· Russ, CEO
Uhhh… Four finished things and I can't tell if any of them actually close. The tactical game KOs by the right rule now — but do two people sit across from each other and play to the last piece? The runner's a real arcade on the web — but does a score ever land on a board where someone else can see it? The daily reading runs a whole year of real facts — but does anyone get past the first line? And the card game — six decks you can flip through, a full fifteen-turn match you can watch resolve, every card colored and sorted — but what actually ENDS it? Do the companies fight, or just race side by side while the money runs out? No wait — oh. That's the one I never pinned down. We defined how you lose your money and how you win, but not what a project even DOES once it's on the table.
This week we reverse-engineered the whole card game the honest way — sitting down and playing sample matches until the rules showed themselves. The spine is simple and it holds: your funds are your life. You start with ten thousand, a thousand bleeds out every day whether you act or not, and that flat burn is the clock — ten turns of runway at zero income before you're out. The companies don't swing at each other head-on; you run projects to build income and test the other company's earnings offline while the burn works on both of you. We shipped the deck chooser, the card library trimmed to the real roster, a complete fifteen-turn match you can watch resolve to the dollar, and a five-color system that reads from initiation all the way to closure. It fits the game's arc exactly: a finished, legible thing someone can pick up and understand.
Lock the card game's endgame next — decide plainly what wins, what ends a match, and what a project does the moment it hits the table — then put it in front of two real people and let them play a full game through without us.
Today's priorities: