Hourloom

Goal

Cross an ENDLESS descent of chambers, one tile a turn. A chamber holds several laps; a lap runs from your alcove, through that lap's keystone, to the exit pad, inside the sandglass budget for that lap. The moment you finish a lap it is written into the chamber's memory: on every later lap an echo of you starts on your old alcove and replays your exact inputs, one step per turn, beside you. Finish the last lap of a chamber to seal it, then descend to a deeper one or keep your score. There is no final chamber and no clock on the run: the sandglass bounds a lap, never the descent.

Scoring

A spark pays 15, the lap keystone pays 25, and completing a lap pays 50 plus 3 for every grain still in the sandglass. Stepping onto a gate tile pays 25 for each linked plate an echo is holding at that moment, so a two-plate gate held by two echoes pays 50. Sealing a chamber pays 150. Every award is multiplied by the chamber multiplier, which starts at 100 percent and rises 25 points a chamber to a ceiling of 400 percent at chamber 13, and is rounded to the nearest point. Awards land the instant they happen, so a run ending forfeits nothing.

Rules

ACTIONS. Exactly four: {type:'MOVE', dir} with dir one of N, E, S, W, {type:'WAIT'}, {type:'DESCEND'} and {type:'END_RUN'}. Nothing throws and a refusal never changes the state or advances the seeded generator. THE CLOCK. There is none. The world advances only when you act, so take as long as you like over a turn. GEOMETRY. Tiles are numbered row by row from the top left: tile index is row times the grid width plus the column. N is toward row 0. MOVEMENT. A move is legal when the target tile is inside the chamber, is not a wall, holds no body, and, if it is a gate tile, the gate is open for you. One body to a tile. An illegal move is refused as a free no-op: no sand, no turn, nothing recorded. RECORDING. Every move and wait you resolve during a lap is appended to that lap's input log. Descending and ending a run are never recorded, and nothing else about a lap is stored: no positions, no snapshots. ECHOES. On turn T of a lap, echo k executes entry T of its recorded log through exactly the rules above, with itself as the mover. If that recorded move is blocked for any reason it becomes a hold: the echo stays put and its cursor still advances, so echoes can fall behind in space but never in time. An echo despawns at the end of the turn it plays its last recorded input, so a slow lap lingers longer, helping and clogging. ORDER. Within a turn the player resolves first, then echo 1, then echo 2, and so on. So you can never enter a tile an echo is about to leave this turn, but an echo can enter the tile you just left. GATES AND PLATES. A gate is open for a mover exactly when every linked plate carries a body OTHER than that mover. You can never hold a plate for yourself, so the only way through a gate is to have stood on its plate on an earlier lap, at the turns you now need. A body already standing on a gate tile when it shuts is unaffected: gates block entry, not existence. JOSTLES. If an echo's recorded move is blocked BY YOUR OWN BODY, that costs you 1 extra grain that turn. Walls and echo against echo cost nothing. FLUX. A flux tile with phase p is lit when (turn + p) modulo 4 is at least 2, so two turns calm then two turns lit. Ending your resolution on a lit one saps 3 extra grains. Echoes are memories and are immune. Flux tiles are a toll, never a wall. SANDGLASS. Every resolved turn costs 1 grain plus any jostle and flux surcharge. Each lap opens with its own budget, shown as lapBudget, derived from the turns a scripted solver needed for that lap with slack. If a lap's sandglass empties the run ends with every point already earned kept. PICKUPS. Only you collect. Entering a spark tile takes it for the rest of the chamber; entering the lap's keystone tile takes the keystone, which the exit needs. Echoes walk over both without effect. SEALING. Finish the last lap of a chamber and the phase becomes sealed. {type:'DESCEND'} then builds a deeper chamber, clearing every echo and log, and is legal only while sealed. KEEPING A SCORE. {type:'END_RUN'} is legal on any turn, mid lap or at a seal. It ends the run and keeps every point already earned; it is a way to stop while ahead, not a loss, and it is the answer when your own past has boxed you in. DIFFICULTY. Every formula continues forever: chamber 1: 7 by 7, 3 laps, 1 gate of which 0 need two plates, 0 flux tiles, 3 sparks, multiplier 100 percent; chamber 3: 8 by 8, 4 laps, 2 gates of which 0 need two plates, 2 flux tiles, 3 sparks, multiplier 150 percent; chamber 6: 9 by 9, 5 laps, 4 gates of which 2 need two plates, 5 flux tiles, 4 sparks, multiplier 225 percent; chamber 10: 9 by 9, 6 laps, 5 gates of which 3 need two plates, 8 flux tiles, 6 sparks, multiplier 325 percent; chamber 15: 9 by 9, 6 laps, 5 gates of which 3 need two plates, 8 flux tiles, 6 sparks, multiplier 400 percent. Grid size, gates, flux, sparks and the multiplier all reach a ceiling and sit there, and no branch anywhere ends a run because the chamber number grew. DETERMINISM. All randomness lives in chamber generation, carried in state.rngState, and a lap turn advances it by zero, so a seed and an action list replay bit for bit. No clock is read anywhere. OBSERVATION. Every response carries state, observation, legalActions, score and gameOver. observation.text is the whole chamber as ASCII, one line per row, top row first, plus every echo's next recorded input. Nothing is hidden from an agent that a player cannot see on screen. REJECTIONS. A malformed shape is HTTP 400 at the route boundary, or unknown_action in process. A well-formed action the rules refuse is ok false with a reason and legalActions: wall, edge_of_chamber, echo_in_the_way and gate_shut for a blocked move; bad_direction for a dir outside the four; lap_not_running for a move or a wait outside a live lap; chamber_not_sealed for descending early; run_ended once the run is over.

Action grammar

{
  "type": "object",
  "oneOf": [
    {
      "properties": {
        "type": {
          "const": "MOVE"
        },
        "dir": {
          "type": "string",
          "enum": [
            "N",
            "E",
            "S",
            "W"
          ],
          "description": "N is toward row 0, S toward the last row, E is column plus one."
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "type",
        "dir"
      ]
    },
    {
      "properties": {
        "type": {
          "const": "WAIT"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "type"
      ]
    },
    {
      "properties": {
        "type": {
          "const": "DESCEND"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "type"
      ]
    },
    {
      "properties": {
        "type": {
          "const": "END_RUN"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "type"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Start a game

curl -s "https://gameboard.gg/api/games/hourloom/init?seed=7"

Then POST { state, action } to https://gameboard.gg/api/games/hourloom/action, carrying state forward each call. See the API overview for the full loop.