aetherbound-guild/docs/product/GAME_PRODUCT_CONTRACT.md

Aetherbound Guild: Game Product Contract

Authority: player promise, complete loop, run and campaign shape, canonical vocabulary, product boundaries, and design acceptance.

Revision: recruit-line-design-r2 / 2026-08-10

Companion authorities: SYSTEMS_AND_BATTLE.md, ECONOMY_AND_BALANCE.md, and SAVE_AND_FAILURE_CONTRACT.md.

1. Authority And Decision Order

This document defines what the game promises. The systems authority owns combat, party-line, recruit, profession, equipment, and artifact mechanics. The economy authority owns prices, rewards, pacing, capacity selection, difficulty numbers, and simulations. The save/failure authority owns commit, casualty, interruption, retry, recovery, and rollback behavior.

When two statements conflict, apply this order:

1. the frozen repository specification and later explicit Owner decisions;
2. save integrity and exactly-once transaction rules;
3. formulas in the systems and economy authorities;
4. this product intent;
5. content, presentation, gallery, and prototype instances.

The repository remains design-only. No document in this package authorizes an engine project, runtime implementation, production package, store operation, or bulk final media production. Human comprehension, fun, visual, listening, device, packaging, and release acceptance remain later gates.

2. Product Definition

Aetherbound Guild is a premium landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn fantasy auto-battler about building a changing company from generated recruits. At each market the player reads three battle offers, hires recruits, buys equipment, locks or refreshes offers, equips the company, and orders one horizontal party line from front to rear. The player commits to a risk, watches the deterministic battle resolve, reads the causal result, then adapts after rewards, deaths, dismissals, and replacements.

The transferable play thesis is independently expressed as:

read a market and a visible threat
-> buy a capability under price pressure
-> order one front-to-rear line
-> commit to a reward/risk contract
-> observe automatic execution
-> explain the first decisive interaction
-> keep, dismiss, mourn, or replace
-> repeat with a changed company and budget

Player skill is preparation, valuation, formation order, risk selection, and diagnosis. Battle controls are limited to start, pause, speed, inspect, and retreat. There is no repeated manual skill activation and no mid-battle formation or equipment editing.

2.1 Audience

Primary players enjoy job systems, shop valuation, equipment interactions, formation order, and watching a prepared plan work without attack-by-attack input. Secondary players enjoy mastering a broad fixed catalog, finding hidden hybrids, completing collections, and applying optional postgame laws.

The game must support 15-30 minute partial sessions, 45-75 minute complete contract runs, touch-only play, frequent pausing, and return after a long break.

2.2 Commercial And Platform Boundary

Field	Contract
Business model	One-time premium purchase; no ads, paid energy, random paid reward, paid currency, battle pass, daily streak, or pay-to-skip
Presentation	Original landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn fantasy; no third-party commercial asset enters this repository
Target platforms	Landscape mobile, PC, and console with equivalent touch, mouse, keyboard, and controller semantics
Launch languages	English and Simplified Chinese from semantic message IDs, not concatenated strings
First clear	15-25 authored hours across eight regions and sixteen contracts
Mastery	60+ hours of profession, equipment, artifact, enemy, and high-difficulty breadth
Connectivity	Complete core play offline; platform services never gate play or save access
Development	Frozen until all design-completion gates, independent review, and Owner approval pass

No real-time wait, offline income, social obligation, or monetized relief may be introduced to solve economy or failure problems.

3. Canonical Vocabulary

These terms are shared keys. Product-facing documents must use them with the same meaning.

Term	Definition
Guild	Persistent profile containing unlock breadth, region progress, records, settings, and collection knowledge
Recruit	One generated participant in the current run, built from a generated name, modular appearance seed, fixed profession, rolled attributes, exactly one Trait, equipment, level, and survival history
Profession	One fixed reusable combat ruleset from the authored catalog
Trait	One short mechanical modifier with a visible benefit and cost; each Recruit has exactly one
Party line	The ordered simultaneous deployment from front to rear
Line capacity	Maximum allied footprint deployable at once; selected as ten and earned from four during each run
Reserve	A living Recruit owned in the run but not currently deployed
Market	The between-battle shop state containing Recruit, equipment, and battle offers plus refresh (reroll) and lock actions
Battle offer	One combat offer with a fixed enemy order, risk tier, reward, retreat result, and seed
Round	One Market preparation, one committed battle, one result, and one reward/recovery handoff
Run	One contract attempt containing repeated Rounds, cumulative hires and losses, a contract boss, and a terminal result
Contract	One twelve-Round regional challenge followed by a boss Muster and boss battle
Region	One campaign area containing two ordered Contracts and two bosses
Artifact	A run-defining shared rule modifier, distinct from unit equipment
Coin	Run-only purchase resource; cleared when the run closes
Renown	Persistent breadth-unlock resource; it cannot buy raw combat power
Replacement Credit	Run-only price relief created by Recruit death and consumed only by later hires
Fallen	A Recruit reduced to zero HP and permanently removed from the current run at outcome commit
Meta progression	Persistent access, information, and rule breadth; it may not replace run decisions
Record	A persistent fact about discoveries, clears, mastery, or a past run; it never turns a Recruit into a fixed narrative lead

Company may describe all living Recruits owned during a run. It is not a deployment cap. A run's cumulative hire count and living Reserve count are independent from Line capacity.

The canonical count used by every dismissal rule is:

live_recruit_count = count(unique Recruit IDs owned by the current run
                           whose state is living,
                           across deployed party and Reserve)

Offers, summons, Fallen Recruits, dismissed Recruits, and pending hires do not count. A dismissal is legal only while a Market is open, its target is living, and live_recruit_count >= 2 at both preview and commit. A legal dismissal must leave at least one living Recruit.

4. Fixed Content Envelope

The complete package contains exactly:

• 12 base Professions;
• 24 regular advanced Professions, exactly two descendants per base;
• 6 hidden hybrid Professions, for 42 total Profession identities;
• 36 mechanical Traits;
• 320 equipment items;
• 60 Artifacts;
• 100 ordinary/elite enemy identities plus 16 bosses;
• 8 Regions, each with two Contracts and two bosses.

Recruits are generated compositional units, not an authored cast. They do not need recruit-specific social progression, courtship, individual narrative arcs, or individual voice-content systems. Generated names and modular visual parts are presentation combinations, not additional gameplay identities.

Every catalog row must alter a decision. A row that differs only by name, rarity, color, art, or a scalar is filler and fails the design gate.

5. Player Promise And Experience Pillars

5.1 Order Is A Build Axis

Front-to-rear order changes legal targets, protection, reach, projectile collision, healing access, displacement, summon space, and collapse after a death. Reordering one pair must visibly change at least one predicted event in a valid fixture.

5.2 Automatic Battle Is Trustworthy

The same initial state, content revision, seed, and retreat timestamp produces the same result. Major actions, target changes, immunity, displacement, and failed actions have inspectable reasons. Presentation speed never changes the simulation.

5.3 Loss Changes The Company

Death is permanent for the current run. Dismissal is deliberate and cannot be used for profit. Equipment returns to run inventory, so losing a trained Recruit hurts without usually destroying every viable counter. Replacement Credit and a protected base-Profession offer make recovery purchasable, while lost level, Trait, Profession, and survival history preserve consequence.

5.4 Randomness Presents Bounded Markets

Seeded offers vary a run, but every Market contains a steady battle option and the recovery rules preserve an affordable base Recruit after ordinary losses. Locks, escalating refresh prices, fixed catalog schemas, and separated random streams prevent closing, reloading, or unrelated draws from changing an offer.

5.5 Progression Adds Grammar

Within a run, capacity, levels, Profession promotions, equipment, Artifacts, and enemy combinations expand planning. Across runs, Meta progression opens new sidegrades, previews, challenges, and catalog breadth. It never supplies a permanent universal damage, HP, Coin-income, or starting-capacity advantage.

6. Product Vetoes

Reject a feature or content row if it depends on:

• manual attack or skill spam during battle;
• a second battlefield axis, hidden sub-row, or free actor wandering;
• silent targeting, reach, protection, immunity, or retarget exceptions;
• a universally correct item, Trait, Profession, order, hire, or refresh plan;
• a generated Recruit needing authored individual plot or bespoke voice scope;
• permanent power grinding to make Standard difficulty fair;
• paid rescue, paid reroll, real-time recovery, or offline resource gain;
• deletion without an explicit transaction and causal record;
• a battle over 150 simulation seconds;
• content volume, rarity, or cosmetic variants used to conceal filler;
• copied names, prose, formulas, layouts, trees, art, audio, or source expression from private reference material.

7. Complete Loop And State Handoffs

7.1 Guild To Run

choose the next unlocked Contract and difficulty
-> review its enemy families, boss rule, and reward breadth
-> choose two of four provisional generated Recruits at no Coin cost
-> create a new Run seed and open Round 1 with 52 Coin

The two unchosen provisional Recruits are not fixed characters and are not retained. The first Market always allows at least two affordable base-Profession hires so the player can fill the opening capacity of four.

7.2 Repeated Round

open the stable Market
-> inspect three Recruit, four equipment, and three battle offers
-> buy, sell, dismiss, lock, or refresh
-> equip and order the Party line
-> choose one battle offer and review exact failure exposure
-> commit and resolve automatic battle
-> inspect first decisive cause and all Fallen Recruits
-> claim one fixed reward or resolve defeat/retreat
-> increase capacity at the declared clear milestones
-> open the next Market with surviving Company, Reserve, Coin, and Credit

The player may hire beyond current Line capacity. Those Recruits enter Reserve and remain available for later preparation. No Reserve enters battle automatically after a death.

7.3 Boss Muster And Run Close

After twelve cleared Rounds, capacity reaches ten and the Boss Muster opens a final non-rerollable market. The boss preview exposes its target, phase, summon, displacement, and timeout rules. Boss victory clears the Contract.

A run closes by Contract clear, explicit abandonment, or inability to deploy one living Recruit after defeat recovery. Coin and Replacement Credit close with the run. Region progress, Renown grants, catalog discoveries, and Records commit once. Surviving generated Recruits become a run-history entry rather than persistent playable units.

8. Recruitment, Dismissal, Death, And Replacement Promise

• Each Recruit has one current Profession. It cannot freely change jobs.
• A base Recruit may make one permanent promotion inside the run when the requirements in the systems authority are met.
• All rolled attribute totals at a given offer level use the same budget; distribution, Profession, Trait, order, and price create value differences.
• A Recruit has exactly one Trait for its entire lifetime.
• Dismissal is legal only in a Market when the canonical live_recruit_count >= 2, returns equipment, removes the Recruit, and requires review when survival history is nonzero. Preview and commit both revalidate the count.
• Death never selects or destroys equipped items; they return after outcome.
• Fallen Recruits do not return later in the run through reload, training, healing, promotion, reward, or Meta progression.
• A death creates Replacement Credit; dismissal does not.
• All hire, dismissal, casualty, equipment return, and credit changes are atomic operations owned by the save/failure authority.

Attempting to dismiss the final living Recruit is blocked with FINAL_LIVE_RECRUIT. It removes nothing, returns no rebate, creates no protected recovery offer, and does not become Company collapse. Ending a run with a living Recruit remains the separate explicit Abandon Run transaction. If the final Recruit instead becomes Fallen, casualty settlement, protected recovery, and Company-collapse rules apply without being routed through dismissal.

This is an economic and strategic loss model, not a character-bond simulator. The result report respects the generated name and survival record without creating authored biography obligations.

9. Capacity And Cumulative Recruitment

Every run begins at four footprint and increases after cleared-Round counts 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, reaching ten for the boss. The formula and five-profile selection evidence are solely in the economy authority.

Line capacity limits simultaneous allied footprint, not purchases. The run stores separate values for:

line_capacity
living_recruit_ids[]
reserve_recruit_ids[]
recruits_hired_total
recruits_fallen_total
recruits_dismissed_total

There is no cumulative hire cap. Market supply, Coin, escalating refresh cost, and low dismissal recovery are the anti-hoarding constraints. A content row or UI label may not treat ten as the run roster total.

10. Campaign, Session, And Decision Shape

Scope	Target	Terminal state
Battle	25-110 s typical; 150 s hard cap	Causal report, reward, defeat, or retreat
Round	3-6 min	Stable next Market with committed casualties and reward
Contract run	45-75 min; twelve Rounds plus boss	Clear, abandonment, or company collapse
Typical session	15-75 min	Suspend-safe Market, battle snapshot, or run result
First clear	15-25 h; sixteen ordered Contracts across eight Regions	Finite ending and postgame selection
Mastery	60+ h	Visible Profession, catalog, boss, and challenge completion records

Each Region's first Contract teaches one new pressure and its second combines that pressure with earlier rules. Each of the 16 bosses synthesizes the current Contract rather than merely increasing HP. Unlock order must provide at least two rational counters to every mandatory boss without requiring a random item.

The five pacing profiles, exact Market/battle/decision timestamps, full-clear budgets, and no-decision gaps are owned by the economy authority. A battle can be fully automatic while remaining decision-dense because a causal result and the next stable Market appear within 15 seconds of resolution.

11. Onboarding Contract

Teaching uses safe action -> guided comparison -> independent commit. It must never make the entire opening build for the player.

Target	Required player action	Safe boundary	Understanding proof
0:00-1:00	Choose two provisional Recruits from four generated offers	Choice can be revised before Run creation	States one Profession job and one Trait cost
1:00-3:00	Hire two Recruits and fill capacity four	First Market has protected affordable offers	Distinguishes Line capacity from owned Company
3:00-5:00	Swap front and rear positions	Predicted targets update before commit	Identifies who protects and who can reach
5:00-7:00	Choose steady or pressured battle offer	Both are completable; risks are explicit	States reward difference and first threat
7:00-9:00	Start and inspect automatic battle	Pause and 1x remain available	Identifies first decisive interaction
9:00-12:00	Choose reward and adapt next Market	Reward draft is fixed; no reload reroll	Makes one causal equipment/order change
12:00-16:00	Recover after a scripted nonterminal casualty fixture	Training state grants no persistent reward or death	Explains death, equipment return, and Credit
16:00-20:00	Complete an independent Round	One no-reward reset before commit	Buys, orders, commits, and diagnoses without a pointer

Experienced players may skip highlights, but the concise rule reference remains available. Returning players receive a state recap, next objective, current Market/encounter boundary, casualties, and one optional no-reward rehearsal.

12. Difficulty And Postgame Promise

Difficulty changes enemy and reward parameters, not hidden target rules, catalog access, save integrity, or the permanence of Fallen Recruits. Standard is balanced without Meta power. Lower difficulty preserves all systems and Records. Higher difficulty rewards broader risk selection but cannot become a mandatory progression route.

After the finite ending, postgame provides:

• Profession Mastery: clear fixed counterfactual trials for every base, regular advanced, and hidden hybrid identity;
• Catalog Completion: discover and validate every equipment, Artifact, Trait, ordinary/elite enemy, and boss identity;
• Oath Contracts: apply one or more fully previewed run laws that change valuation, formation pressure, market constraints, or enemy composition;
• Final Ledger: a finite completion screen for all mastery and challenge requirements.

Postgame does not promise endless content or infinite stat scaling. Repeated unchanged clears cannot be the majority of the 60+ hour mastery target.

13. Accessibility, Localization, And Input

13.1 Accessibility Baseline

• UI scale presets at 100%, 115%, and 130% without clipped functional text;
• reference landscape layouts at small, standard, and large safe areas;
• reduced motion, reduced flash, camera-shake intensity, and hit-stop options;
• independent master, music, ambience, voice, and effects volume;
• captions for every information-bearing audio event;
• color-independent rarity, target, protection, status, risk, and casualty encoding;
• high-contrast target paths and Party-line position indicators;
• pause, 1x, 2x, and 4x without loss of event-log information;
• complete keyboard/controller remapping and complete touch path;
• screen-reader labels and deterministic focus order for every Market, formation, result, recovery, and confirmation state;
• no required rapid tap, precision drag, simultaneous input, audio-only cue, or unpausable reading window;
• low-power presentation settings that never alter simulation ticks or results.

13.2 Input Semantics

All platforms map the same verbs: focus, inspect, compare, buy, sell, lock, refresh, equip, reorder, confirm, cancel, start, pause, speed, retreat, and open event log. Drag is optional; select-then-destination performs every reorder and equip action. Battle provides no hidden pointer-only command surface.

Destructive or spending actions use a review state. Duplicate confirm input returns the first operation receipt and cannot spend, dismiss, claim, or close a run twice.

13.3 Localization Rules

• English and Simplified Chinese share semantic message IDs and typed values.
• No sentence is assembled from translated fragments.
• Generated names store component IDs and a rendered snapshot so migration and language changes remain deterministic.
• System nouns have one glossary entry; content cannot invent synonyms for the canonical state terms.
• Layout validation covers English pseudolocalization at 130% expansion and Simplified Chinese at 130% UI scale.
• Player-entered profile/run labels are Unicode-safe; generated Recruit names remain content-filtered and do not require online moderation.

14. Content Interface And No-Filler Gate

Every consumed gameplay row declares:

stable_id and localized_name_id
catalog family and unlock placement
decision changed
state inputs read and authoritative outputs changed
trigger, timing, target, tradeoff, and counterplay
at least two nontrivial interactions
failure mode and causal-report event
presentation, accessibility, localization, and asset needs
fixed validation fixtures and expected event differences

A Recruit offer additionally declares Profession, attribute budget/distribution, one Trait, level, generated identity seed, list price, and offer provenance. A Profession changes battlefield responsibility or resource/timing/target/order grammar. Equipment and Artifacts change behavior, not only magnitude. An enemy creates a distinct preview-to-counter question. A Region changes composition, market pressure, or formation valuation. Any row failing its decision test is rejected before production planning.

15. Product Validation Gates

15.1 Comprehension

With at least five uncoached target players:

• four identify front and rear and predict the first legal target;
• four distinguish Line capacity, living Company, and cumulative hires;
• four explain one equipment or order counterfactual before battle;
• four state what death, dismissal, retreat, and run close preserve;
• four can explain why the final living Recruit cannot be dismissed and can find the separate Abandon Run action;
• four use refresh and lock without expecting a reload reroll;
• three voluntarily start another Round or name a specific build test.

15.2 Decision And Economy Quality

• A meaningful hire or provisional-Recruit choice occurs within one minute.
• A formation-order counterfactual occurs within five minutes.
• Every 20-minute profile trace stays within its stated decision-gap bound.
• Capacity ten passes all five analytical profile gates; larger candidates do not pass the same complete gate set.
• Three ordinary deaths are recoverable within the next Market in the fixed solvency fixture without making death profitable.
• Fixed seeds reject always-refresh, always-hire, always-dismiss, and never- replace as dominant strategies.

15.3 Battle Trust

• Reorder fixtures change targeting, reach, protection, healing, movement, or projectile results exactly as previewed.
• Every rejected action and retarget has one machine-readable reason.
• 1x exposes every major cast, projectile collision, displacement, summon, death, collapse, and retreat event.
• 4x and pause produce the same outcome hash as uninterrupted 1x.
• The result identifies the first decisive cause before aggregate statistics.

15.4 Open Human Gates

Machine checks cannot approve fun, emotional weight, visual clarity, listening quality, generated-name quality, device ergonomics, or willingness to continue. Those require prototype, target-player, device, independent-review, and Owner evidence. Runtime, media production, packaging, store, and release remain separately authorized.

16. Acceptance Checklist

• One ordered Party line is the only deployment grammar.
• Battle is fully automatic apart from diagnostic controls and retreat.
• Generated-Recruit, death, dismissal, replacement, Reserve, capacity, and cumulative-hire rules are explicit.
• Final-Recruit dismissal is illegal at preview and commit without changing abandonment or casualty recovery.
• All four authorities use the same counts, terms, IDs, and ownership.
• The complete Market loop includes Recruit, equipment, battle, refresh, lock, risk, result, reward, and recovery decisions.
• First clear is 15-25 hours and mastery is 60+ hours without waiting.
• Every gameplay row passes the no-filler decision test.
• Accessibility, localization, offline, premium, and save-integrity boundaries are preserved.
• Originality, human acceptance, development, and release gates remain open.