Mark 1 Generic Mutual Play
Tests whether appetite, local perception, reciprocity belief and per-playmate boredom can produce a recognisable mutual game without a declared quest.
- Deterministic
- Five places
- Two actors
- Eleven personas
Research programme
Pocket Quest
Choose a version to inspect. Each laboratory opens separately and uses the full window.
Pocket Quest 7 Responsibility, Belief, World State
Tests whether a guard can choose useful legal actions from concrete world state, belief, institutional responsibility, and a small Character configuration — without Drive-to-Verb mappings or psychological bonuses attached to verb names.
- Hypothetical evaluation
- Institutional obligations
- One action per decision
- WAIT remains legal
Inhabited World Drives Meet Participants
Tests whether a world that already has its own drives can accept human intervention without either half going inert — an actor that helps you if you act, and takes over if you don't, with the same machinery working in both directions.
- Deterministic
- One place
- Two competing drives
- No persistence
Jail Cell Agenda, Clock, Contention, Readout
Tests the word Step 2 left untested — asynchronous — via a guard who patrols on his own agenda, a clock that runs on real elapsed time even with zero choices recorded, a second guard who contends with the first over one doorway with no wiring between them, and a readout that speaks the shape of a history rather than the play-by-play.
- Deterministic
- Wall-clock async
- Two guards contend
- Story readout
Jail Cell Duel Cooldown, Travel-Time, No Sealed Mode
A punch is an ordinary action, not a combat mode — it costs a cooldown, and disengaging rides the same travel-time the patrol already proved. You play day_guard against a reactive night_guard: leaving right after they swing is safe, leaving while they're fresh draws exactly one parting shot. Nobody is ever pulled off the shared clock.
- Deterministic
- Real-time cooldown
- No sealed mode
- Duel readout
The Reach Object, Contest, Lock, Projection, Readout
Generalizes the jail cell's one hardcoded pickpocket into a real key, a real lock, and detection askable more than once. A key exists as persistent state, not a roll outcome; reaching for it resolves a contested effect and an independently-observed detection check, never the same roll wearing two names; unlocking is deterministic once you hold the right key, but opening the door is a second, separate act — and every option shown is derived from world facts, never declared by the engine.
- Persistent object
- Effect / observation split
- Lock & door
- Derived options
The Reach Tappable Prose
Same world, same verbs, same guard as The Reach above — a different player-facing surface built on top of it. Narration reads as persistent prose instead of a status panel; nouns in the text (the guard, the key, your blanket) are the only way to navigate, surfacing up to four contextual actions for whichever one you tap — never a fixed menu. No "Focus" mechanic is ever exposed; every affordance shown is still derived from the exact same world-fact legality the mechanics above already prove, grouped, not reinvented.
- Entity-tagged prose
- 4 contextual affordances
- No exposed focus
- Same verb legality
Pocket Quest 8 The Dark Room
Tests whether a player can inhabit an unknown bounded space through movement, orientation, sound and touch while a rat acts from a perceived safety clearance. Sensory Percepts, perceived threats, decisions and language remain separately traceable.
- Continuous local space
- Actor-relative hearing
- Clearance pressure
- World → event → Percept
Pocket Quest 9 The Lit Room
Tests whether immutable experienced prose can remain an addressable history while current focus and legal Options continue to come from the live embodied World.
- Continuous visibility and occlusion
- Opaque Actor-known referents
- Immutable growing story
- Historical focus, live Options