseudo-tables in the architecture doc.
The stack
| Layer | Decision |
|---|---|
| Client | Flutter, BLoC, portrait web-first — flutter build web; iOS/Android later from the same codebase |
| Rules engine | lib/engine/ — pure Dart, zero Flutter imports, deterministic; one test group per rulebook rule |
| Auth | Firebase Anonymous Auth (goop persists), upgradeable to full accounts later |
| Data | Firestore (native) on project hot-potato-games — matches are append-only move logs; board state is always derived, never stored |
| Hosting | Site sod-tori-i (x keeps sod-tori); the link is the game |
| Rules file | The canonical symlink: ~/Potatuhs/.config/firestore.rules → deploy via /deploy-rules, never a local copy |
| Sessions | Emit play + session events, gameId sod_tori_i, per SESSIONS-CONTRACT.md — cell_mobile owns the counter |
| The CPU (v1) | Local engine bot, greedy (capture > chain > develop); the constantly-training ladder of bots is the roadmap |
| Ship script | Engine tests gate → build web with BUILD_ID dart-defines → firebase deploy --only hosting:sod-tori-i |
The tables, in brief
users/{uid} — displayName · goop · wins · losses
matches/{id} — code · mode · players · firstMove ·
moves[] (n · by · verb · potuh · target) ·
matchGoop{green,red} · winner
queue/{uid} — goop · enqueuedAt (window widens)
scenarios — LOCAL json; Practice is offline
events — emit-only, SESSIONS-CONTRACT shape
The doctrine that makes it small: a match IS its move list. Every client runs the same engine over the same moves; preview, animation, and truth are one function. Transactions enforce turn parity; history is append-only; the goop steal is auditable from the log.
Full pseudo-tables, relationships, turn protocol, and security notes: ARCHITECTURE.md — the architecture link. It ships beside this book.
The linked triangle — brand · customer · market
| Artifact | Canonical home |
|---|---|
| This book + DESIGN.md + ARCHITECTURE.md | potatocore/brands/public/brands/sod-tori/head/ |
| Ideal customer profile (facets of James / Ike / Horatio) | potatocore/ic-profiles/hotpotatogames/sod-tori/ICP.md |
| Go-to-market strategy | potatocore/gtm-strategies/hotpotatogames/sod-tori.md |
| Series status board (the consultant reads this) | hotpotatogames/_status/sod_tori.md |
Each artifact cites the other two. Change one, ripple all three — the triangle is the spec.
The Event Log · the receipt behind every move
Event Log — reversible & auditable
Nothing on this board happens invisibly. Every state change is an event, appended to a log that can be replayed, reversed, and audited. The log is the single source of truth — the board is just its latest frame.
The doctrine, stated up front. A move is not a mutation — it is an event. The board never changes except by appending an event and folding it in. Same events, same order → same board, every time, on every device. Preview, live resolution, and stored replay are the same reducer run over the same events — divergence anywhere is a bug (see the Rulebook, RB-1…RB-12).
The event record
{ seq: 128,
turn: 12, actor: "P",
type: "BOOP",
from: [4,6], dir: "UP",
causes: [ {t:"LAUNCH", pc:"tato", path:[…]},
{t:"CAPTURE", at:[4,2], pc:"potuh"} ],
goopΔ: 0, at: 171…, sig: "a1f9" }
One player action, one top-level event; every consequence it triggers rides inside causes[], resolved in order, tile by tile. seq is monotonic and gap-free. sig hashes the prior signature plus this event — a tamper-evident chain, so a doctored log fails its own math.
Every verb is an event
| Event | Emitted by | Visible signature |
|---|---|---|
| MOVE | Move — one step | the piece slides one tile |
| GOOP | Goop — the summon | Tato rises · counter ticks +1 |
| BOOP | Boop — the strike | contact flash on the struck tile |
| LAUNCH | a Boop's causes[] | flight, tile by tile, to rest |
| CAPTURE | contact on a hostile | 1HKO — the ✕, then gone |
| CHAIN | a launch striking a Tato | fresh full-distance relaunch |
| TURN_END | resolution reaches stillness | the side chip flips |
If it changed the board and you couldn't see it, it wasn't an event — and it isn't allowed.
Reversible
- Undo
- Truncate the log to seq−1 and re-fold from the last snapshot. Available in Tutorial & Practice; a real take-back, not a patch.
- Replay
- Any match re-runs from seq 0 — scrub, step, or watch. The clip that leaves the game (Rulebook §VIII) is just a replay with a share code.
- Snapshots
- Every N events the folded board is cached, so undo and mid-match join are O(1), not O(history).
Auditable
- Append-only
- Events are never edited or deleted — only appended. The board is derived; the log is authoritative.
- Server-authoritative
- In Compete the server folds the log and owns the outcome. No undo online — a committed event is final.
- Honest-sessions gate
- The signature chain plus actor timing flags self-play, bot loops, and farmed matches (Rulebook §XII) — excluded from steals, records, and the session count.