aetherbound-guild/docs/01_GAME_DESIGN.md

# Aetherbound Guild - Game Design

Product promise, audience, complete game scope, core loop, duration, completion and originality boundary.

## Owner Review / Owner 审核

先确认游戏幻想、目标玩家、核心循环、单局/全局时长、完成条件和原创边界。这里回答“这是什么游戏、为什么值得玩、最终做到哪里”。

本文件是当前六份审核文档之一。历史拆分文件仅保留在 Git 历史中；文内规则、表格和 ID 仍是完整开发依据。

## Current Consolidated Project Contract

> Status: `OWNER REVIEW REQUIRED / P0 PROJECT CONSOLIDATION`
> Purpose: one positive product contract that connects product strategy,
> systems, pages, presentation and ordered development. Detailed authority
> remains in Sections 2-16 and the companion documents below.

### Product Identity

Aetherbound Guild is a landscape Japanese 2D hand-drawn fantasy incremental
management game. The player grows a persistent Expedition Company made from
generated Recruits, prepares a horizontal Party line, commits bounded Contracts,
observes deterministic automatic battles and adapts the Company after each
stage. The world, people, tools and changing Company state are the primary
experience; UI is a compact field instrument attached to that world.

### Player Contract

The player repeatedly:

```text
read the current Company, Market and threat
-> choose a capability, Recruit, item, order or risk
-> commit one authoritative decision
-> observe automatic progress and its causal result
-> retain the Company growth and adapt the next stage
```

The first session teaches valuation, Company building, front-to-rear order,
risk and diagnosis in that order. A useful decision must change resources,
capability, legal options, risk, information or future Company shape; a new
row, currency or timer without a new decision is not valid scope.

### Persistent And Contract State

| Scope | Owns | On Contract completion/withdrawal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Guild / Company | Recruit IDs, names, Profession, Trait, attributes, level, XP, equipment, history, Coin, Records, Renown and breadth | retained and available at Guild |
| Contract | Market offers, current Coin allocation, Line capacity, formation/risk snapshot, route, battle/result/recovery receipts and temporary effects | resolved or cleared through one receipt |
| Battle | current HP, event timeline, target state, pause/speed/inspect state and Knockout result | closed at Result/Recovery; no permanent Recruit deletion |

The initial four-offer choose-two decision runs once when New Game creates the
initial Company. A knocked-out Recruit leaves only the current Battle and
returns at the next stage with the same identity and persistent growth.

### Strategic Grammar

The long-term strategy is built from:

- Market valuation under Coin pressure;
- Profession, Trait and Equipment interactions;
- one-slot equipment tradeoffs and replacement inventory;
- Party Line order, protection, reach, healing and exposure;
- visible risk/reward and information confidence;
- deterministic automatic battle diagnosis;
- level/XP, promotion, roster breadth and later Contract choices.

Growth must keep opening new comparisons and combinations. It must not collapse
into a single dominant build or a sequence of unconditional numeric upgrades.

### Product Architecture

```text
Godot main / compatibility bridge
-> entry pages and input shell
-> domain services and authoritative receipts
-> content registry and deterministic offer generation
-> redundant local Save / migration / recovery
-> focused tests, normal-render evidence and human review
```

Pages render state and submit commands; services own rules and persistence;
content owns stable IDs and localized rows; tests observe the same player path.
No new page may implement its own Coin, Recruit, Contract or Save semantics.

### Authority Map

| Question | Authority |
| --- | --- |
| What the game is and why it continues | this document |
| Combat, Recruit, Profession, Party, failure and Save mechanics | `02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md` |
| Player pages, controls, states, localization and accessibility | `03_PAGES_AND_UX.md` |
| Japanese 2D visual identity, assets, animation and audio | `04_ART_ANIMATION_AUDIO.md` |
| Complete content identities and references | `05_CONTENT_CATALOG.md` |
| Ordered implementation, evidence and gates | `06_DEVELOPMENT_AND_REVIEW.md` |

When an older implementation conflicts with this positive contract, the
current Owner decision and these companion authorities win; the older behavior
is retained only as explicitly marked migration evidence.

<!-- Historical section source: GAME_PRODUCT_CONTRACT; retained in Git history. -->

## Aetherbound Guild: Game Product Contract

> Authority: player promise, complete loop, run and campaign shape, canonical
> vocabulary, product boundaries, and design acceptance.
>
> Revision: guild-charter-integration-r4 / 2026-08-11
>
> Companion authorities:
> [02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md](02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md),
> [02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md](02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md), and
> [02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.md](02_GAMEPLAY_AND_BALANCE.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.

#### 1.1 Owner-Locked Continuity And Knockout Rule

Owner decision, 2026-08-17, superseding the 2026-08-11 permanent-casualty
decision: **the Expedition Company is persistent across Contract runs and a
zero-HP Recruit is knocked out only for the current battle**. The Recruit leaves
the resolving line immediately and Reserve Recruits do not substitute during
that battle. At the next stage the knocked-out Recruit is battle-ready again
with the same stable ID, level, XP, Profession, Trait, equipment and history.
The exact stage-entry HP amount belongs to the later balance conversion; DEV-2
must not invent or persist a permanent casualty while that value is frozen.

Contract completion clears only Contract-local stage, route, formation snapshot
and temporary-effect state. It never discards the roster or its growth. Four
opening offers and the choose-two decision occur once when New Game establishes
the initial persistent Expedition Company.

### 2. Product Definition

**Aetherbound Guild** is a premium landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn fantasy
incremental auto-battler about growing a persistent Expedition 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, knockouts,
dismissals, recruitment and continuing growth.

The transferable play thesis is independently expressed as:

```text
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, train, reserve, dismiss, or recruit
-> 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 Contract
expeditions inside one continuous save, 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 save containing the Expedition Company, resources, unlock breadth, region progress, records, settings, and collection knowledge |
| Recruit | One persistent generated member of the Expedition Company, built from a generated name, modular appearance seed, fixed profession, rolled attributes, exactly one Trait, zero or one equipped item, an individual level/XP record, and battle 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 for the current Contract expedition; distinct from persistent roster size |
| Reserve | A Recruit owned by the persistent Expedition Company 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 |
| Initial Company draft | The durable pre-Guild record that reserves one New Game seed, its four opening Recruit offers, and the current accepted pair before the persistent Expedition Company exists |
| Round | One Market preparation, one committed battle, one result, and one reward/recovery handoff |
| Run | One bounded Contract expedition containing repeated Rounds and a Contract boss; it retains the persistent roster and growth when it ends |
| 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 | Persistent earned operating currency unless a later named temporary resource explicitly says otherwise |
| Renown | Persistent breadth-unlock resource; it cannot buy raw combat power |
| Guild Charter | Persistent eight-Region board where Renown buys catalog, trial, threat-information, and optional Oath-law breadth for future generated runs |
| Knocked Out | A Recruit reduced to zero HP and removed from the current battle; the Recruit is battle-ready again for the next stage without losing persistent state |
| 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 |

`Expedition Company` describes all Recruits owned by the persistent Guild save.
It is not a deployment cap. Company size and Reserve count are independent from
the current Contract's Line capacity.

The canonical count used by every dismissal rule is:

```text
owned_recruit_count = count(unique Recruit IDs owned by the Expedition Company,
                            across deployed party and Reserve)
```

Offers, summons, dismissed Recruits and pending hires do not count. A knocked-
out Recruit remains owned and does count. A dismissal is legal only while a
Market is open and `owned_recruit_count >= 2` at both preview and commit. A
legal dismissal must leave at least one owned 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 line collapse after
a knockout. 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 Defeat Interrupts Progress Without Deleting Growth

A knockout removes the Recruit's contribution for the rest of the current
battle and may reduce reward, mastery rating or route momentum, but it never
deletes the Recruit or equipment. The next stage makes that Recruit battle-ready
again under the later balance authority's stage-entry HP rule. Dismissal remains
the only ordinary roster-removal operation and cannot be used for profit.

#### 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

Across Contract runs, persistent levels, Profession promotions, equipment,
Artifacts and recruited members expand planning. Guild progression also opens
new sidegrades, previews, challenges and catalog breadth. Growth must keep
revealing new decisions rather than becoming an unconditional stat-only ladder.

### 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 New Game To Persistent Company, Then Contract Run

```text
durably reserve one New Game seed in an Initial Company draft
-> generate four provisional Recruits from that seed at offer indices 0..3
-> choose exactly two at no Coin cost, revising the pair if desired
-> atomically commit those two Recruit records into the persistent Expedition Company
-> enter the Guild
-> choose an unlocked Contract and create its bounded expedition state
```

Seed reservation and offer materialization are persistence steps inside one
player-facing Initial Company page. Once the four offers exist, Back, Cancel,
Save and Quit, process restart, clock change or repeated confirm returns the
same draft and cannot allocate another seed. The player may revise the accepted
pair until Company commit. That commit promotes the draft exactly once; only
then are the two unchosen provisional offers discarded. The chosen two become
persistent Recruits. The first Market allows at least two affordable hires so
the player can expand the opening roster without preselecting a build.

#### 7.2 Repeated Round

```text
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 knocked-out Recruits
-> claim one fixed reward or resolve defeat/retreat
-> increase capacity at the declared clear milestones
-> make knocked-out Recruits battle-ready for the next stage
-> open the next Market with the persistent Expedition Company and earned resources
```

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

#### 7.3 Boss Muster And Contract Return

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 Contract run ends by clear or explicit withdrawal. The result commits Region
progress, rewards, records and the next unlocked decision, then returns the
persistent Expedition Company to the Guild. Recruits, levels, XP, Professions,
Traits, equipment and earned persistent resources remain playable. Only
Contract-local stage, route, battle snapshot and temporary-effect state closes.

The sixteenth campaign boss uses the same run-close settlement, then opens one
explicit first-clear decision only after every result, casualty, reward, and
progression receipt is verified:

- **Complete the First Chronicle** records the clear, presents the finite ending
  and Final Ledger, then returns to the persistent Guild/Title boundary.
- **Open the Oath Season** keeps that same Expedition Company and opens the
  postgame hub under separately reviewed optional laws.

Both choices settle the cleared Contract state exactly once. Neither choice
duplicates or deletes a Recruit, equipment item, level, XP or earned persistent
resource.

### 8. Recruitment, Dismissal, Knockout, And Continuity Promise

- Each Recruit has one current Profession. It cannot freely change jobs.
- A base Recruit may make one persistent promotion 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.
- A Recruit has exactly one universal equipment slot. Item form is eligibility
  and presentation, not an additional simultaneous slot; equipping a candidate
  atomically returns the previous item, if any, to persistent Guild inventory.
- Level and XP belong to one Recruit, are bounded to levels `1..10`, and never
  become a shared Company level or transfer to another Recruit.
- Dismissal is legal only in a Market when the canonical
  `owned_recruit_count >= 2`, returns equipment, removes the Recruit, and
  requires review when survival history is nonzero. Preview and commit both
  revalidate the count.
- Knockout never selects, destroys or unequips the equipped item.
- Knockout grants no same-battle respawn, resurrection timer, extra life or
  automatic Reserve substitution.
- At the next stage the Recruit is battle-ready again with identical persistent
  identity and growth state; the later balance conversion owns the exact HP
  restored.
- All hire, dismissal, knockout outcome and recovery changes are atomic
  operations owned by the save/failure authority.

Attempting to dismiss the final owned Recruit is blocked with
`FINAL_OWNED_RECRUIT`. It removes nothing and returns no rebate. Contract
withdrawal is a separate expedition operation and never deletes the persistent
roster.

This is a persistent generated-roster growth model, not a fixed-protagonist or
character-bond simulator. Result reports respect generated identity and battle
history without creating authored biography obligations.

### 9. Capacity And Cumulative Recruitment

Every Contract expedition 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 Guild
and active Contract store separate values for:

```text
line_capacity
owned_recruit_ids[]
deployed_recruit_ids[]
reserve_recruit_ids[]
recruits_hired_total
recruit_knockout_events_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 result, recovery and reward |
| Contract run | 45-75 min; twelve Rounds plus boss | Clear or explicit withdrawal, then Guild return |
| 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 | Pair can be revised before atomic Company commit; return/restart restores the same four | 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 knockout fixture | Training state grants no persistent reward or roster loss | Explains current-battle removal and next-stage return |
| 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, knockouts, 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 persistent Recruit ownership. 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.

Persistent breadth is reviewed through the **Guild Charter**, an original board
of eight horizontal Region seals and prerequisite tracks. It spends Renown only
on catalog packets, Profession clues or trials, threat information, and optional
Oath laws. It never contains percentage power, starting resources, extra Line
capacity, Recruit preservation, or casualty reversal.

The sixteenth boss completes the campaign before asking the player to choose:

- **Complete the First Chronicle:** record the clear, view the finite ending and
  Final Ledger, and return to the persistent Guild/Title boundary.
- **Open the Oath Season:** keep the same Expedition Company, enter the postgame
  hub, and review optional laws for further Contract expeditions.

After that 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. The
cleared Expedition Company remains the playable persistent roster; Records
reference its history without cloning or re-instantiating Recruit IDs.

### 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. Touch instructions name Tap as the primary operation: Tap a Recruit
or item to select, then Tap a legal destination or target to commit the pending
choice. Drag is an optional shortcut; 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:

```text
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, individual level/XP, one starting item, generated identity seed,
list price, and offer provenance. An
opening provisional offer also declares its Initial Company draft ID, fixed index
`0..3`, deterministic offer ID, and canonical output hash. 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, persistent Company, and cumulative hires;
- four explain one equipment or order counterfactual before battle;
- four state what knockout, dismissal, retreat, and Contract return preserve;
- four can explain why the final owned Recruit cannot be dismissed and can
  find the separate `Withdraw Contract` action;
- four use refresh and lock without expecting a reload reroll;
- four can state what Renown buys on the Guild Charter and why no claim adds
  permanent combat power;
- four distinguish Complete the First Chronicle from Open the Oath Season and
  predict that both preserve the Expedition Company while changing destination;
- 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 knockouts return the same Recruit IDs for the next stage in the
  fixed recovery fixture without duplicating value.
- Fixed seeds reject always-refresh, always-hire and always-dismiss 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,
  knockout, line-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, knockout, next-stage return, dismissal, Reserve,
      capacity, and cumulative-hire rules are explicit.
- [ ] Final-owned-Recruit dismissal is illegal at preview and commit without
      changing Contract withdrawal or knockout 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.
- [ ] Initial Company creation reserves its seed before generating the four
      opening offers, preserves a revisable exact pair, and promotes the draft
      into the persistent roster exactly once.
- [ ] First clear is 15-25 hours and mastery is 60+ hours without waiting.
- [ ] The Guild Charter has eight horizontal Region seals, sourced
      prerequisites, existing Renown costs, and breadth-only effects.
- [ ] The final boss presents Chronicle completion and Oath Season as two
      explicit choices; both preserve the Expedition Company without duplicating
      Recruit IDs.
- [ ] 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.

<!-- Historical section source: ORIGINALITY_BOUNDARY; retained in Git history. -->

## Aetherbound Guild Originality Boundary

### Original Product

Aetherbound Guild may study genre structures such as automatic party combat,
shop valuation, one-dimensional formation, equipment tradeoffs and visible
enemy telegraphs. Its world, names, prose, formulas, progression topology,
screen compositions, characters, enemies, art, animation, music, sound and code
must be independently authored.

### Prohibited Reproduction

- No commercial game code, extracted asset, music, sound, font or resource pack
  enters the product repository.
- No reference screenshot becomes a traced or near-identical product layout.
- No reference name, description, formula, profession tree, enemy identity,
  level sequence or reward table is copied.
- No downloaded commercial material is used as an image-generation reference.

### Product-Specific Decisions

- Recruits are generated, recruitable and dismissible persistent members; they
  have no fixed lead cast or authored personal narrative system.
- Battle uses one continuous front-to-rear line, not a three-lane grid.
- The player prepares and diagnoses automatic battle; repeated manual attack or
  skill activation is not part of the product.
- The visual identity is original Japanese 2D hand-drawn fantasy, not copied
  commercial art and not the rejected pixel implementation.

### Evidence

Reference research and rejected attempts may remain in Git history or private
research storage. They are not current product authority. Runtime production
records retain only the provenance needed to prove that accepted assets and
audio are owned, licensed or independently generated.