Parley Hatch 277c158378 feat(deepfall): board-game design + balance-by-bot simulator

DEEPFALL: a tabletop game mashing up 9 loved games (SmashUp, Dragon
Rampage, Blood Rage, Catan, EverQuest, Daggerfall, Eye of the Beholder,
Quarriors, SmallWorld). Core fusion = SmallWorld decline + Blood Rage
glorious death -> three exits (Cash Out / Press On / Worthy End) under a
rising Maw that collapses a reikhelm dungeon floor-by-floor.

- deepfall-core: pure deterministic engine (vendored ChaCha8, 11 tests)
- deepfall-sim: balance-by-bot sweeps -> CSV/JSON
- analysis/analyze.py: stdlib ASCII heatmap (no deps)
- DESIGN.md (rules + post-critique revisions), FINDINGS.md (9-iteration
  balance journey), README.md
- reikhelm-core/examples/sample_dungeon.rs: dumps a real generated board

Method: adversarial design critics -> build -> simulate -> tune. 9
iterations compressed combo spread 77.8 -> 32.5 pts (all 36 combos
viable). Fixed deep-content lockout (value rises with the Maw), the
multi-collapse feel-bad (1 collapse/round cap; feel-bad now 0.00/game),
and dead combos. Open finding: Cash-Out and Worthy-End are substitutes
for a glory-maximizing bot.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-06-18 22:49:33 -06:00

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Sample Dungeon — concrete example board

Generated by the reikhelm dungeon recipe (reikhelm-core/src/recipes/dungeon.rs) and dumped by the throwaway example reikhelm-core/examples/sample_dungeon.rs.

Reproduce exactly:

cargo run --example sample_dungeon -p reikhelm-core 42 48 32

Seed: 42
Canvas: 48 x 32 cells
Config: DungeonConfig::default() (just resized) — BSP min_leaf 8, max_depth 5; rooms 5..=11, margin 1; extra_edge_ratio 0.30 (loop edges, not a strict tree); door_chance 0.5.
Result: 12 rooms, 14 corridors, deterministic for this seed.

ASCII map

Legend: # wall . floor + door o pillar ~ water ! lava

################################################
#################.....####################...###
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#...........#####.....###########.######.......#
#...........#####.....###########.+....+.......#
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#...........#####.....###########.#######....###
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####.#########...##.#############.#######+######
####.########.....#.#############.####.......###
####.########.....#.#############.####.......###
####.########.....#.##########....####.......###
##...########.....#.##########...+...........###
###...+...........+.#######.........##....o..###
###.#.#######.....#########.........##.......###
#####.#######.....############...#####.......###
#####.#######.....############...########+######
#####.#######.....#######################.######
#####.########...########################.######
#####.#########+#########################.######
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##.......######.########......###########.######
#.........#####+#######........##########+######
#.........+.+.....####..........####...........#
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###.....#####.....#####........#####...........#
#############.....######......######...........#
################################################

Regions

Themes drive DEEPFALL room flavor. Only rooms carry a theme; corridors are plain passages. cells is the room's floor area (a rough "size").

Region	Kind	Theme	Cells (size)	Top-left (x,y)	W x H
0	Room	Stone	55	(1,3)	11x5
1	Room	Threshold	35	(17,1)	5x7
2	Room	Den	9	(31,3)	5x5
3	Room	Vault	37	(40,1)	7x7
4	Room	Den	8	(2,13)	4x4
5	Room	Library	51	(1,23)	9x7
6	Room	Crypt	51	(13,10)	5x11
7	Room	Den	30	(27,13)	9x6
8	Room	Hall	49	(38,11)	7x7
9	Room	Crypt	25	(13,26)	5x5
10	Room	Den	58	(22,24)	10x7
11	Room	Throne	55	(36,26)	11x5

Plus 14 corridor regions (ids 12–25) linking the rooms.

Entities (overlay layer)

Entrance @ (19,4) — sits in the Threshold room (region 1).
Exit @ (41,28) — sits in the Throne room (region 11), the far end.
Treasure x6 and Monster x14 scattered, biased by each room's theme (e.g. Vault/Library loot-rich, Den monster-dense, Throne high-risk high-reward, Threshold kept safe).

Mapping to DEEPFALL

Each reikhelm room becomes a DEEPFALL room tile carrying its theme (Vault, Library, Crypt, Den, Hall, Throne, Threshold...), which sets that tile's loot/danger profile via the recipe's (treasure_bias, monster_bias); corridors are the connective passages between them. Depth = distance from the Threshold entrance toward the Throne exit, so deeper rooms are higher value (and higher risk) — the Throne boss seat at the far corner is the natural payoff tile.

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