Game design
Core loop
Plan → find → grab → snap the receipt. The grocery list is the quest log. The real store is the dungeon. The items on their real shelves are the treasures. Mobile first. The keyboard is for the demo only.
My rules (2026-10-28)
- No lives, no game over, no clock, no way to lose. Points only go up.
- Dopamine during the hunt and after it, never stress or pressure.
- Upgrade the existing hunt; no separate game.
- The game must keep feeding four things: community shortage reports, store layout and shelf maps, consumption and spend from receipts and list completion (plus receipts for returns), and fun with kids or a partner.
Plan a hunt
- Pick the store. Each store says what you usually buy there, counted from your receipts ("my milk is from TJ, eggs from Costco").
- Move items into the quest. The Arya list, sorted for that store. Items usually bought here, and new items, start ticked. Items usually bought elsewhere stay on the list. Usuals not on the list are suggested. ✕ removes an item from the list (Undo). Typed extras join the list. Planning is list management, not a second list.
- Check my list appears only when Arya has a question.
- A quest starts. Express, the plain-checklist mode, has no entry point any more; see Modes below.
The hunt (Quest)
- One store view, picked by the store: real photos of a mapped store (people pixelated by SAM), shelf cards anywhere else.
- The next-item card suggests a stop; any stop can be grabbed in any order. A fresh shopper photo shows the item boxed when one exists.
- Find it for me: the camera scans for that one item. SAM 3.1 boxes candidates and Muse Spark checks each crop. The item lights up and one tap grabs it. A miss never says the item is not there.
- Tools: Scan shelf, Not here?, How to play (?), sound.
- Put back any grab; nothing finishes by itself.
- I'm done shopping works any time. Leftovers are saved for the next trip or dropped. Nothing counts as failure.
- How to play shows once, on the first Quest hunt on a phone.
Rewards
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Grab | +10, the chip bumps, a fun fact |
| Combo count | Combo: each grab of the suggested stop adds 1. It never resets and put back never lowers it. |
| Boss | +40, only when the boss item was grabbed; a boss is an item you reported missing here on 2 earlier trips. |
| Halfway, full haul | milestone; full haul +25 and confetti |
| Receipt snapped | +50; the trip's points bank |
| Level line crossed | level-up moment (L2 at 100, L3 at 300, L4 at 600, +100 more each level) |
Sound and buzz are opt-in, off by default. Express stays quiet. Offline grabs queue on the phone and sync when the signal returns.
Modes
Quest was designed with a second mode, Express: the same list as a
plain checklist in walking order, with no points. Express no longer has
an entry point (see STATUS.md); its screen stays only for runs that
started before. The list works without Quest, and shopping from the
list needs no game.
Quest is a mood, not an age. With a child holding the phone, the kid hunts and grabs while the adult handles quantities and checkout.
Store drift: Spotter
Every hunt is a shelf survey. A grab proves a product is there; "Not here?" (Empty shelf / Something else here / Can't tell, optional photo) says it is not. A report edits nothing. It flags the stop and opens a window. A later grab at the stop means a stockout. A second player finding it elsewhere means a move, applied as a shelf-graph edit. Find it for me sightings add the same signal.
Points on truth, never on reports: +2 for a true stockout, +10 for a verified move. Eagle Eye badge (1 / 10 / 50 verified spots), Store Guardian per store. Status only, never cash.
Community
Every metric is receipt-verified: the receipt is the referee.
- Boards: Fastest Hands, Clean Sweep, Top Contributor, Big Haul, World Mapper, Globetrotter.
- Badges: Egg Baron, Banana Republic, Dairy Royalty, Midnight Shopper, Speed Demon, Return Regret, First Mapper, Perfect Week.
- Races: Shop-Off (first verified receipt wins), Split the List (not built), Clue Hunt (rollout).
- Friends: handle-based; no chat, no DMs, no lists shared. Run notifications are designed (Discussion 24), not built.
- Handles, never real names. Household boards are private. Spend boards are opt-in.
Contribution
Store videos earn permanent first-mapper credit. Receipts stay private; their reward is a smarter list and a hunt that plans itself.
Never
- No random spawns or sponsored placements in routes.
- No purchases, external links or chat in the hunt.
- No pictures of people kept: frames are kept only after SAM pixelates the people it detects.