# Engagement Layers (Crafting Feel)

Crafting is the *primary* action of the game — not seasoning on a meta-game like Stardew or Minecraft. That means the bar is higher. Drag-to-station with a strategic input layer is enough for *thinking* engagement, but it's not enough for *feeling* engagement. Three additive layers fix that:

| Layer | What | Status |
|---|---|---|
| **Layer 1: Juice** | Visceral feedback on every interaction (drag-snap, particles, audio, haptics) | Recommended, not formally accepted |
| **Layer 2: Master's Touch** | Brief skill-timing mini-game per craft, opt-in, difficulty-scaled | **Designed** (this doc) |
| **Layer 3: Adjacent-station synergy** | Passive bonuses for thoughtful parallel-craft scheduling | Recommended, not formally accepted |

References for "primary-action games that feel amazing": **Vampire Survivors** (almost no decisions, every kill is a tactile pop), **Forager** (click rock → satisfying), **Cookie Clicker** (literally just clicking, juiced perfectly), **Slay the Spire** (cards already chosen, but each play feels meaningful).

## Layer 1: Juice (recommended)

The single biggest miss in vanilla drag-to-station crafting. Make the *act* feel like bubble wrap:

- Ingredients drag with weight. They *snap* into station slots with a small particle burst, audio per placement, brief haptic
- Stations have idle animations that intensify when you hover ("ready to receive")
- A small visual countdown / heartbeat as the craft "thinks"
- Workshop ambient SFX layer up briefly during craft action
- Card lift-out at completion uses the reveal choreography (already designed in [13-reveal-choreography.md](13-reveal-choreography.md))

Forager and Vampire Survivors are mechanically simple games whose secret is *all* in the juice. Worth taking that lesson seriously — this layer carries the moment-to-moment feel for every player whether they engage with the others or not.

## Layer 2: Master's Touch (designed)

Inspired by the dart mini-game in *Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Serrated Scalpel* — two-axis energy meters, simple input, difficulty-scaled. Brief skill-timing per craft that *nudges* outcomes without dominating them.

### The mechanic

After the player hits Craft, the result auto-resolves over the craft's duration. *During that window*, two energy meters appear in sequence:

- **Meter 1 — Quality**: horizontal bar with a moving indicator and a green zone. Tap to lock. Hitting green nudges the quality roll up.
- **Meter 2 — Critical**: appears after Meter 1 locks. Same mechanic. Hitting green increases critical-success chance.

**If the player ignores the meters, the craft auto-resolves on its timer with the engineer's roll alone. No penalty.** This is the foundational rule — engagement is opt-in.

### Difficulty scales meter behavior

Faster meter + smaller green zone = harder timing. Difficulty is a function of:

- **Recipe baseline** — Crude Pickaxe = slow; Lapis-Infused Moonsilver Falchion = fast
- **Target quality vs. engineer skill** — attempting Masterwork roll with a journeyman narrows the zone further
- **Critical-attempt toggle (opt-in)** — further narrows the zone in exchange for bigger crit bonus

A player attempting ambitious crafts is leaning in, timing carefully. A player banging out 20 Crude pickaxes for sale hits Craft → wait → done.

### Themed skinning per station

Universal input mechanic, station-specific visual:

| Station | Skin |
|---|---|
| Forge | Hammer-strike rhythm — meters are timing of two hammer falls |
| Alchemy Table | Stir-and-pour — stir tempo + pour-in moment |
| Loom | Shuttle-pass timing |
| Carpenter | Plane-stroke + chisel-tap |
| Glassworks | Furnace-pull + blow-rhythm |
| Jeweler | Setting-press + polish-stroke |

Same inputs, recognizable craft motions per discipline. Players develop favorites without learning new mechanics.

### Reward magnitude (bounded)

The nudge matters but doesn't dominate. Working numbers:

- **Hit both green** → +1 to quality-band roll, +5% critical chance bump
- **Hit one** → small partial bonus
- **Miss both / skip** → engineer-skill roll only, no penalty
- **Critical-attempt toggle** → +15% crit chance if both hit, smaller margin for error

**Engineer skill remains dominant.** A Master Engineer with both meters missed should beat a Journeyman with both meters hit on average. The mini-game polishes the result; it doesn't replace the strategic layer.

### Trait integration

Roster traits become visibly meaningful in the meter:

- **Lucky** — widens green zones for that engineer's crafts
- **Steady** — slows meters slightly
- **Hasty** — narrows zones (penalty), small speed bonus to craft duration
- **Drunk** — meters wobble erratically; high variance

This is how traits become *felt* during play, not just stat numbers in a tooltip.

### Tie-ins

- **Onboarding** ([12-onboarding.md](12-onboarding.md)) — the forced-crit Lantern moment is "you nailed both meters." Player feels they earned it. The earlier Crude Pickaxe craft gently introduces the meter on slow speed with a wide green zone (essentially impossible to miss) so the mechanic is taught before it matters.
- **Reveal choreography** ([13-reveal-choreography.md](13-reveal-choreography.md)) — critical-success mid-flip fires both from lucky engineer rolls AND from perfect Master's Touch timing. Same dopamine moment, different earnings paths.
- **Veteran auto-craft** — toggle in settings to skip the meters by default for queued bulk crafts. The mini-game is for the items that matter, not for filling sale queues.

### Accessibility

- Auto-craft toggle (skip meters always) — no penalty
- Larger green zones option (motor-impairment / casual mode)
- Visual feedback for meter timing strong enough that audio-only or visual-only players can both engage
- Pause-during-meter-tap for cognitive load (no tight reflex pressure)

## Layer 3: Adjacent-station synergy (recommended)

Reward thoughtful parallel-craft scheduling without adding a new active mechanic. Pure rule additions to the existing system:

- **Shared-warmth** — two parallel crafts sharing an ingredient type (both use iron) → both get a small quality bonus
- **Chained refining** — one craft's output is the next queued craft's input → small efficiency bonus, faster turnaround
- **Engineer cross-assist** — same engineer assigned to two adjacent crafts → fatigue cost, small bonus to both
- **Discipline pair** — Smith + Jeweler crafting at the same time → set-piece bonus when their outputs combine into one final item later

This is a *thinking* hook that emerges from existing systems. Players who optimize feel clever; players who don't still get fine results. No new UI, no new mini-game.

## What we're explicitly NOT building

- A mandatory mini-game per craft (kills veterans, hates the loop)
- Skill bars / mastery numbers per craft type (deliberately cut earlier)
- Real-time combat or twitch-action elements (wrong game)
- A sticker-album of mini-games (one per station with totally different mechanics is fragmenting; the themed-skinning approach keeps the input language unified)

## Summary

The combination — Juice everywhere, Master's Touch as opt-in skill nudge, Synergy as opt-in optimization — gives crafting **viscera + skill + strategy** without any single layer having to carry alone. Players who want to button-mash get satisfying button-mashes. Players who want to optimize have meaningful levers. Players who want to roleplay just craft and equip and admire.

Open questions:
- Visual representation of the meter — vertical / horizontal / pendulum / circular dial?
- Sound design per station's themed meter (hammer-rhythm vs. shuttle-click vs. pestle-grind)
- Critical-attempt toggle — is this a craft-time choice, or a default setting per item type?
- Layer 1 and Layer 3 — these are recommended but not yet formally accepted. Worth pulling on each as separate threads later.