Watching (Observer)¶
Observer
| Rung | 1 of the mode ladder |
| Changes the world | never |
| Tools | feed, village view, spotlight, Explain this, timeline, speed |
| Since | Phase 1 |
| Status | designed · Phase 1 |
| Technical | Clients, API, engine |
Watching is the default and the heart of the game: a living chronicle of named lives that you read. The screen is the village and its feed; you can look at anything, ask about anything, and go back to see it again. You cannot touch it. For that, turn the dial to Tinkering.
The village view¶
All eight places in one scene, with the people in them as figures at the spots where they are — by the hearth, at the river. The light follows the day; places glow when they burn and tint when they are hot. Click a place to see who and what is there; click a figure for the person.
Phase 1 look
Phase 1 ships a functional village: a plain scene with clear, clickable tokens for people and things. The illustrated, painterly village and the composed portraits arrive with the Visual Oracle phase. Everything you can do is already there.
The feed¶
Sentences, in village time, about what just happened: The inn caught fire. Kira (cautious) fled to the village square. Tomas grabbed a bucket from the river. Each sentence has a small portrait and an Explain this link. The feed never speaks engine: no counters, no codes, no numbers without a unit.
The spotlight¶
Click a villager and their card opens: name, personality in words, what they need right now, what they are doing and why — the choice that won and the two it beat, in a sentence — and a short timeline of their recent story. Click a place for its card: who is here, what is here, how warm it is.
Interesting moments¶
The game scores every moment by how deep its causes run — a death of old age is shallow, a death from a fire from a toppled lamp from an exhausted carrier is deep — and when something deep happens it slows the clock and shows Something interesting happened — watch from here. Click it to jump back a little and watch it unfold.
Time¶
Play, pause, step. Speed from a tenth to a thousand times. Drag the timeline back through the last day. See The timeline.
History¶
| Phase | Change |
|---|---|
| 1 | Introduced: village view with clickable tokens, prose feed with Explain this, character and place cards with "why", interesting-moment auto-slow, speed and rewind. |