Roxemon

1. Purpose of this document

This is the working design bible for Roxemon. It tells a small team what to build first, what never to copy, and how the game should feel in a browser and on a thumb-driven phone. It is not a full production GDD (no shot lists, no audio stems, no 80-creature stat dump). It is detailed enough that a Godot prototype can start without inventing the fantasy on the fly.

2. Research note and copyright hygiene

Pokémon Red (Game Freak / Nintendo, Game Boy, 1996 JP / 1998 NA as Red/Blue) is a third-person overhead RPG split into overworld, turn-based side-view battles, and menus. The player walks a region, meets wild creatures in tall grass and caves, trains a party of six, uses up to four moves, and aims to beat eight type-themed gyms plus a final champion circuit while filling an encyclopedia. Game Boy input is D-pad, A (confirm / talk), B (cancel), Start (menu), Select (reorder).

Those are genre facts useful for pacing. They are not Roxemon’s identity. Pokémon names, maps, creatures, items, UI chrome, music, slogans, and the “ball that swallows a monster” are closed. Roxemon must be playable by someone who has never heard of Kanto and still feel whole.

What we keep as genre craft (not IP)

What we throw away on purpose

• Random invisible grass rolls. Roxe are 3D actors you can see, sneak, or ignore.
• Hidden Machines as story locks. The player sails, climbs, and lamps; creatures are partners, not keys.
• Level 100 grind and a six-move-wait menu tree. Cap is 50. Battle UI is cards, not nested lists.
• Version exclusives that require a second cartridge. One game, one roster, optional later co-op gifts.
• Capture-by-sphere and shake-count ritual. Attunement is a pact mini-beat with a Heartcharm.
• Copying the Gen 1 type chart, Special-stat bug, or badge-boost math. New tones, new formula.

3. Fantasy and pillars

You are a new Keeper on Isla Laya, a warm archipelago where animals called Roxe grow from tide, heat, root, and storm. Keepers do not trap them. They attune: earn a pause in the fight, offer a Heartcharm, and invite the Roxe into a shared Sanctuary. The Ash Compact is bottling that same life as fuel. Your job is to walk the Laya Circuit, mark six shrines, and stop the drain.

4. Core gameplay

4.1 The five-beat loop

Victory is not “become champion of a league.” Victory is Circuit Complete: six Tide Marks, a Sanctuary that feels like yours, the Ash Compact’s siphon broken, and a Ledger that is honestly unfinished (completionists can keep exploring after credits). A second, quieter goal is First Chorus: attune one Roxe of every tone.

4.2 Player fantasy in play

You are a field naturalist with a small traveling team, not a gym-circuit celebrity. Combat is how Roxe talk when words fail. The overworld is the real game: weather, bait, line of sight, and which island tool you brought. Battles should feel like arguments with rules, not slot machines.

4.3 Encounter rules (overworld)

• Visible spawn. Roxe idle, graze, perch, or patrol. A faint tone-colored haze tags their resonance at close range (colorblind: icon + pattern, never color alone).
• Attention. Walking into personal space, sprinting, or using a noisy tool aggroes them. Crouch-walk and downwind approach (Gale weather matters) keeps them curious instead of hostile.
• Initiation. Tap / press Action on a wild Roxe to call a challenge. They may start the fight if they charge you. Some shy species flee into brush; chase is optional.
• Keepers. Human opponents have a greeting radius, not an invisible line-of-sight laser from 1996. You can walk around most of them. Story Keepers step into your path once.
• No inescapable grass tax. Roads are safe. Wilds are opt-in density. Fast-travel shrines never dump you into a forced fight.

4.4 Attunement (the capture analog)

Attunement is allowed only on wild Roxe, and only after they are Weary (Vigor at or below 40%) or Soothed (Calm Fruit, Lullaby Call, or a successful Flow art). Then the player spends one Heartcharm:

1. World slows. The Roxe faces you in a 3D close-up.
2. A three-pulse Resonance match: tap when the ring meets the mark (mobile) or press Action (web). Misses reduce success; they do not auto-fail unless all three miss.
3. Success: the Roxe steps into a light motif and is added to the trail four or sent to Sanctuary if the trail is full.
4. Failure: the charm cracks, the Roxe may flee or take one panic turn. No cartoon “wiggle counter.”

Success chance is a readable bar before you spend the charm: species rarity × remaining Vigor × soothe bonus × charm grade. Designers tune a curve; players see a High / Mid / Low label, not a hidden 0–255 roll copied from 1996.

4.5 Failure, death, and tone

If the trail four all drop to 0 Vigor, you are escorted to the last shrine or Port Sibol clinic. You keep Roxe, Marks, and Ledger. Dropped trail items stay in a marked pack you can recover. This is a setback, not a lecture. Wild Roxe that faint are not “yours to pick up.” They recover and leave. That is the moral line versus trapping.

4.6 Session length

5. World structure

Isla Laya is six inhabited islands plus open water, not one continuous overworld rectangle. Boats are a first-class map mode (short, on-rails-with-steering coastal hops), so mobile players are never asked to hold a stick across an ocean. Fast travel unlocks shrine-to-shrine after each Tide Mark.

5.1 Islands and shrines

5.2 Hub anatomy (every town)

• Clinic — restore Vigor, cure statuses, change trail order.
• Sanctuary annex — deposit / withdraw Roxe, rename, see Ledger pages.
• Market — Heartcharms, fruit, craft mats. No infinite buy of win-buttons.
• Boat post — sail to unlocked islands. Fast travel after the local Mark.
• Notice wall — optional Keeper duels and lost-Roxe side stories. Never required for credits.

5.3 Port Sibol (start)

A working harbor, not a silent suburb. Home is a stilt house with a guardian (Lola Ima). The field station belongs to Keeper Sela, a chart-maker, not a lab-coated inventor of the species. She does not hand you a world encyclopedia to fill for her ego; she asks you to walk because the Compact is lying about “empty islands.” Starter choice happens on the beach as three wild juveniles already arguing — you pick whom to back, the other two leave. Jun always takes the tone that beats yours.

5.4 Travel and locks (player tools, not creature keys)

5.5 Antagonist geography

The Ash Compact is a fuel company with legal docks on Ashfall and illegal barges in the mangroves. Their siphon towers are readable 3D landmarks. They are not a cartoon crime gang in matching uniforms in every cave. Officers can be dueled; workers can be talked down. The last act is a machine, not a “boss rush of four typed demigods.”

5.6 Space budget for Godot

Each island is a handful of streamed chunks (harbor, wild belt, shrine approach, dungeon), not an open-world continent. Target: you always see a coast or a ridge so the 3D camera has a horizon. Interiors are separate scenes with a load veil under 1.5s on mid Android.

6. Battle system

Battles are turn-based, 3D, one-versus-one by default, with a shared Chorus meter that is the main original hook. The camera sits in a small arena carved from the place you stood (mangrove water, kiln plaza, karst ledge) so fights feel local, not a copied side-view HUD from 1996.

6.1 Flow of a turn

1. Both sides pick in secret: Art, Item, Switch, Chorus, or Leave (wild only).
2. Tempo stat + art priority decide order. Switching is fast but not free (see below).
3. Resolve animation, numbers, statuses. If a Roxe hits 0 Vigor, the owner must send another or lose.
4. Chorus meter ticks up when you spend matching tones or take a hit while in Guard stance.

6.2 Stances (chosen with the art)

6.3 Stats (five, not six)

There is no split special-defense stat in v1. Spark arts still check Guard unless tagged Pierce. Simpler math is a mobile feature, not a missing AAA checkbox.

6.4 Eight tones

Every Roxe has one or two tones. Arts have one tone. Effectiveness is Strong / Neutral / Weak (1.6 / 1.0 / 0.6), never a 4× spike that deletes a creature because two charts stacked like later monster games. Dual-tone targets use the worse of the two for the attacker (defender-friendly).

6.5 Arts loadout

A Roxe carries three arts + one Chorus art. Arts unlock along a small web (not a 4-slot TM shop cloned from carts). Replacing an art is free at any Sanctuary. No “delete move forever” tax.

• Body / Spark tag on each art.
• Priority tags: Quick (goes first vs same Tempo), Heavy (goes last, +damage).
• Statuses: Burn (Ember, Might down), Soak (Brine, Tempo down), Root (Canopy, cannot Switch), Static (Pulse, 20% flinch), Gloom (Dusk, miss chance), Flare (Gleam, Spark down). One status at a time.
• No endless trap turns. Root lasts 2 turns max.

6.6 Chorus meter (original)

A shared bar 0–3. Gain 1 segment when you play a tone that matches your Roxe’s primary tone, or when you Guard a Strong hit. Spend 1–3 on the Chorus art: 1 = powered strike, 2 = field effect (rain, heat shimmer, dusk veil) for 3 turns, 3 = partner assist (a bench Roxe appears for one animation — still 1v1 rules, no true doubles in v1). Meter empties if you switch, on purpose: switching is a reset, not a free teleport.

6.7 Damage sketch (for engineers)

damage = (Might or Spark) × artPower × toneMod × stanceMod × random(0.9–1.0) − (Guard × 0.35) then floor at 1 if the hit connected. Crits are a 6% base, +4% on Strike vs Flow, never tied to a hidden Speed stat. Numbers are shown. No fake “super effective” voice line copied from another franchise; the UI says Resonates / Dull.

6.8 Wild vs Keeper duels

6.9 Experience and growth

• Level 1–50. Curve is front-loaded so island 1 feels fast and island 6 does not demand a grinding marsh.
• XP to all four on the trail, 70% to the active Roxe, 30% split to the bench. Sanctuary Roxe do not silently farm.
• Molt (evolution analog) is a storyed body change at set levels or with an island item. It can be deferred. No accidental molt in the last hit of a shrine fight unless the player opted in.
• No effort-value underground. A simple Diet bonus from cooked fruit (+Might week, etc.) that is visible and caps low.

7. Player systems

7.1 Identity

Preset body with hair / clothes / boat-color options. Name up to 12 characters. No celebrity-trainer license, no numbered “gym badges” row that reads as a Nintendo HUD. Tide Marks are carved tags on a wrist cord in the pause menu.

7.2 The trail four

You walk with at most four Roxe. That is a mobile decision: four portraits fit a phone without a second menu. Order is formation: slot 1 leads. Drag to reorder on touch; Q/E or click on web. Downed Roxe stay in slot but cannot lead until clinic or revive fruit (rare).

7.3 Sanctuary

Unlimited storage in named paddocks (Coast, Canopy, Night, Foundry, Favorites). Filter by tone. This is a 3D diorama you can visit in Port Sibol, and a list UI on the boat. Not a PC warehouse UI. Nickname, release (with a two-step confirm), or send to trail.

7.4 Field Ledger

Encyclopedia of seen / attuned Roxe. Pages store habitat, diet, molt, and a one-line behavior note you unlock by watching, not by dealing the last hit. Completion is optional. No professor nagging a quota of 151. v1 roster target: 80 species, ~20 molt lines, 8 dual-tone oddities.

7.5 Economy and satchel

• Currency: shells. Drops from Keepers and salvage, not from every wild faint.
• Satchel: 24 stacks. Overflow auto-sends to a harbor chest.
• Heartcharm grades: Driftwood, Tide, Shrine, Chorus. Higher grade helps rarity, never guarantees legendaries that do not exist in v1.
• Fruit: Vigor, soothe, status clear. Crafted at market from forage (visible bushes, not hidden 1990s tiles).
• No pay shop. If a mobile store page exists later, it is cosmetics only — never tones, never win chance.

7.6 Starters (original trio)

Names nod to Philippine coastal life without lifting folklore creatures as 1:1 mascots. Do not draw an electric mouse, a starter turtle/lizard/plant triangle copied in silhouette, or a sphere toy.

7.7 Sample wild roster (not the full 80)

7.8 People

• Keeper Sela — mentor, maps, never fights you for sport.
• Jun — rival. Wants strength as proof the islands still matter. Three story duels + optional rematch.
• Lola Ima — heal-at-home once; then the clinic is the system.
• Compact officers — named, few. The Siphon is the last opponent, piloted, not a secret fourth starter god.

7.9 Save, settings, and web persistence

• Auto-save on island enter, shrine, clinic, attunement, and every 3 minutes of idle-safe walking.
• Manual save in pause. Web: IndexedDB. Mobile: user data dir. Export a save file in settings for backup.
• One profile in v1. Language: English first, room for Filipino later.

8. User experience and controls

Pokémon Red taught a whole generation four verbs: move, confirm, cancel, menu. Roxemon keeps that grammar and throws away the hardware. The Game Boy had a D-pad because the world was a grid. Roxemon’s world is analog 3D, so the stick (or WASD) is locomotion, and Action is still one obvious button.

8.1 Verbs (platform-agnostic)

8.2 Mobile overworld (portrait default, landscape supported)

8.3 Mobile battle

Bottom sheet, not a 1996 text box with a blinking triangle. The 3D arena stays visible in the top 55%.

• Four big cards: Art (opens 3 arts) · Chorus · Trail (switch) · Satchel. Fifth ghost slot: Leave when legal.
• Art cards show tone color + pattern, power band, and stance icon. Confirm is the same Action disc or a second tap on the card (setting: “tap once / tap twice”).
• Vigor bars on top of each model, always on, high contrast. “Resonates” flash is icon + text, not red/blue super-effective language.
• Attune is a full-screen pulse game using the Action disc. Haptics on pulse if the OS allows.
• One-hand mode (settings): all cards shift to the right or left edge.

8.4 Web keyboard and mouse

Click-to-move is available for trackpads and accessibility. Hover shows Action prompts; never require pixel-perfect clicks on NPCs — a generous capsule collider plus a sticky “nearest prompt” solves web frustration.

8.5 Gamepad (optional, web and mobile with a controller)

Pokémon Red’s Select-to-reorder becomes drag-and-drop or LB/RB in the trail screen. Soft reset is Settings → Reload, never a four-button chord that kids hit by accident.

8.6 Camera rules

• Default: over-shoulder, 8–14 m, collision fade on near walls (opacity, not a hard clip into the player).
• Shrine interiors: slightly tighter. Boat: pulled back. Battle: authored tripod with a 10% follow.
• Never lock pitch into the ground. Never copy a 90° top-down Game Boy view as the real camera; a photo-mode top-down is allowed.

8.7 UI writing and readability

• Body text 18px+ on phone. Contrast ≥ 4.5:1. Tone icons have shapes (flame lick, wave, leaf, curl, block, bolt-not-Pikachu-star — use a ring spark, crescent, facet).
• Dialogue: 3 lines, skip, log in pause. No unskippable 1996 Oak lecture.
• Damage numbers toggle. Colorblind palettes: deuteranopia / protanopia / high contrast.
• Reduce motion: shorter Chorus camera, no screen shake.

8.8 Onboarding, first 12 minutes

1. Wake in the stilt house. Move + look only.
2. Harbor: Action on Lola, then Sela. No combat.
3. Beach: pick a starter by walking up and backing it. First wild is a Tikitik you can Leave.
4. Clinic + satchel fruit. Jun duel is scripted easy.
5. Kael’s kiln trial teaches tones with a single Strong/Dull example, then Mark 1, then the boat.

If the player has not opened Menu by minute 8, a single non-modal hint. Never a sticker of button icons copied from a Game Boy overlay.

8.9 Web-specific UX

• First click captures pointer only after a “Click to play” gate (browser policy).
• Mute toggle persistent. Autoplay music off until gesture.
• If Wasm is slow, offer “Low mesh” before the first island, not after a crash.
• Fullscreen button in the HTML shell around the Godot canvas.
• Touch on a phone browser uses the mobile scheme even in the web build.

9. Engine choice: Godot 4.5+

Pick Godot, not Unity. Roxemon is a stylized 3D game that must load in a browser and feel light on mid-range Android. Godot’s MIT license, smaller web footprint, and first-class GDScript web export match that better than Unity’s heavier WebGL player and fee/runtime complexity.

9.1 Render and export

• Web: Compatibility (OpenGL/WebGL2), single-threaded, no SharedArrayBuffer requirement. Texture size cap 1k/2k. Compress meshes. Target first paint < 15 MB compressed if possible.
• Android / iOS: Mobile or Forward+ as devices allow; same GDScript. 60 fps on harbor, 30 fps allowed in Ashfall particle weather.
• Character art: mid-poly, hand-painted or trim-sheet coral/wood. No photoreal skin.
• Lighting: baked GI on interiors, dynamic sun on islands. Night is a real clock, 16-minute cycle, rest at clinic skips to dawn.

9.2 Project map (Godot)

9.3 Hosting the web build

Export to this site’s /roxemon/play/ when a build exists. Serve .wasm, .pck with correct MIME types. Enable gzip/brotli. Do not enable cross-origin isolation unless we switch to threads on purpose. The design reference you are reading stays at /roxemon/.

9.4 v1 vertical slice (build this first)

1. Port Sibol streets + beach + clinic (one chunk).
2. One starter, Tikitik, Jun duel, Kael shrine (three arts, no Chorus yet).
3. Mobile stick + web WASD + battle cards.
4. Save / load. Then Chorus, then island 2.

10. Art and audio direction (anti-clone)

Look: humid dusk, kiln orange, lagoon glass, carved wood UI. Not red/white spheres, not a world map that is a fat rectangle with a plateau in the northwest. Music: kulintang-adjacent percussion and guitar, original themes. No chiptune that is trying to be a Game Boy soundtrack. Creature design: tropical mammals, reptiles, shorebirds, insects — readable silhouettes, no copyrighted mascot echoes.

11. Risks

12. Research sources (for the team, not for shipping copy)

Structural notes were checked against public gameplay summaries of Pokémon Red/Blue (overworld + battle + menu split; wild vs trainer; four moves; six-party; gym-gated region; Game Boy A/B/Start/Select). None of that material is reused as names, maps, or rules text in the game client. Roxemon’s rules above are the source of truth for implementation.