DUE TONIGHT

[h2]THE DEBT IS DUE TONIGHT[/h2]

You owe three hundred and twenty. The collector arrives when the night ends.

Between now and then there is a floor full of rooms, a clock that does not stop,

and a card table in every one of them.

Win it back. That is the whole plan, and it is not a good one.

[h2]THE GAME AT THE TABLE[/h2]

Match the colour or the value. That rule is true in every room in the building,

and everything else is built on top of it.

[list]

[*][b]Every card has a price.[/b] Before you commit, the table tells you exactly

what a play costs: the Pressure it deals, the Heat it puts on you, what it does

to your Chain, and how many answers it leaves the other side. Nothing is hidden

and nothing is a dice roll.

[*][b]Heat is the good stuff and the dangerous stuff.[/b] Playing hot makes you

hit harder and makes everything they do land harder too. Braking costs you the

turn. Deciding when to cool down is most of the game.

[*][b]Chain links across the whole night.[/b] Keep matching and you build toward

Fever, the moment the table turns over and starts working for you.

[*][b]Break them or empty your hand.[/b] Two ways to take a round, and they want

completely different decks.

[/list]

[h2]TWENTY-THREE PEOPLE, NOT TWENTY-THREE STAT BLOCKS[/h2]

Nobody across the table is a bag of numbers with a portrait on it. Each one has

a habit they cannot help, a mistake that habit leads them into, and a tell that

fires a beat before they do it.

[list]

[*][b]They have a plan and it has a hole in it.[/b] The Barkeep never watches his

own temperature. The Counter reads a small card as weakness and commits to being

wrong. The Bouncer spends his best cards first because he always has.

[*][b]They watch you back.[/b] Sit down bleeding, or wealthy, or armed, and the

room notices - and reacts by playing differently, in the open, never by a hidden

modifier.

[*][b]They remember.[/b] Break your own chain in front of the Usher and he stops

guarding it. Finish a round hot in front of the Whale and he starts respecting

heat, which ruins him, because recklessness was the only thing he was good at.

[/list]

[h2]THE NIGHT IS THE RESOURCE[/h2]

Twelve rooms are open and you have hours for about five. The bar, the presses,

the fence, the office where a man will lend you more than you should take. What

you did not have time for is the thing you gave up to do something else.

[h2]BRING SOMETHING TO THE TABLE[/h2]

Objects you put on the felt, where everyone can see them. A ceramic pink pig

that hides money from the collector. A brass bell wired to nothing at all. A

small hammer for the card that will not move. Some of them are jokes. Some of

them are a very bad idea. A few are both.

And yes, you can cheat. The room will notice before it acts - you get a glance,

then a stare, then the moment their tell goes quiet. That silence is your last

chance to put it away.

[h2]HIGH TABLES[/h2]

Some rooms are not harder. They are a different game.

[list]

[*][b]THE COLD TABLE[/b] - the brake only works while you are cold.

[*][b]THE PRIVATE ROOM[/b] - the night runs while you sit here.

[*][b]THE DOG TABLE[/b] - the pot shrinks every turn it stays on the table.

[*][b]THE GLASS TABLE[/b] - both hands face up, and nobody here guesses.

[*][b]THE SPLIT TABLE[/b] - one Tempo pool. Spending it is also taking it.

[/list]

[h2]THE HOUSE[/h2]

At the end of the night somebody is waiting who does not play a bigger version

of the same game. He watches how you play, says out loud what he thinks you are,

and then spends the rest of the fight making that true.

He is also certain. Once he has decided who you are, he never revises it - so

the way past him is to stop being the man he named.

[h2]ALSO[/h2]

[list]

[*][b]Play together.[/b] Two to four at one table over the network, taking turns

on one shared deck.

[*][b]Seeded and shareable.[/b] Daily runs, challenges, and an endless table.

[*][b]Drawn by the game itself.[/b] There is not a single image file in this

project. Every card, every face, every mark on the felt is generated at runtime.

[*][b]Built to be read.[/b] Colourblind palettes, text scaling, reduced motion,

screen shake and filter controls, and a full keyboard path through every screen.

[/list]

[i]An original card game. The ruleset is colour-and-value matching, which is

older than any trademark on it, and it shares no names, art or text with any

commercial card game.[/i]