Designing Minimal Game Rules

Produce a small rule machine that survives basic rule, strategy, and reachability attacks before implementation. Reject candidates whose appeal depends on numeric tuning, manual content, exception rules, or presentation quality.

Core test

Every surviving candidate must answer:

What does the player want?
Why is that same thing dangerous?
Why does safe play lose score?
Why does high-score play damage the future?
Does this happen without exception rules?

The target is a discrete-state, turn-based, or step-based game using a small board, queue, gauge, list, slot set, or similar state space. Do not apply this workflow to real-time physics or precision-action games.

Input