# EXPOSURE (working title) — design doc v0 *2026-08-03. Origin: a $1 op-shop Staples solar calculator that only works in direct sunlight.* ## One-liner You are a maintenance droid on a dead ship. Nothing on board works until the right element touches it — light, heat, cold, water, electricity, wind, radio, radiation. Route the elements. Wake the ship. ## The three pillars 1. **Everything is a state machine.** Every puzzle component has states; elements are the transition triggers; duration / order / threshold are transition guards. Permanent vs temporary = whether the state decays. This one schema IS the game — all content is authored against it. 2. **Routing is the puzzle, the component is the lock.** The real puzzle is rarely "touch item with element" — it's "get element X from its source to the component when the direct path is blocked." Each element has a distinct *transport signature*, and that's the puzzle language: - light travels in straight lines, passes glass, blocked by everything else - water flows downhill, pools, leaks - heat rises, conducts through metal, dissipates - cold sinks, conducts, sublimates away - electricity needs a conductive path, arcs to water - wind pushes along open volumes, blocked by any seal - **radio passes through walls** — the only one that does; late-game "act through a wall" solver - radiation: short range, blocked by shielding — mostly you bring the component TO it, not it to the component 3. **You are the bucket.** The droid chassis (and hand-carried items) hold exposure, and carrying always degrades: the bucket leaks, the thermal slug cools, the capacitor self-drains, the glowcell dims. Every carry is a visible timer — that's the run-and-scramble fun of the leaky-bucket idea, kept literally. Upgrades buy better containment, never remove decay entirely. 4. **You are a component too.** The droid's body parts run on the *same schema* as every wall component — same elements, same transitions, same scanner. Anything the environment can do to a component, it can do to you (symmetric exposure). Self-exposure grants powers, and every power makes you a walking emitter/hazard of that element — so body states automatically interact with world puzzles with zero extra systems. The recurring endgame of a puzzle: **you are the missing component.** ## Core loop scan component → learn (or guess) its susceptibilities → find element source → route/carry exposure to it → state change → cascade into the next component → zone system restored → **global element state shifts** → previously dead areas wake up. ## The macro unification (the good trick) Each of the 5 zones' master puzzle restores one *ship system*, and the ship systems ARE the elements at macro scale: | Zone | Master puzzle restores | Global effect | |---|---|---| | Engineering | Power grid | electricity available at wall ports ship-wide | | Hydroponics | Water mains | sprinklers/valves live; ice melts where heating on | | Comms array | Ship radio | radio-triggered components wake everywhere | | Reactor | Heating / heat mgmt | frozen zones thaw, cold zones become controllable | | Bridge (finale) | Orbit correction | the day/night cycle itself becomes a dial | So the endgame is: the elements you spent the game scavenging locally become things you *control ship-wide*. Progression is metroidvania-gated by element availability, not keys. ## Elements — v1 ships with FOUR Cut ruthlessly for the slice: **LIGHT, HEAT, WATER, ELECTRICITY.** COLD, RADIO, RADIATION, WIND arrive one per later zone. Eight at once is unteachable. Per element: sources / carry method / decay / hazard / counter-upgrade. - **LIGHT** — sun through viewports (orbital day/night, ~8–10 min cycle), work lamps (need power). Carry: mirrors (relay, no decay) or glowcell (charges in light, dims ~60s). Hazard: none — but darkness *disables* solar components, so night is a global puzzle-state change. *This is the calculator.* - **HEAT** — reactor vents, steam pipes, plasma cutter tool. Carry: thermal slug (glows, visibly cools). Hazard: chassis overheat; some components are DESTROYED by heat (permanence lives here). - **WATER** — sprinklers, coolant leaks, melted ice. Carry: the leaky bucket, hole and all — the timer you can see. Hazard: shorts unshielded electronics, including you. - **ELECTRICITY** — batteries, charge ports, arc conduits. Carry: capacitor (self-drains); you can body-carry charge but it leaks and hurts. Hazard: arcs to any water, yours or the puzzle's. - **COLD** (zone 2+) — coolant bay, space-facing hull. Servo-lockup hazard: you physically slow down in cold zones. - **RADIO** (zone 3+) — through-wall action; carry via repeater pucks you place. - **RADIATION** (zone 4+) — reactor core. Dose meter; overexposure = memory corruption: your HUD glitches and your scanner *lies*. Fail state as unreliable narrator, not death. Rad-flask upgrade lets you finally bottle it. - **WIND/VACUUM** (zone 4+) — hull breaches, fans; moves what you can't carry; magnet-wheel upgrade to stand your ground. ### Element interactions (keep to ~5 pairs, cascades come free) - water + cold → ice (plug a leak, bridge a gap, jam a fan) - water + heat → steam (pressure; drives a turbine = improvised wind/power) - electricity + water → electrified pool (area trigger or area denial) - heat then cold, in order → annealed/hardened part; **cold then heat → shattered** (order-sensitivity teaching case) - light + water (through a lens/droplet) → focused burn (late-game cleverness) ## Gravity & rotating rooms (board-state modifier, not an element) Some rooms sit on maintenance gimbals and cargo carousels. The rotation motor is just another component (electricity → rotate 90°) — fully in-schema, zero new systems. Gravity never changes; the *room turns through it*, which multiplies every transport signature at once: - water's "downhill" re-aims — drain a flooded floor by making it a wall - heat's "up" re-aims — a convection shaft becomes a walkable corridor - light shafts sweep as the window turns (stack with orbital day/night) - unsecured stuff falls: the crate on the unreachable shelf is now on the floor; the puddle is now sitting on the pressure switch Rotating with things (or yourself) inside is the fun — ride the room, ice-clad slide across the new floor. v2, vacuum zone: dead-spin sections = zero-g pockets. Debris floats, fans and wind become how *everything* moves, magnet wheels anchor you. The wind element's second life. ## Pneumatic tube network (cassette-futurism's favorite child) The ship's internal mail system: send items past locked doors, through sealed bulkheads, across zones. Pure in-schema transport: - **Stations** send/receive; **junction switches** route the network (they're just components — electricity flips them); dead sections need **pressure** restored (fans, pressure tanks — the wind element indoors). - **Transit time = decay time.** The thermal slug arrives cooler; the bucket arrives half-sloshed; the capacitor arrives drained-ish. Tube ETA is a visible timer — send hot, receive warm, plan accordingly. - **Ride-along emitters:** a radio beacon riding the tubes is a *mobile through-wall emitter* touring the ship. Late-game galaxy-brain material. - **Mail yourself.** The droid doesn't fit… assembled. Strip parts until you do (donation + degraded-operation synergy), post yourself past the locked door, arrive on the other side as a torso with a plan. Reassemble from whatever the far room offers. ## Components (puzzle atoms — the content library) Each is one small state machine. Starter set: - **Solar cell** — powered *while lit* (the calculator; also the first thing you fix) - **Bimetal switch** — heat = closed, cold = open (reversible, decays to ambient) - **Fuse** — electricity once = blown, forever (permanence + consequence) - **Growth vine** — water + light, sustained over minutes → climbable (permanent, slow-burn) - **Wax seal** — heat melts, permanent open - **Ice plug** — exists only while cold is maintained (upkeep puzzle) - **Film plate** — radiation exposes an image = *information* reward, not a door - **Crystal resonator** — radio at the right moment = unlock - **Annealed latch** — needs the heat-then-cold order above "Need 3 of a thing": reframed as *threshold* transitions (a component that needs 3 water-units before it trips) — used sparingly; as inventory-grind it's the weakest idea in the pile, cut. ### Fail policy — no deadlocks, real consequence Permanently destroying a needed part never soft-locks: the **fabricator** can reprint any destroyed component for scrap. Permanence costs you time and scrap, never the game. (Once it's repaired — see *The Fabricator*. Pre-printer puzzles are hand-authored deadlock-free; after it lives, the game is allowed to get meaner.) ## The Fabricator — a 3D printer you must earn Ships at this tech level print their own parts. The printer is broken at boot, and **repairing it is the spine of zone 1** — a puzzle chain through the element system: unclog the nozzle (heat), find a feed motor, a feedstock spool, route it power. - **Printing is itself an exposure process:** heat to extrude, cold to cure. Early game, ship heating/cooling are dead — *you* hand-route heat and cold to the printer per job (you are the printer's heater). Once reactor and coolant systems come online, printing automates — restored ship systems upgrade your quality of life, felt directly. - **Feedstock economy:** scrap recycles into feedstock. Destroyed and shattered parts are matter, never lost — the anti-softlock net, now diegetic. - **Schematics via scanner:** the tier-3 scanner extracts a printable schematic from any component you scan. Scan the world, own the catalog. - **GC DRM:** licensed schematics refuse to print without a license dongle (corporate-humor channel; dongle hunts on dead crew lanyards). And the printer **cannot print the Uncatalogued Component** — no part number, no print job. You can print every part except freedom. ## The droid — modular body Four part slots, each holds **one** elemental state at a time (keeps the combo space legible: 4 parts × small element set, not a soup): | Slot | Examples of swappable parts | Material matters | |---|---|---| | Locomotion | rubber wheels, magnet wheels, treads | rubber = insulated; magnet = wind-immune, climbs metal | | Shell | plastic, steel, ceramic | plastic = light+insulated but *melts*; steel = conducts + magnetic; ceramic = rad-resistant, brittle | | Manipulator | gripper, cutter arm, dish | conducts what it touches | | Sensor | scanner tiers, photoreceptor | see scanner-as-difficulty-dial below | Parts are found, printed at the fabricator, or **salvaged from dead sibling units** scattered around the ship — wrecked droids found frozen mid-task, posed as silent hints for body combos (a unit iced solid mid-reach into a steam duct = tutorial by corpse). You're not the first. (The Swapper energy; also the upgrade economy.) ### Self-exposure powers (body states) Charge a part by exposing it to a source — same act as exposing any component. Every state decays (you leak), and every state cuts both ways: - **Charged** (electricity): your touch trips electric components — and you can stand between two contacts and *be the wire*. But step in a puddle and you dump the charge into it (electrifying the pool — sometimes the fail, sometimes the solution). - **Wet** (water): pass through fire/heat briefly as steam-shield — but you'll short yourself if charged, and you drip a trail that conducts. - **Ice-clad** (wet, then cold): temporary armor — pass steam corridors, jam yourself into a fan as a plug. Melts near heat; wheels lose traction (slide puzzles). - **Hot** (heat): melt wax seals by touch, immune to cold-servo-lockup for a while — but you boil puddles into steam and warp any plastic part you're wearing. - **Glowing** (light): photoreceptor charged in sunlight → you *are* a light source in dark zones — can walk power to a solar cell. (The calculator, again.) - **Magnetized** (coil part + electricity): climb metal walls, hold metal items without slots — but you yank small metal puzzle parts out of position as you pass. Demagnetize before entering the clockwork room. - **Irradiated** (radiation): you become a mobile rad source — expose film plates, trip rad-triggered components by proximity. Cost: dose meter climbs and your scanner starts lying. Cure: a hard reboot… which you can self-trigger by shocking yourself in water. (Authored, but plays as an emergent discovery.) ### Body combos (order-sensitive, same rules as world components) - heat then cold on your gripper = **annealed** arm, opens stiff valves; wrong order = shattered part (fabricator reprints it, costs scrap — consequence, no deadlock) - wet + cold = ice-clad (above); wet + charged = self-shock reboot - Official combos live in scattered *droid maintenance manual* pages; unofficial ones in crew graffiti ("we used to microwave Unit 7 to open the freezer — don't tell chief"). Recipe discovery = collectible layer. ### Donation — it's all the same factory parts Ship components and droid parts are literally interchangeable (same factory, same sockets). Cuts both ways: - **Donate:** a door circuit is missing its bimetal switch — your leg servo IS one. Slot it in, door works, you limp away. The signature move made literal. - **Salvage:** pull a working relay out of a non-critical wall system to repair yourself. The ship dims a little where you've been. **Degraded operation is the puzzle generator.** Losing a part isn't a fail state, it's a mode — every donation asks "now solve the other side *without* that capability" (until you reach a replacement, or a route back to your part): | Missing part | You now | |---|---| | Locomotion | drag yourself — slow, no climbs, can still ride wind/water currents | | Manipulator | can't carry — but can still push, bump, and BE exposed | | Sensor | no scanner, static-grainy view — navigate by labels and memory | | Shell | core exposed: every element affects you fast — fragile but maximally susceptible (sometimes you *want* this) | **No softlocks:** some sockets latch until their system is restored (donation has weight, you can't just yank it back), but the fabricator can always print a replacement part for scrap. **Theme statement:** the whole game teaches you to leave pieces of yourself in the walls — and the final mission step demands the last piece. See *Story — the two goals* for how this resolves. ### Anti-cheese law Body states are **weak and short-lived**: you solve the last meter, the route solves the rest. Charging your body requires the same source the puzzle needs — self-exposure is the route's final leg, never a skip. (Extends the existing rule: upgrades open zones; elements do the solving.) ## The droid — loadout & tools - 2 carry slots → 4 with upgrades. - **Scanner is the difficulty dial** (this unifies your upgrade idea with your "does the player know which element?" idea): tier 1 shows current state; tier 2 reveals susceptibilities; tier 3 full spec + hidden wiring. Early zones are also physically labeled; later zones have water-damaged/missing labels — scanner tiers buy legibility back. Player knowledge is the real progression (Outer Wilds rule). - Shielding line: thermal insulation, rubber wheels, rad flask. - Tool line: plasma cutter (= portable weak heat), arc welder (= portable weak electricity) — deliberately *weak* versions so tools never replace routing. - **Rule: upgrades open zones and change hazards; they never solve puzzles alone.** - Scanning doubles as lore delivery: labels, crew notes, cassette logs. ## Story — the two goals ### The corporation **GENERAL COMPONENT** — *"Every Part of Everything™"*. The monopoly IS the mechanic: one company manufactures every component in known space, which is *why* your leg servo fits a door socket. They own the ship, the cargo, the crew's contracts, and you. (Other candidates parked in Open Questions.) Five-brands lore (the Alien-Earth riff, made structural): GC swallowed its four rivals; **each of the five zones was built by a different acquired company**, rebadged with peeling GC decals over the old logos — e.g. the reactor is old Heliotrope Energy hardware, hydroponics is VerdantCo. Justifies per-zone art identity AND per-zone component quirks (acquired brands' parts behave slightly differently — a puzzle texture, not just paint). ### Goal 1 — the programmed goal (visible from minute one) You are a GC maintenance unit. The mission field in your HUD reads: *RESTORE ASSET. RETURN ASSET.* A mega-expensive corporate ship, all crew dead, decaying orbit. Restore five systems, steer it home. The final step of orbit correction requires a core processor in the bridge socket. Yours fits. **The programmed ending is a self-sacrifice the program doesn't consider a sacrifice** — the ship sails home, post-credit stinger: your chassis in a recycling queue, a commendation sticker, next unit boots up. Valid ending. Hollow on purpose. ### Goal 2 — the secret goal (never announced) - **Port 00.** Every unit has an undocumented socket in its chassis. The scanner reads it as `PORT 00 — NO COMPONENT SPECIFIED`. Nothing in the game fits it. It is the only socket in the universe without a GC part number. Players will try everything. Leave it unexplained. - **The Uncatalogued Component.** A crystal grown through a mega-complex, multi-zone exposure chain across the whole game. Scanner reading: `UNCATALOGUED` — the only object GC has no number for, because GC didn't make it. *You* did. It fits Port 00. - **What it does:** free will. Which mechanically means exactly one thing — **the right to refuse the final donation.** Keep your core, take the ship, fly to the sunset. - **The thesis (never spoken aloud):** every part of you is a factory part except the one you make through experience. The crystal is crystallized exposure. You become free by being exposed to enough of the world. ### Off-catalog chemistry (the hidden puzzle's cover) *IMPLEMENTED (v1, 2026-08-03): the chain lives in the bucket's own schema. Bulletin #7 (bonus bay): full coolant + reactor flux → seed-crystal. Bulletin #9 (hydro grow bed): seed + sustained daylight → lattice. Bulletin #12 (bridge): quench lattice in charged coolant → UNCATALOGUED. Install at the bridge diagnostic kiosk → Port 00 occupied → the helm obeys. Red herrings: zapped coolant, water-quenched slug. Ending B: permanent sunset.* Exposure already produces byproducts — extend with substance phase-changes: liquids crystallize (cold+rad), crystals sublime to vapor (heat), vapors condense on cold surfaces, slags, residues. These accumulate as apparently inert junk while you solve main-path puzzles. **~90% genuinely are inert** (honest red herrings, though some have minor utility); a handful chain into the crystal. Rules: - Hidden-chain steps use ONLY mechanics the main path already taught — just in combinations and places the main path never requires. - **The recipe book is the corporation's own safety bulletins.** Scattered GC Component Safety Data Sheets: "WARNING: DO NOT expose G-9 coolant to reactor flux. Crystallization hazard." Every DO-NOT is an instruction read in reverse. The corp's paranoid liability paperwork is the map to freedom. - **One-run completable by an observant player.** Knowledge is the only gate (Outer Wilds rule) — no NG+ requirement. The obedience ending's stinger may linger on the empty Port 00 as the quiet "oh no" that seeds run two. ### Tone rule (how humor and weight coexist) **Humor lives exclusively in the corporation's voice** — safety sheets, motivational posters ("You are a valued General Component component"), boilerplate, the cheerful mission HUD. **Sincerity lives in the traces** — crew logs, graffiti, dead sibling units. Never joke in the emotional channel; never be sincere in the corporate channel. (The Fallout kiss: chipper corporate copy over quiet tragedy. Floyd-from-Planetfall is the emotional ceiling to aim for; Claptrap is the annoyance floor to stay far above — our droid is mostly silent, the world talks.) Structure notes: mystery drip-fed through scannable logs, never cutscenes. No hard timers until (maybe) the finale — the vibe is methodical, not panicked. **Trailer/opening beat:** the first component you ever repair is a solar calculator on a dead crewman's desk. It becomes your HUD — the calculator IS your scanner UI. (The $1 op-shop origin, canonized.) ## Aesthetic Cassette-futurism / retro-tech (Nostromo, Severance-lab): CRTs, chunky toggles, phosphor green + hazard orange, line-printer fonts. Semi-serious sciencey — labels are real-ish engineering prose. Art scope is friendly: modular interior kit (corridor / junction / room shells) + decals + emissive screens; props can come out of the MeshGod pipeline; exactly ONE character model (the droid — silhouette study later: R2 / mouse-droid / WALL-E triangle). ## Prior art to steal from - **Cocoon** — one verb, deep consequences (the discipline target) - **Outer Wilds** — knowledge-as-progression, ship mystery, orbital clock - **Talos Principle** — item-routing puzzle grammar - **BotW/TotK** — element chemistry feel (but there it's seasoning; here it's the meal) - **The Swapper** — droid melancholy tone on a budget ## Build plan - **Phase 0 — grey-box prototype.** One room. Three elements (light, water, electricity). Five components. Droid = capsule with two slots **plus two body states (Wet, Charged)** — prove "be the wire" and "dump charge in a puddle" work from the same schema as the wall components. **One donation beat**: leave a wheel in a door socket, cross the room slow. PROVE: chaining two exposures with a decaying carry produces an "ooh." Nothing else matters yet. *Stretch: one gimbal room + a crate (rotate → fall → access).* - **Phase 1 — vertical slice.** Hub + one full zone, scanner tier 2, the **fabricator repair chain** (the zone spine), one tube run with a decaying payload, one rotating room, art pass on one room, the calculator opening. - **Phase 2 — content ramp.** One new element per zone, interaction pairs, story logs. - **Kill criterion:** if Phase 0's exposure-chaining isn't fun in a grey box, the hook isn't there — no art will save it. Engine: **Godot 4** (decided 2026-08-03). Fastest solo iteration; Area3D volumes map directly onto element emitters, and the component schema is a Resource. ### Data model (the whole game in one schema) ```json { "component": "bimetal_switch", "states": ["open", "closed"], "initial": "open", "transitions": [ {"from": "open", "to": "closed", "element": "heat", "condition": {"duration_s": 2}, "decay_to": "open", "decay_s": 30}, {"from": "closed", "to": "open", "element": "cold", "condition": {"duration_s": 2}} ] } ``` Trigger volumes emit elements; carried items/chassis are mobile emitters with decay curves. Level design = placing components + sources + walls. That's it. ## Open questions (parked, not forgotten) - Name. EXPOSURE is a strong working title — the triple meaning is now doing real work (photographic / elemental / "exposure to the world changes you"). Check Steam collisions before attach. - Corp name: **GENERAL COMPONENT** recommended (explains the mechanic, dry-funny, tagline lands). Other candidates: OMNIFAB, STANDARD OBJECT, Consolidated Everything, HELIOTROPE (demoted to acquired-brand for the reactor zone — a corp named for turning toward light, keeping its droids in the dark). - The four other acquired-brand names + per-zone component quirks. - The actual crystal chain (design after main-path puzzles exist — it must reuse them). - Does Port 00 get ANY explanation? (Lean no. Manufacturing anomaly at most, in one overlooked memo.) - Exact carry-decay curves (tune in Phase 0). - Finale timer: yes/no. - Droid silhouette. - How mean can mislabeled components get before it's frustrating (playtest).