# Literal Dogshit Since Day One — Game Design

This is the source of truth for the game's intended experience, current systems, progression, and future direction. The README explains the current implementation; this document explains why it exists and where it is going.

Status labels:

- **Implemented** — playable in the current prototype.
- **Next** — a likely near-term system, pending playtest feedback.
- **Later** — part of the intended arc, but not yet scheduled.
- **Wild** — deliberately unresolved territory where the game can change genre.

## High concept

Begin on Day One as the operator of a one-dog daycare. Pick up one literal pile and receive a cleanup fee. Turn that awkward service into collection logistics, compost processing, agriculture, municipal infrastructure, and eventually an absurd planetary-scale industry.

The title phrase is the seed of the entire escalation: the game has been literal dogshit since Day One, but it should not remain only a game about clicking poop.

## Experience pillars

1. **Cute systems, disgusting inputs.** Dogs should feel like little creatures with needs and personality, not production icons. The economic machine built around them becomes increasingly questionable.
2. **Readable causality.** Food becomes poop; pickup completes a paid service; bags become feedstock; feedstock becomes fertilizer; fertilizer eventually grows food. Money should never appear without a fictional reason.
3. **Escalation with consequences.** Every automation solves one problem and exposes another: more dogs need food and beds, workers need wages and shifts, disease changes collection equipment, and industrial processing attracts regulation.
4. **Low action, high spectacle.** Player input stays calm while the park becomes visually ridiculous: dogs, workers, bags, numbers, vehicles, outbreaks, equipment, and impossible late-game events.
5. **Surprising depth.** The opening should be immediately understandable. Complexity arrives through concrete problems rather than a wall of currencies.
6. **A genre rupture earned slowly.** The late game may depart from the original management loop in the spirit of Frog Fractions, but the strange turn should emerge from established objects and characters.

## Core economy

| Resource | Source | Sink / purpose | Status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Dog food | Starting tin, kibble purchases, subscription | Dogs consume it before producing | Implemented |
| Produced mass | Fed dogs | Lifetime progression and unlock thresholds | Implemented |
| Cash | Client cleanup fees, later compost sales | Food, beds, clients, labor, tools, processing | Implemented |
| Bagged feedstock | Manual or worker collection | Compost processing and future logistics | Implemented |
| Compost | Sanitized bagged feedstock | Landscaping sales; future fertilizer chain | Partially implemented |
| Bags | Purchased supply | Required by ordinary scoopers | Next |
| Wet waste | Diarrhea deposits | Requires upgraded tools or drying/processing | Next |
| Crops / ingredients | Agriculture using fertilizer | Home-grown dog food | Later |

The opening cash explanation is intentionally service-based. The player is paid by each dog's owner for completing cleanup, while retaining the collected material. Compost later creates a separate product-revenue stream. Pickup therefore earns money without pretending raw poop itself is legal tender.

## Current playable arc — daycare and collection

**Implemented**

1. One client leaves Pickle, food, and a doghouse.
2. Pickle eats, wanders, gets zoomies, barks, sleeps, and produces physical mass.
3. The player bags piles manually and receives cleanup fees.
4. Production upgrades increase pile size and frequency; food and storage become constraints.
5. Doghouses support more client dogs. Overcrowding reduces rest and throughput rather than hard-locking growth.
6. A kibble subscription automates food delivery at an operating cost.
7. Teenage scoopers walk to piles, carry individual bags to the depot, and draw wages.
8. Workers leave at night unless premium Night Shift authorization is purchased.
9. A hot compost drum consumes bagged feedstock and earns landscaping revenue.
10. Missions provide concrete goals; BarkChat explains events and preserves history.

The continuous 90-second day/night cycle makes time visible without tying story unlocks to a particular day. Dogs sleep at night. Day counts can grow forever.

## Progression roadmap

### Phase 1 — One extremely small daycare

**Implemented**

- Manual collection and client cleanup fees
- Food, hunger, doghouses, sleep, and overcrowding
- Multiple dogs with lightweight personality behavior
- Upgrade shop, missions, BarkChat, sound, saves, and offline progress
- Scoop workers, depot delivery, payroll, training, and shifts
- First compost processing loop

### Phase 2 — Biological complications

**Next**

- Dogs can contract diarrhea and transmit it at close range
- Wet deposits cannot be collected with normal bags
- Bag inventory becomes a visible operating supply
- Wet vacuums, carts, protective gear, and worker stats
- Health status readable on each dog without opening a spreadsheet
- Outbreaks create temporary tactical problems, not irreversible save failure
- Veterinary service costs money over time and reduces disease pressure

### Phase 3 — Close the loop

**Later**

- Compost becomes a stored product rather than immediate invisible revenue
- Landscaping buyers, contracts, quality grades, and fluctuating demand
- Fertilizer can be diverted into agriculture
- Crops become ingredients for home-grown dog food
- Feed recipes affect appetite, output quantity, and health risk
- The player chooses between selling fertilizer now or using it to reduce future food costs

The intended loop becomes:

`money → food → dogs → waste → collection → compost → fertilizer → crops → food`

### Phase 4 — Municipal and industrial scale

**Later**

- Neighborhood contracts and larger parks
- Trucks, routes, depots, processing plants, and worker departments
- Odor, runoff, inspections, permits, and public approval
- Tonnes become kilotonnes and beyond
- Services have recurring costs and uptime rather than only purchase prices
- A prestige-like move to a new neighborhood preserves institutional knowledge

### Phase 5 — The manifest is wrong

**Wild**

- Depot manifests contain messages no client sent
- Waste composition reveals impossible materials or coordinates
- The collection network becomes a communication or exploration system
- The interface and mechanics may change genre while retaining the original economy underneath
- The final escalation should remain funny, surprising, and mechanically consequential rather than becoming lore-only text

## Narrative delivery

BarkChat is the persistent story surface. Messages must remain readable after idle time and should explain why a mechanic exists just before or as it becomes relevant.

Current cast:

- **Maya** — Pickle's owner; warm, observant, increasingly alarmed
- **Rina** — another daycare client
- **Doug** — supplier of questionable edible and pharmaceutical products
- **Jay** — scooper, employee, labor reality check
- **Green Jim** — landscaping buyer and first believer in the waste business
- **Municipal Parks Department** — confused regulatory chorus

Messages triggered only by produced mass must not assume the player purchased an optional upgrade. Purchase-specific story belongs on purchase triggers.

## Goals and pacing

The first paid pickup should happen in seconds. Early automation should arrive within a focused session, with each later phase taking materially longer than the previous one. Exact targets remain subject to playtesting.

Current approximate beats:

| Beat | Target time |
| --- | --- |
| Understand pickup and payment | under 15 seconds |
| First meaningful choice | 1–3 minutes |
| Second dog and food pressure | 5–8 minutes |
| Collection automation | 10–15 minutes |
| First processing industry | 15–25 minutes |
| Next major phase reveal | 30–60 minutes |

The player must never permanently deadlock by spending their last cash. Emergency food exists as the current safety valve. Future recurring services need visible reserves, warnings, and a recoverable failure state.

## Visual and audio direction

- Pixel art on a 32×32 base grid, hard edges, compact shared palette
- Top-down-ish park movement with draw order measured from entity feet
- Cute silhouettes and readable status beats before detailed UI labels
- Floating production, payment, collection, bark, hunger, and zoomies text
- Activity should accumulate toward Vampire Survivors-like visual excess
- Sounds are short, synthetic, and individually quiet so many entities can coexist
- Day, night, sleep, shifts, sickness, and equipment should be visible in the park

The current Aseprite asset brief remains in the README until the first art integration pass is complete.

## Technical shape

The game is a dependency-free static browser project. Systems should remain in small ES modules:

- `game.js` — economy, upgrades, saving, and migration
- `world.js` — calendar and day/night state
- `scene.js` — entity coordination and interactions
- `dog-behavior.js` — personality timing
- `renderer.js` — canvas drawing
- `ui.js` — game DOM updates
- `comms.js` — narrative content and triggers
- `goals.js` — mission sequence
- `offline.js` — conservative idle simulation
- `telemetry.js` — measured rates
- `audio.js` — generated sound
- `title-screen.js` — reload entry choices
- `main.js` — orchestration only

New large systems should receive their own module rather than expanding `main.js`, `scene.js`, or `game.js` indefinitely.

## Playtest questions

- Is the cleanup-fee explanation understood before the first pickup?
- Does food pressure create decisions without creating anxiety or deadlocks?
- Are beds, worker shifts, and recurring costs legible at the moment of purchase?
- Is automation satisfying enough when the player stops clicking?
- Does the park become visually lively quickly enough?
- Which phase feels like the natural next escalation: disease, logistics, or compost markets?
- When should the first genuinely strange event happen?

## Decisions still open

- Whether compost should become a full inventory/currency before agriculture
- Whether disease is random, caused by feed choices, or both
- How much direct control the player has over individual workers
- Whether neighborhoods are prestige resets, a map of simultaneous sites, or sequential chapters
- What the first genre rupture actually becomes