Game Design Requirements

This document records the durable gameplay decisions from the design interview. It describes the intended player experience rather than implementation details. The selected release title is Frog City Feast.

Product and presentation

Target device: iPad with an A16 chip, running the latest supported iOS.
Orientation: landscape.
Format: single-player, touch-first, third-person game.
Camera: positioned behind the frog.
Primary goal: explore freely and achieve a high score.
The game has no timer, lives-based ending, or forced round ending. The player chooses an always-visible End Game control to finish and return to the main menu.

The repository’s technical requirement remains a 2D game built with Godot 4.7.2 and GDScript. The behind-the-frog view must therefore be presented using the project’s 2D visual style rather than changing the documented technology stack.

The game uses a safe-area-aware 1280×960 reference layout. Important HUD controls stay inside device-safe edges without resizing or repositioning the game world. Interface text and controls use high-contrast original vector presentation, explicit text labels, and touch actions that are at least 56 pixels high in normal presentation.

Accessibility choices are stored independently for each local player profile:

Reduce motion removes camera shake, scale and wobble pulses, tongue travel, tutorial-marker pulsing, struggle-width pulses, and decorative city movement while retaining informational text, color flashes, the tongue line, city density changes, and streetlight state.
Larger text & controls modestly increases interface text and raises touch actions to at least 64 pixels without changing world scale, collision, targeting, or score behavior.
Input timing offers Standard, Relaxed, and Hold Assist modes. Relaxed mode accepts a wider double-tap window and reduces repeated-tap demand; Hold Assist lets a player hold a target to use the tongue and hold during escape struggles for bounded repeat input.
Camera assistance provides 50%-150% manual sensitivity, optional movement auto-alignment after a 1.8-second manual-input grace period, and an explicit camera reset.
Haptics are independently optional, safely no-op outside iOS and Android, and do not depend on audio or Reduce Motion.
Left-handed HUD mirrors the action-first top bar and bottom instruction card while preserving the same safe-area and touch-target requirements.

All controls are available from player selection and during play. Tutorial targets, rare targets, resistant targets, and dangerous targets use shape or glyph cues in addition to color. Completed profiles can replay the tutorial without clearing the saved completion flag, score, Field Guide, achievements, clues, powers, or secret unlocks. Older saves use behavior-safe defaults.

Each profile also stores three audio controls:

Master volume, defaulting to 80%;
Music & ambience, defaulting to 45%; and
Effects volume, defaulting to 80%.

The production audio direction is soft chamber-synth with marimba-like plucks, warm pads, toy percussion, playful city motifs, and gentle day/night texture. It is non-vocal, unobtrusive, and original to the project. Menu, daytime, nighttime, pursuit, and epilogue contexts have distinct music while music and ambience share one control. Gameplay and interface effects remain independently adjustable. A zero setting mutes its bus. Reduce Motion remains independent and never changes audio volume.

Performance requirements

The fixed 1280×960 presentation targets 60 FPS on an A16 iPad. Performance instrumentation is a developer-only local tool: it is off by default, input-transparent when enabled, writes no reports or save data, and performs no remote analytics, player tracking, or network telemetry.

Hardware-dependent acceptance budgets for an A16 iPad release build are:

at least 58 sustained FPS over a 30-second sample, targeting 60 FPS;
frame-time p95 at or below 18 ms, against a 16.67 ms frame target;
main-thread process-time p95 at or below 8 ms;
physics-process-time p95 at or below 2 ms;
static memory at or below 192 MiB;
video memory at or below 256 MiB; and
no more than 450 draw calls, 1,800 rendered objects, and 50,000 rendered primitives in the documented stress states.

These measurements must not become CI pass/fail gates because frame scheduling, render-driver behavior, and GPU performance vary by host. Godot’s runtime performance monitors do not provide GPU frame time, so final GPU acceptance requires Xcode’s Metal profiling tools on the target iPad. The unsigned Godot-to-Xcode export and generic-device compile are verified; installing a profiling build on the device remains separate signed-device work.

Deterministic structural budgets are enforced independently of hardware. The authored core permits 36 gameplay targets, 4 buildings, 10 separate exploration rooms, 1 pursuer, 1 temporary physical roadblock, 1 profile-driven draw-only pursuit trap, 1 scheduled physical city detour, 20 draw-only city actors, 84 batched draw-only rain streaks, 40 batched draw-only wind ribbons, 10 draw-only night-bazaar lanterns, 8 draw-only kite-festival decorations, 1 draw-only Animal Control net projectile, 24 capped world effects, 3 touch cues, and 6 fixed audio players including 4 reusable effect voices. Baseline and separate-room states permit up to 331 game-subtree nodes, 41 collision objects, and 111 collision shapes; ordinary pursuit, net attack, and the scheduled city detour permit 333 nodes. Any pursuit-trap profile permits 334 nodes; a straight-roadblock pursuit permits 335 nodes; a staggered-roadblock pursuit permits 336 nodes; and the reachable staggered-roadblock-and-snare gameplay peak permits 337 nodes. Physics ceilings remain 42 collision objects and 112 shapes for ordinary pursuit or a trap, 43 objects and 113 shapes for a straight roadblock or detour-plus-trap state, and 43 objects and 114 shapes for the staggered roadblock and gameplay peak. The performance Belly scenario renders 64 item rows within 587 nodes without changing the Belly’s unlimited gameplay semantics. A recoverable save warning adds exactly two temporary UI nodes, including while Options is open. The score epilogue adds 15 temporary UI nodes, for a maximum 348-node ending state when a save warning is also retained. The Guide catalog contains 49 Field Guide entries, but bounded journal pagination renders one text row at a time, with at most 7 Field Guide entries on a page.

The generated-city stress state holds a maximum 3x3 ring of 9 generated districts, with 9 generated buildings and 72 generated targets. Its measured structural ceiling is 541 game-subtree nodes, 100 collision objects, and 172 collision shapes, including the always-resident authored core. Untouched district definitions are regenerated instead of retained after unloading; only compact state for changed districts remains in session memory. The secret-district variant retains the same district, building, and target caps; its worst-case obstacle composition permits 556 nodes, 104 collision objects, and 183 collision shapes.

Ground navigation uses a deterministic, world-aligned AStarGrid2D query window over the active room or loaded district bounds. Requests are fail-closed at 160 obstacle rectangles, 70,000 total coarse/fine query cells, and 512 smoothed route points. A 16-pixel cardinal grid handles ordinary routes; a bounded 4-pixel refinement is used only for nearby physically valid narrow passages. Navigation state adds no scene nodes or physics bodies.

The final fixed-seed September 1, 2026 rendered Windows stress run included deliberate multi-corner queries in both peak states. The authored gameplay peak held 31 active obstacle rectangles and reached 6,480 query cells, 4 smoothed points, and 2,794 microseconds for its largest observed request. The maximum generated ring held 61 obstacles and reached 6,408 cells, 4 points, and 4,063 microseconds. Both states completed every request without fallback, failure, or budget rejection.

Reproducible stress coverage includes the maximum generated-district ring, all ten connected exploration rooms, both scheduled shops, the night bazaar, busy daytime city activity, peak rain, all three pursuer-and-trap profiles at the zero-event clock boundary, the wind squall and Canal Kite Festival alone and with every pursuer-and-trap profile, pursuit, active crowd cover, both roadblock layouts, the staggered-roadblock-and-snare peak, the rain-window city detour alone and with every pursuer-and-trap profile, a net in flight, maximum growth, a finite simultaneous presentation burst, a 64-item Belly, the longest fully populated Guide page, both accessibility settings, and a reachable gameplay peak. The same snapshots assert that Moonlight Market remains open throughout wind and kite states, Oddities Shop overlaps the night bazaar, and both shops are closed during the repair. Boundary tests cover the exact handoffs at clocks 0.46, 0.56, 0.58, 0.62, 0.74, and 0.78. Desktop measurements are advisory; the target iPad release build is authoritative. The exact commands and current local measurement notes are recorded in playable-prototype.md.

Player character and touch controls

The player controls a frog.

Tap a location on the ground to make the frog run there.
Ground movement preserves the exact tapped destination when it is reachable, routes around successive collision obstacles, and visibly redirects to the nearest safe reachable point when the requested location is blocked or outside loaded city space.
Double-tap a target to shoot the frog’s tongue at it.
Use a second finger to rotate the camera.
Brief draw-only cues confirm accepted movement, tongue attempts, and camera rotation without participating in hit testing or changing the touched point.
The tongue has a fixed maximum range.
The tongue aims at the exact screen location touched by the player.
A hit anywhere on a valid target can succeed, but a hit nearer its center earns an accuracy bonus.
A miss causes a short tongue recovery and may give the target enough time to escape. A normal miss does not directly remove a life or time.
Distant targets appear smaller.

Core eating mechanic

The frog can attempt to swallow anything that is not secured strongly enough, including ordinary food, loose objects, vehicles, living characters, removable building parts, and eventually weakened buildings.

The frog begins small and can only swallow targets appropriate to its current size.
If a target is too large or too secure, the attached tongue pulls the frog toward the target instead of moving the target.
Targets that resist initiate a struggle. The player rapidly taps anywhere on the screen to pull the target in.
If the player loses a struggle, the target escapes.
Small or successfully captured targets are swallowed immediately into the frog’s belly.
Living characters are handled as harmless cartoon targets. When digested, they become points and reappear elsewhere unharmed.

Buildings

Buildings are eaten in stages rather than swallowed immediately:

The frog eats removable parts such as signs, doors, furniture, and sections of wall.
Removing parts weakens the building.
Once the frog is large enough and the building is weak enough, the remaining structure can be swallowed.

Belly, digestion, and spitting

The player can open a view inside the frog’s belly and manage swallowed contents.

The belly has unlimited magical capacity.
Swallowing does not immediately award points.
The player chooses which swallowed targets to digest.
Points are awarded when a target is digested.
The player may instead spit a target out, restoring it safely to the nearby world without awarding points.

The scoring value associated with a swallowed target must retain relevant capture information until digestion, including the accuracy of the tongue hit and whether the target was captured under dangerous conditions.

Scoring

The score cannot fall below zero.

An item’s value may increase based on:

its size;
its rarity;
how close the tongue hit was to its center;
whether it was found in a dangerous location; and
whether it was captured while the frog was being chased.

Rare targets are worth many points, appear only in unusual places, and may grant temporary powers.

The game records:

the best score ever achieved on the iPad; and
a separate best score for each local player profile.

Save data ownership and migration

Save version 3 uses one local ConfigFile and stores no account, advertising, analytics, social, contact, or other personal information. Every persistent field has one explicit ownership scope:

Section and key	Scope	Meaning and default
`meta.version`	Device	Save schema version; `3`.
`profiles.<profile_id>`	Profile	Local display name, normalized to at most 24 characters.
`scores.<profile_id>`	Profile	Best completed or in-progress score observed for that profile; `0`.
`device.best_score`	Device	Highest score observed across local profiles; `0`.
`tutorial.<profile_id>`	Profile	Whether the first-time tutorial was completed or skipped; `false`.
`discoveries.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sorted unique known Field Guide target IDs; empty.
`accessibility.<profile_id>`	Profile	Reduce Motion and Larger Text & Controls (`false`); input assistance (`standard`); camera sensitivity (`1.0`); camera auto-align, haptics, and left-handed HUD (`false`).
`audio.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sanitized master, music/ambience, and effects levels; `0.80`, `0.45`, and `0.80`.
`profile_achievements.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sorted unique known one-time achievement IDs; empty.
`story_clues.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sorted unique known story-clue IDs; empty.
`power_discoveries.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sorted unique temporary-power IDs encountered by that profile; empty.
`secret_unlocks.<profile_id>`	Profile	Sorted unique stable secret-content unlock IDs; empty.
`device_achievements.unlocked`	Device	Sorted unique known one-time device milestone IDs; empty.

Current score, current growth, Belly contents, location, current powers and their remaining time, session challenges, city clock, city seed, loaded districts, generated definitions, and generated-city deltas are session state and are never written by Start New Game.

Loading a version 1 save first renames the untouched source file to a timestamped migration-v1-to-v2 backup before migrating through version 3. Loading a version 2 save creates a migration-v2-to-v3 backup. Both paths preserve all existing profile and device fields, seed the new accessibility values with behavior-safe defaults, and set meta.version to 3. Unknown future versions and unreadable files retain the existing preservation behavior. If the original file cannot be preserved, saving is disabled rather than overwriting it.

Every version 3 load also performs an idempotent derived-progress repair before the menu is shown. It backfills achievements implied by device best score, unique Field Guide discoveries, whole-building discoveries, all power discoveries, or all event goals; backfills clues implied by saved discoveries or achievements; and restores the Golden Crumb from a saved Flight discovery. It also restores the clue-threshold achievement and secret-path unlock when six clues are present. This recovery uses the same stable IDs and does not change score, growth, session state, or the fresh-city rule.

Growth and powers

Growth is a central form of progression within play.

Digesting normal targets gradually fills a growth meter.
Rare targets can provide large growth boosts.
The frog becomes visibly larger.
The tongue becomes longer.
Larger targets become swallowable.
People and vehicles react more strongly as the frog grows.
New areas become reachable at larger sizes.

The implemented deterministic rebalance is centralized in src/gameplay_tuning.gd. Cumulative growth uses four physical tiers:

Tier	Growth required	Visual scale	Collision radius	Ground speed	Tongue range	City zoom	Camera lead
Small	0	1.00	28	330	380	0.90	220
Growing	100	1.25	35	345	500	0.86	230
Large	500	1.58	44	355	650	0.78	250
Enormous	1,700	2.35	66	320	900	0.62	320

Camera rotation is preserved when a growth tier changes; only the deterministic zoom and forward lead change. The slower enormous ground speed offsets its larger collision footprint and longest tongue.

Score is the authored base value multiplied by 1 + 0.35 × size tier + 0.45 × accuracy + 0.80 if rare + 0.30 if dangerous + 0.45 if swallowed during active pursuit, rounded to the nearest integer with a minimum of one. Growth reward is the authored base value multiplied by 1.00, 1.10, 1.25, or 1.35 for target size tiers zero through three, rounded to the nearest integer, plus 45 for a rare target. The guided Market Sign fills any remaining gap to the first 100-growth threshold so the tutorial retains its guaranteed growth lesson; the same sign uses the ordinary formula in free play.

Resistant targets use a 3.4-second struggle. Required taps are the authored tap count minus the frog’s size-tier advantage over the target, with a floor of four taps. Equal-size struggles therefore retain their authored difficulty, while returning to a smaller resistant target after growing is easier.

Vehicles and fully weakened whole buildings become edible at the Large tier. Pursuers remain dangerous and protect their eligible targets through Large, then become edible and unable to damage, net, or trap the frog at Enormous. Enormous growth never makes roads, walls, bridges, portals, furniture, or other fixed collision geometry edible.

Enormous growth is outdoor-only. Reaching 1,700 growth inside a connected room stores a pending session tier and applies it at the first collision-safe outdoor position after exit. An enormous frog cannot enter authored rooms or the hidden-maintenance portal, but an enormous state restored inside by a test or future migration may still use room exits. Enormous growth adds no scene nodes and uses the existing generated-district streaming ceiling.

One confirmed temporary power allows the frog to fly around the city for one minute. The progression milestone also adds:

a 20-second Speed Burst that increases ground movement by 35%;
a 30-second Long Tongue power that increases range by 40% and shortens recovery by 20%;
a 20-second Camouflage power that prevents new pursuit calls and accelerates loss of an existing pursuer; and
a Bubble Shield that blocks one eligible pursuit hit and otherwise expires after 30 seconds.

Temporary powers activate immediately when their source item is digested. There is no separate activation button. The HUD uses full power names and remaining seconds instead of letter abbreviations. To preserve all top-bar actions with large text and safe-area insets, it reserves a bounded readable timer slot and rotates through every active named power at 2.5-second intervals, while also showing the number of other active powers. Its desktop tooltip lists every active named timer. Persistent status guidance retains the selected eating control while explaining that powers need no separate button. Flight uses the normal click/tap destination control while allowing the route to cross ground walls and obstacles.

Power durations count active play only and pause while the Belly, Field Guide, or Options overlay or a room-transition fade pauses player control. Powers persist through connected-room transitions. Recollecting the same power keeps the longer of its current remaining time and the power’s standard duration rather than adding durations; different powers may coexist. Speed Burst affects only ground movement, so it does not multiply flight speed.

The current power sources are:

Power	Digested source	Active behavior
Flight	Flying Golden Cake	Ignores ground collision while remaining bounded to the active city or room; safe landing is required when time expires.
Speed Burst	Rooftop Beehive	Ground movement uses a 1.35 multiplier; flight retains its own fixed multiplier.
Long Tongue	Cursed Music Box	Tongue range uses a 1.40 multiplier and every ordinary or trap-applied tongue recovery is reduced to 80%.
Camouflage	Maintenance Pump Handle	New pursuer calls fail, active attacks cancel, and an existing pursuer loses the frog after 0.8 seconds.
Bubble Shield	Lily Pad Planter	Blocks one Animal Control net, pursuer contact, pursuer attack, or damaging pursuit trap, then ends. It does not block traffic.

All five power IDs are recorded once per profile when first activated. Repeated digestion can refresh gameplay time but cannot repeat discovery progress.

Infinite city

The game takes place in an endless city. New districts continue to generate as the frog explores. Damage and destruction remain in previously visited places during the current game rather than being automatically repaired.

The implemented foundation keeps the authored city as district (0,0) and places generated districts on a deterministic 3520×2720 world grid. Each game creates a session seed without using the existing gameplay random-number stream. A district’s coordinate and that session seed reproduce its archetype, streets, building, entrances, obstacles, open restock points, targets, and pursuit anchors.

Generated neighbors stream in before the frog reaches a district edge. Outside the core, the active district and its surrounding 3x3 ring are loaded, capped at nine generated districts. Distant generated nodes are removed from the scene tree. Untouched districts are regenerated on demand, while compact session-local deltas retain removed targets, moved or spat-out targets, removed building parts, and consumed or restored buildings.

After six profile clues reveal the secret path, a star portal appears in the Hidden Sewer Maintenance Pocket. It leads to Starfall Quarter, a special fantasy archetype placed four to six districts from the core at a coordinate derived from the current session seed. The district uses the same one-building, four-target, 3x3 streaming, collision, navigation, destruction, and compact delta limits as ordinary generated districts. A marked return star leads back to Hidden Maintenance without replacing the original River Park return.

The chosen coordinate is reserved from session start with stable secret_district_<x>_<y> instance IDs, even while it still presents an ordinary archetype before unlock. Revealing Starfall Quarter replaces only the definition and preserves removed or moved targets, building damage, swallowed building references, and other session deltas already recorded there.

The secret unlock persists, but its coordinate, layout details, target state, and destruction state do not. Start New Game derives a fresh placement and fresh district state from the new city seed. First entry grants one profile achievement and one device milestone; revisits cannot farm either.

Start New Game always creates a fresh city. Score, growth, Belly contents, location, city seed, destruction, moved targets, and generated-district deltas reset. Per-profile Field Guide entries, achievements, story clues, power discoveries, secret unlocks, preferences, and tutorial state persist, along with device-wide best score and device milestones. Generated world deltas are therefore session state and are not written to the profile save.

The city contains a large variety of shops, apartments, restaurants, and other enterable locations. A rare discovery is a large open plot containing many things to eat.

District types

Downtown skyscrapers (implemented foundation archetype)
Apartment neighborhoods (implemented foundation archetype)
Restaurant district
Shopping district (implemented foundation archetype)
Outdoor market
Suburbs and backyards
Industrial area (implemented foundation archetype)
Parks and gardens (implemented foundation archetype)
Waterfront and canals (implemented foundation archetype)
Construction sites
Entertainment district
Secret fantasy district (implemented as the clue-gated Starfall Quarter)

Buildings and interiors

Every building can be entered.
Entering an interior uses a short transition or fade.
Ordinary interiors are compact, with a few important rooms rather than a complete simulation of every room and floor.
Additional potential exploration spaces include upper floors, rooftops, fire escapes, balconies, sewers, subway tunnels, parks, ponds, construction cranes, and secret underground areas.
The navigation system marks buildings the player has discovered.
Generated districts currently contain one enterable street-level building shell with a collision-safe doorway, three removable parts, and a large-growth whole-building capture. Generated separate rooms and upper levels remain future work.
The current game has staged destruction for all four authored buildings. Each requires three removable parts and Large growth before the whole weakened building can be swallowed.
Leap Café stays enterable throughout its ordered sequence: remove the Sidewalk Menu Board, grow once and win an interior struggle with the Rear Espresso Counter, then strip the Front Awning. Its left bar remains in place so the Loose Phone still requires entering the café for a clear tongue shot.
Canal Apartments also stays enterable throughout its ordered sequence: remove the Address Plaque, grow once and win an interior struggle with the Lobby Bench, then strip the Entry Canopy. The remaining wall-side furniture keeps the Tenant’s Cat and Lobby Lamp exploration paths intact.
Leap Café and Canal Apartments use wall-hugging solid furniture with collision-aware routes through their central aisles. Their interior targets require the frog to enter, remain associated with their rooms when restocked, and reward exploring the space.
Leap Café also has the game’s first separate room: a marked rear door leads through a short fade to a compact stockroom with solid shelving, a centered room camera, a return door, and a Stockroom Coffee Tin target. The normal End Game HUD action becomes Exit Room while any connected room is active, routes to that room’s marked return door, and changes back after returning outdoors. A short post-exit grace period prevents repeated exit taps from immediately ending the score run. The stockroom entry point stays outside the return marker’s hit radius so the player’s first movement tap cannot accidentally leave. Belly, Guide, and Options use Back to Game rather than claiming that closing an overlay returns to the city. Entering hides the frog from active Animal Control pursuit. Reduce motion replaces the fade with an immediate cut, and consuming the café disables the stockroom entrance until the building is restored.
Canal Apartments has the second connected room: marked lobby stairs lead to a compact upper hall with solid wall-side furnishings, the same centered room camera, a return-to-lobby marker, and a tier-one Hallway Vacuum target. The target remains scoped to the upper hall when spat out or restocked. Entering also ends active pursuit, Reduce motion uses an immediate cut, and consuming the apartments disables the stairs until the building is restored.
The Canal Apartments upper hall now continues through a growth-gated fire door to a larger authored fire escape. This first multi-stage room chain uses paired safe landings instead of returning every room directly to the city. The fire escape uses a bounded follow camera, retains open central space for Large growth, and contains a room-scoped Balcony Laundry Basket. Returning through the upper hall restores the original city camera. Consuming the apartments disables the whole chain until the building is restored.
River Park now has a marked sewer hatch leading to a larger Sewer Junction, which continues into an Old Subway Service Tunnel and returns through the same two-stage route. Both sections use bounded follow cameras, authored Large-size-safe landings, central navigation space, and room-scoped targets: the Sewer Valve Wheel and resistant Abandoned Signal Lamp. Entering the chain ends pursuit, blocks remote pursuit spawning, pauses generated district streaming, and restores the River Park position and city camera on exit. Reduce motion converts every leg to an immediate cut.
Discovering the existing Sewer Valve Wheel reveals an otherwise invisible maintenance hatch in the Sewer Junction. The hatch branches into a compact Hidden Sewer Maintenance Pocket without adding a new story dependency. Its fixed camera, paired safe landings, and central floor support Large growth; its dangerous, resistant Maintenance Pump Handle remains scoped to the pocket for Belly returns and restocking. The persistent Field Guide discovery keeps the hatch revealed, direct transition calls cannot bypass the hidden gate, remote pursuit remains blocked, district unloading stays paused throughout the branch, and Reduce motion uses immediate cuts.
The River Park pond now has a marked boardwalk entrance leading to a larger Lily Pond Boardwalk with a bounded follow camera, authored safe arrival and return positions, open Large-growth navigation space, and a room-scoped Lily Pad Planter. Entering ends pursuit and blocks remote pursuit spawning; leaving restores the River Park camera and exact safe return position.
The northwest construction site now has a marked lift that unlocks after the first growth tier and reaches a large Construction Crane High Deck. Its bounded follow camera permits limited rotation without exposing neighboring authored rooms, while the widened deck, authored lift landings, and central route remain safe at Large growth. Entering ends pursuit, blocks remote pursuit spawning, and preserves a room-scoped dangerous, resistant Crane Operator Toolbox for Belly returns and restocking. Reduce motion uses an immediate lift cut and restores the city camera on return.
Moonlight Market has the first progression-gated rooftop: after growing once, the frog can use the marked interior ladder to reach a compact rooftop garden with solid wall-side planters, a centered room camera, a return-to-market marker, and a resistant tier-one Rooftop Beehive. The target remains scoped to the garden when spat out or restocked. Entering ends active pursuit, remote pursuit spawning remains blocked, Reduce motion uses an immediate cut, and consuming the market disables the ladder until restoration.
Oddities Shop has the first destruction-gated connected room. Removing the Curio Shelf reveals a marked trapdoor to a compact cellar with solid wall-side storage, a centered room camera, a return-to-shop marker, and a resistant tier-one Cursed Music Box. The target remains scoped to the cellar when spat out or restocked. Entering ends active pursuit, remote pursuit spawning remains blocked, Reduce motion uses an immediate cut, and consuming the shop disables the trapdoor until restoration. The removed shelf and cellar access remain unlocked after the shop is restored.

Dynamic city events

The city can change through:

a day and night cycle;
storms;
changing crowd sizes;
changing traffic levels;
shops opening and closing;
special festivals;
random emergencies; and
fantasy events.

The fixed city implements nine small deterministic dynamic-city slices. The day and night cycle changes the visible pedestrian crowd, secondary traffic level, streetlight glow, and restrained synthesized ambience. Once per 180-second cycle, a 36-second daytime rain shower fades in, reaches a steady peak, and fades out. Peak rain adds fixed draw-only streaks, wet-road sheen, puddle highlights, and a cooler tint while reducing ambient activity from 10 pedestrians and 5 vehicles to 4 pedestrians and 3 vehicles. The 84 streaks are submitted as one batched draw-only mark set. Reduce motion keeps the wet presentation and lower density but freezes the streaks with the other decorative movement. Rain adds no audio asset, physics, targeting, scoring, save data, random-number use, or Field Guide entry.

Earlier in the daytime window, a separate 29-second wind squall fades in for 7.2 seconds, holds for 14.4 seconds, and fades out for 7.2 seconds while the River Park meetup and all authored pedestrian and traffic routes remain active. Forty mathematically positioned directional ribbons are submitted as one batched draw-only mark set across the city, with a subtle cool-grey tint. Reduce motion freezes their translation while the deterministic schedule, intensity, direction, and fixed visible count remain readable. The squall adds no nodes, actors, collision, forces, targeting, damage, score, growth, Belly items, saves, discoveries, challenges, gameplay random-number use, or Field Guide entries. Connected-room travel and generated-district streaming retain the same single global presentation layer rather than duplicating weather.

Earlier in the same cycle, five draw-only visitors gather for a 68-second River Park meetup, including a 50-second steady interval, then disperse before rain begins. During pursuit, the marked 145-unit meetup area becomes crowd cover. A small or medium ground frog that remains free inside it for 1.75 seconds loses Animal Control. Leaving the area resets progress; flight, Large or Enormous growth, knockback, netting, tongue pulls, and target struggles cannot build cover. Reduce motion freezes the visitors while preserving event and hiding timing. The meetup adds no collision, target, save, audio, or gameplay-random behavior.

Oddities Shop implements the first scheduled business. Its intact removable shutter raises from the late-evening boundary through early morning, revealing the existing entrance without weakening the building. During the day it lowers and becomes the same edible shutter used by the destruction sequence. Closure waits while the frog or Animal Control occupies the shop or doorway, or while the frog explores the connected cellar, preventing a character from being trapped or overlapped. Eating the shutter permanently opens the entrance for the rest of that city session. The schedule is deterministic, adds no nodes, targets, saves, audio, animation, or random-number use, and has identical timing with Reduce motion.

Moonlight Market implements a separate daytime business schedule. Its intact removable door opens from clock 0.30 through the instant before 0.58, spanning 50.4 seconds of each 180-second cycle and closing as the rain window begins. Closure waits while the frog or any pursuer occupies the market or doorway, or while the frog explores the connected rooftop, so the schedule cannot trap or overlap a character. Eating the door permanently opens the entrance for the rest of the city session, and consuming the building cannot re-enable its collision. The outdoor Moonlight Market night bazaar remains a separate event after the indoor market closes. The schedule uses no random numbers, new nodes, saves, score, growth, Belly changes, discoveries, challenges, audio, or Field Guide progress, and Reduce motion does not alter its timing.

Moonlight Market hosts the first festival event. Ten fixed draw-only lanterns fade in around the market during the late-evening boundary, remain lit through midnight, and fade out before the daytime River Park meetup begins. Their motion uses the existing absolute city-activity clock, and Reduce motion keeps them lit while freezing their gentle sway. The bazaar adds no scene nodes, collision, targeting, scoring, saves, audio assets, gameplay random-number use, or Field Guide entries.

The Canal Kite Festival is a separate daytime event. It begins exactly when the wind squall ends, fades in for 3.6 seconds, holds for 10.8 seconds, and fades out for 3.6 seconds before the rain window. Eight fixed kites sway above River Park while the nearby meetup and routed daytime activity remain available. Their outlines and tails are grouped into two batched draw calls with one static event label; Reduce motion freezes the gentle sway without hiding the kites, label, intensity, or schedule. The festival adds no actors, collision, forces, targets, saves, score, growth, Belly items, discoveries, challenges, gameplay random-number use, audio assets, or Field Guide entries. Pursuit, crowd escape, traps, roadblocks, room travel, and district streaming continue to use their existing rules.

During the steady rain window, one bounded water-main repair creates a temporary detour from clock 0.62 through the instant before 0.74. It tries three authored core-city anchors in fixed order and retries once per second if live collision, targets, buildings, entrances, portals, or safe navigation margins block every site. The repair uses one StaticBody2D, one collision shape, a fixed label, and no animation or gameplay randomness. Ground movement and pursuers route around it, flight crosses it, and Enormous growth retains a verified safe route. It may coexist with one draw-only pursuer trap, but it never overlaps a pursuit roadblock: an existing roadblock finishes first, while new roadblocks wait until the repair window ends. The detour expires at the schedule boundary, clears on connected-room travel or leaving the authored core, retries on a safe return during the same window, and updates navigation on every deployment and cleanup. It changes no score, growth, Belly state, saves, discoveries, challenges, targets, audio, gameplay random-number state, or Field Guide progress.

Ambient pedestrians and vehicles use authored routes and are decorative rather than targets, hazards, or persistent world state. The labeled Delivery Van remains the game’s interactive traffic target.

Target locations

Targets may be found in:

restaurants and shops;
outdoor markets;
gardens and open lots;
the possession of people;
food-delivery vehicles; and
strange or fantasy locations.

Threats and pursuit

Larger people, dogs, security, and animal-control characters can threaten a small frog. Traffic is dangerous while the frog is small, but vehicles become edible after sufficient growth.

There is no automatic city-wide alert meter. A target that escapes or observes the right event can call for help.

Pursuers are summoned only when the frog loses a resistant-target struggle. Successful swallows do not create a pursuit. A failed struggle against an object, vehicle, removable building part, or whole building calls Security; a failed living-target struggle calls the Watchdog; and another failed resistant target calls Animal Control. Ordinary eating and non-resistant targets never summon Security.

Pursuers may:

chase the frog;
block roads and doors;
interrupt or deflect the tongue;
protect valuable targets; and
set traps.

Ground pursuers use the same deterministic collision topology as player movement, with their own radius, bounded repath cadence, and stuck recovery. They cannot route through active building or room collision, roadblocks, or district space that is not loaded. Their net sweeps and tongue-deflection checks remain direct physics queries rather than navigation decisions.

The game’s Animal Control pursuer implements the first bounded net attack. A small or medium ground frog within the authored range receives a clear 0.8-second aim warning before one draw-only net travels along the locked path. The net sweeps its full radius against building collision, so walls and corners stop it, and moving out of the telegraphed line dodges it. A hit interrupts an active tongue struggle, roots the frog for a three-second escape, and reuses the existing rapid-tap panel. The panel explicitly states that only the net temporarily locks movement and directs desktop players to left-click rapidly or touch players to tap rapidly anywhere; Hold Assist accepts a continuous press. Six inputs tear through the net without changing score or progression; timing out applies a 22-point capped loss and knockback. Flight and Enormous growth are immune. Reduce motion removes the telegraph and escape scale pulses while preserving the gameplay timing and static net information. The attack is deterministic, uses no gameplay random numbers, adds no collision or scene nodes, and has a distinct warning sound.

Animal Control also explicitly deflects tongue shots from a small or medium frog. A direct shot at the officer, or a shot whose path crosses the officer before reaching another target, stops at the officer with a short draw-only shield flash and the normal tongue recovery. The intended target, score, growth, challenges, and Field Guide remain unchanged. At Enormous growth the officer can no longer protect targets: shots pass through the block, while a direct hit can swallow Animal Control through the existing discovery path. Reduce motion keeps the static flash while suppressing its expansion. The deflection adds no scene nodes, collision, saves, or gameplay random-number use.

Security Guard is the second bounded pursuer archetype. Secured objects, vehicles, building parts, and whole-building struggles can call one guard instead of Animal Control. The guard is slower and searches the last visible frog position using the same deterministic generated-district navigation, but solid city geometry breaks its 760-unit line of sight and three uninterrupted seconds without detection ends the chase. It protects only nearby valuables, not food or living targets, and uses a 0.65-second draw-only flashlight warning instead of a net. Remaining in the locked beam applies one 10-point capped knockback; stepping out of the beam, moving behind a wall, flying, or reaching Enormous growth prevents the strike. Crowd cover loses the sight-based guard in 1.1 seconds. The guard deploys no physical roadblock, but after five eligible seconds it can place one draw-only motion beacon with a 0.5-second calibration warning. An armed beacon reveals a ground frog through geometry for two seconds and clears partial crowd-hide progress without damage or immobilization. At Enormous growth it can be swallowed into the Belly and discovered in the Field Guide like Animal Control. Reduce motion freezes beam decoration while preserving its warning and hit timing.

Watchdog is the third bounded pursuer archetype. Resistant living targets can call one dog instead of Animal Control. Its 860-unit scent detection ignores walls while the frog remains on the ground, and its 22-unit navigation radius, 320-unit speed, and shorter repath cadence let it use narrower generated-city routes than either person. It protects only nearby living targets and attacks with a 0.45-second warning followed by one 220-unit physical lunge using its existing collision body. Walls stop the lunge, moving out of its locked path dodges it, and a hit applies one 14-point capped knockback. Flight breaks scent and ends the chase after 1.4 seconds; crowd cover takes 0.8 seconds; the total chase is capped at 22 seconds. The dog deploys no physical roadblock, but after four eligible seconds it can leave one draw-only sticky scent patch with a one-second settling warning. An armed patch applies 1.2 seconds of ordinary tongue recovery without stopping movement, changing score, or dealing damage. The dog uses no projectile or gameplay random numbers and remains edible at Enormous growth with its own Belly and Field Guide record. Reduce motion suppresses decorative lunge pulses and trails without changing warning, movement, collision, or hit timing.

The River Park meetup implements the first crowd-based pursuit escape. While the daytime meetup is active, pursuit changes its marked area to HIDE HERE and a static progress ring fills as an eligible frog stays within the crowd. Completing the short hold dismisses Animal Control without awarding score, growth, challenge progress, or Field Guide credit.

Animal Control can deploy one temporary physical roadblock per chase. After three unpaused, movement-enabled pursuit seconds, the nearest safe authored road anchor 260–850 units from the frog selects its fixed layout; if no anchor is currently valid, deployment waits and retries without consuming the allowance. Straight anchors use one solid segment. Staggered anchors use two offset segments with an authored opening of at least 148 units, preserving a route for the 132-unit-diameter Enormous frog while still creating a visible chicane. Both layouts are represented by one capped roadblock body, with at most two collision shapes and two navigation rectangles.

Every segment is checked against live collision, building footprints, targets, loaded navigation bounds, and 90-unit Enormous edge clearance before deployment. The roadblock blocks ground movement, pursuer movement, net sweeps, and tongue rays; flight passes over it. Three tongue hits anywhere on its body break the entire layout, while an untouched roadblock expires after ten seconds. Breaking or expiry never deploys a replacement during the same pursuit. Pursuit end, connected-room travel, and generated-district changes clear it immediately and rebuild navigation topology. Placement is deterministic, uses no gameplay random numbers, and changes no score, growth, target, save, challenge, or Field Guide state.

Each pursuer can deploy one profile-driven draw-only sidewalk trap per chase at the nearest safe authored anchor 180–700 units from the frog. If no anchor is safe, deployment retries without consuming the allowance. Animal Control waits six eligible seconds, then places a 46-unit snare with a 0.75-second arming warning and twelve-second lifetime. Eligible contact applies the existing capped damage and knockback flow for 12 points; active damage recovery prevents the snare from stacking with another hit, and triggering it cancels an overlapping net so knockback cannot become an immediate capture loop. Security waits five seconds, then places a 54-unit motion beacon with a 0.5-second warning and ten-second lifetime. It deals no damage, clears partial crowd cover, and grants exactly two seconds of forced sight before wall-aware detection resumes. Watchdog waits four seconds, then leaves a 42-unit sticky patch with a one-second warning and fourteen-second lifetime. It deals no damage or immobilization and applies 1.2 seconds of tongue recovery while movement and pursuit escape remain available.

Flight, Enormous growth, knockback, movement-disabled states, net escape, tongue pulls, and target struggles prevent every trap profile from triggering. Triggered or expired traps never redeploy in the same pursuit. Pursuit end, connected-room travel, and generated-district changes clear them immediately. Reduce motion freezes decorative pulses while retaining labels, arming changes, and all gameplay timing. Placement uses no gameplay random numbers, changes no navigation topology, and adds no collision, target, save, score, growth, challenge, or Field Guide state beyond Animal Control’s explicitly documented 12-point damage.

If a pursuer catches the frog:

the frog is knocked backward; and
points are lost, but the score never drops below zero. Contact costs 20 points for Animal Control, 16 for Security, and 12 for the Watchdog.

Ordinary pursuit never disables movement. The frog can escape by clicking or tapping ground to outrun pursuers, hiding inside buildings, losing them in crowds, or using temporary powers. Animal Control only roots the frog after a net hit, and movement returns after either breaking the net or taking its bounded timeout penalty. Once sufficiently large, the frog can also eat its pursuers.

Additional goals

Discovering every target type is now a confirmed secondary goal. The game implements this through a persistent per-player Frog Field Guide. Each unique target is recorded on its first successful swallow, without awarding extra score or growth.

Short challenges are also a confirmed session goal. Each normal session shows three fixed tasks: make three swallows at 90% accuracy or better, win two rapid-tap struggles, and swallow four distinct target types. Challenge progress starts after the tutorial is completed or skipped, resets with each game, and awards presentation-only completion feedback so it cannot distort score, growth, or permanent Field Guide progress. Returning and re-eating a target can count as another accurate swallow, while the distinct-target task only counts each target ID once per session.

The progression milestone confirms all remaining optional goal categories:

non-farmable achievements with visibly separate session, profile, and device-wide progress;
an enormous-growth tier beyond the current maximum, with explicit collision, camera, navigation, room, target-eligibility, and performance behavior;
the four additional temporary powers defined above;
eight to ten optional, persistent story clues outside the Field Guide;
one bounded secret-fantasy district path unlocked through those clues; and
one-time goals tied to existing deterministic city events.

The story remains a light environmental mystery. Clues use short, child-friendly captions in a separate journal section, imply rather than fully explain the mystery, and do not require cutscenes, dialogue trees, accounts, or personal information. Collecting enough clues reveals the secret-district path, but reading story text is never required for score-focused free play.

The Guide & Journal now presents progression under explicit ownership headings:

Session goals are the three existing challenges and reset on every Start New Game. They never grant score, growth, powers, or permanent rewards.
Profile achievements are stable one-time IDs. They cover first growth, twelve unique Field Guide entries, a whole weakened building, all five unique power discoveries, six unique clues, all four event goals, and the future secret-district and enormous-growth milestones.
Device milestones are separate stable one-time IDs for a 2,500 device best score and the future first secret-district and enormous-growth events.

Achievement triggers use unique or monotonic state. Re-eating a restocked target, repeating a completed event action, recollecting a known power, or swallowing another building cannot add duplicate permanent progress. The four event achievements require any successful swallow during the deterministic Moonlight Market bazaar, Canal Kite Festival, active water-main repair, or wind-squall windows, including an eligible pursuer swallow. Completing all four unlocks Event Explorer.

The nine persistent clues are Golden Crumb from digesting Golden Cake, Sewer Stamp from the hidden pump handle, Moonlit Receipt from the bazaar goal, Silver Kite Thread from the kite goal, Folded Blueprint from the repair goal, Oddities Label from the cellar music box, Crane Operator’s Map from the crane toolbox, District Glyph from finding all six normal generated archetypes, and Giant Shadow from swallowing a whole weakened building. Six unique clues permanently reveal the secret-fantasy path for that profile. The path unlock persists, while its generated city placement and contents remain fresh session state.

Progression milestone decisions

The September 1, 2026 progression decision checkpoint resolved the remaining product questions:

New games: Start New Game creates a fresh generated city and gameplay session while retaining only profile and device meta-progress.
Pursuit calls: only a lost resistant struggle summons the target’s documented pursuer archetype; successful eating does not alert Security.
Goals: achievements, enormous growth, additional powers, story clues, secret districts, and deterministic event goals are all included.
Attachment boundary: only explicit edible targets and staged removable sign, door or awning, counter, and other separately authored target parts can be removed. Roads, walls, bridges, portals, and fixed structural geometry remain permanent until an eligible whole building is swallowed. Enormous growth does not turn arbitrary collision geometry into targets.
Powers: Speed Burst, Long Tongue, Camouflage, and Bubble Shield join the existing one-minute Flight power under the timing and replacement rules above.
Tuning: a full gameplay rebalance is approved for point values, growth thresholds, tongue range and recovery, struggle difficulty, and pursuit penalties. Exact values must remain deterministic, documented, and covered by focused tests.
Story: use the light environmental mystery described above, with eight to ten concise persistent clues and an implied secret-district reveal.

Every new persistent field must be documented with its ownership scope and default. Existing saves must migrate forward without losing profiles, scores, tutorial completion, Field Guide discoveries, accessibility settings, or audio settings.

Production direction

The September 1, 2026 production checkpoint resolves the remaining publication direction. Visual review remains intentionally deferred until publication; the production pass must follow this direction without requesting iterative visual approval.

Art and tone

Use a hybrid original-asset system built from reviewable SVG source files, with restrained shaders or draw overlays only where they improve weather, lighting, interaction feedback, or transitions.
Use a layered storybook cut-paper style with rounded silhouettes and a tone of whimsical, gentle mischief.
Use warm confectionery city colors, teal canals and parks, and violet-and- amber nights. Informational states must remain contrast-safe and readable without relying on color alone.
Use medium selective detail: keep navigation silhouettes clean while giving interactive targets, characters, landmarks, and story clues richer detail.
Keep every asset original to the project. Record source, authorship, license, and reproduction instructions in the repository asset ledger.

Animation

Use snappy cutout-style animation with readable anticipation, squash and stretch, clear impacts, and subtle ambient loops. Movement, tongue use, swallowing, struggles, growth, damage, pursuit, weather, destruction, and transitions each require distinct feedback. Reduce Motion must retain the state change, label, silhouette, and timing while removing continuous travel, camera shake, pulsing, and decorative motion.

Music and sound

Expand the original score into a soft chamber-synth palette using marimba- like tones, plucked voices, toy percussion, warm pads, and playful city motifs.
Adapt music for the menu, day, night, pursuit, major growth, and end-game summary without making music necessary for gameplay.
Use layered original synthesized or reproducibly authored cartoon foley, creature sounds, and city ambience without spoken dialogue.
Preserve independent Master, Music & ambience, and Effects controls, bounded reusable effect voices, deterministic variation, and gameplay-randomness isolation.
The production implementation uses five compact four-second music loops, two four-second ambience loops, 31 semantic effects, and exactly six persistent players: one music, one ambience, and four reusable effect voices. Pursuit temporarily overrides day/night music and restores the current time-of-day cue when the chase ends; the score postcard uses the epilogue context.

Use an illustrated title scene, skippable contextual onboarding cards, journal-style clue postcards, and a score-summary end-game epilogue. Story presentation remains concise, child-friendly, optional for score-focused play, and free of required reading, cutscenes, or dialogue trees.

The production implementation uses an original draw-only city-and-canal title backdrop, illustrated tutorial cue cards, numbered clue postcards inside the Guide & Journal, a paused score postcard before returning to the title, and short input-blocking screen fades. Reduce Motion converts screen fades and decorative card movement to immediate/static presentation. Save read, backup, and write failures are surfaced as persistent player-facing warnings while technical error details remain in the Godot log.

Accessibility additions

In addition to the existing scalable text, contrast, Reduce Motion, touch targets, safe-area layout, independent audio, and readable status feedback, the production pass includes:

color-vision-safe icons, patterns, labels, and non-color state cues;
adjustable double-tap, rapid-tap struggle, and hold timing assistance;
camera sensitivity, auto-align assistance, and a one-touch camera reset;
independently controlled haptic feedback;
replayable onboarding and contextual help; and
left- or right-handed HUD action placement.

All additions are stored per profile with documented defaults and migration behavior. Accessibility assistance must not change score formulas, target eligibility, world geometry, or progression ownership.

Distribution

Prepare a normal public App Store release path. TestFlight is unavailable to the target device because its Apple Account is under 13; do not falsify age or attempt to bypass Apple’s restriction. The App Store export path must not set testFlightInternalTestingOnly.

Preparation does not authorize signing, uploading, submission, publication, release creation, or tag creation. Those operations require separate explicit approval after the production pass, metadata, device measurements, and release checklists are complete.