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Game rules

Route Race

The player receives a start entity and target entity. The server retains the known shortest distance for scoring, but it is not presented as a Par field during play. Selecting a neighboring entity follows one stored relationship and counts as a move. Back returns to the previous navigation node and also counts as a move.

Before a new round, Solo players choose Any category or one of the ten atlas topics, then confirm Easy, Normal, or Hard. Multiplayer hosts make the same locked choices while creating the lobby; joiners see the pinned topic but cannot change it. A specific category requires both endpoints to share that topic, while intermediate discoveries may cross the wider atlas. The last category and difficulty are remembered independently for Solo and Multiplayer, but every new Solo round requires confirmation. Daily category and difficulty remain part of its curated assignment. Every category contains four Easy, four Normal, and two Hard routes. The server keeps one per-player history for the active graph, then selects unseen eligible routes within the current filters and avoids an immediate repeat. Changing between Any category and a specific topic therefore does not make a route the player already saw immediately eligible again.

The data pipeline owns choice-first publication: every generated candidate must start with at least two distinct playable targets, with parallel facts to the same target counted once. Automatic Solo, multiplayer-lobby, and new Daily assignment pools verify that invariant again before selection. Explicit round IDs and already-pinned Daily assignments remain available for deterministic replay.

Reaching the target starts one finite confetti rain across the transition to the result page in Solo, Daily, and Multiplayer. It is decorative, ignores pointer input, does not announce itself to assistive technology, and is suppressed when either the system or Webwoven preference requests reduced motion.

Every mode reveals its category, difficulty, start, and goal during a five-second introduction that ends at the server-owned started_at timestamp. The category remains visible above the start and goal cards while the endpoints are revealed. Multiplayer-lobby participants share exactly one timestamp. Movement is unavailable before it, and elapsed play time begins from it. Reduced motion or missing WebGL changes the presentation, not the duration or control boundary.

Active-round interface

An active round uses a compact dark HUD. Desktop and tablet show the timer, move count, permanent target, score, and Back command. Phones retain Time, Moves, and the complete wrapping Target; Score is removed from the narrow row, and Back appears only when it is available. The known shortest distance remains available to server scoring, but the HUD has no Par field. The map board is the primary play surface: it marks the current entity, shows exactly one visible goal marker, and places the immediately reachable entities between them. It behaves as an expanding atlas rather than replacing one diagram with another.

Desktop and tablet retain the separate round-identity area with Round active, mode, and difficulty. At phone widths, that area and the map's separate prompt/header are removed entirely, while the Multiplayer status strip becomes one compact line: lobby code plus a player/finish summary, or the active grace countdown. The individual player roster remains available on larger layouts instead of competing with the map on a narrow screen. Phone maps also remove the floating zoom and navigation toolbar so it cannot cover the current node; touch gestures remain available, and the semantic map instructions remain attached for assistive technology. Back and every remaining control retain at least a 44px touch target. The recovered height belongs to the game canvas rather than leaving the graph crowded below stacked chrome. Every Follow or Back command freezes the current decision stage. On desktop and tablet, the next stage opens in a column to its right; on phones, it opens below in a vertical flow whose active choices form a compact two-column constellation. The selected entity joins the visible breadcrumb route; the alternatives remain on the map as muted, inspectable branches. The spatial canvas expands with every resolved stage and automatically pans the newest playable stage into view. Back instead fades the departed node into a muted history state and recenters the returned current node, reading as the reverse of forward progress. Repeated entities remain separate visit occurrences, so a retraced route never collapses the history into one dot.

The expanding atlas is a free spatial canvas rather than a one-directional strip. Players can drag the background to pan in both directions, pinch or scroll around a pointer to zoom, fit the entire explored map, or return to the current position. Arrow keys pan when the canvas is focused; + and - zoom, 0 fits the map, and Home returns to the current node. A newly resolved move preserves the player's zoom. The initial desktop camera contains the complete start card, active frontier, and distant goal card; finishing the endpoint reveal refits that same opening stage rather than letting normal stage-follow panning cut off either endpoint. Desktop and tablet pan later current stages into the left third of the viewport, leaving the new frontier visible to its right; phones place it toward the upper portion, leaving the new frontier visible below. The camera and decorative renderer move together over 320ms; reduced-motion mode updates immediately. Hint-only updates do not pull the camera away from an older branch being inspected. On phones, the current card, compact constellation, and selected detail tray take containment priority so every route remains tappable without fitting several full cards into the canvas.

Every earlier breadcrumb and muted alternative remains a focusable inspection point. Opening one does not move the player or spend a command: it shows the entity description, whether the route was taken, its documentary image, its source and target, and every stored fact for that connection. The one exception is the immediately previous active-route node, which is also an inline Back control on both pointer and touch layouts. Its first activation arms a visible Back indicator but does not submit a command; activating the same node again sends the existing server-owned Back command. Activating any other node clears that pending confirmation and preserves the ordinary inspection behavior. The HUD Back control and B shortcut remain available. When the acquired data includes a preferred Wikipedia sitelink, the inspector offers that external article in a new tab; article text is never copied into the game bundle. These details are rebuilt from the server-owned decision history after refresh or reconnect. Back stages suppress a duplicate inverse option for the node they returned to, while the immutable visible trail still records the Back action.

When the active branch has no playable connections, the map shows a non-modal recovery callout next to the current node. Its primary action names the server-owned Back destination, states that Back costs one move, and exposes the B shortcut. The previous active-route node retains its two-step inline Back behavior; all other historical nodes remain inspection controls. The recovery action is omitted at a start-node dead end and after the round leaves the active state.

On desktop and tablet, each reachable entity is a direct move card. It shows the entity name and the complete stored fact sentence that justifies the connection; raw property labels are supporting metadata, not the player's main instruction. The card orders a color-coded relationship glyph, the fact sentence, and a square documentary image. On phones, the same choice is a compact labelled bubble. Selecting that bubble for the first time only previews the route: it highlights the choice, opens one detail tray containing the complete fact, artwork, and an explicit Move or Check action, and exposes a small action indicator beside the selected bubble. Selecting that same bubble again confirms through the same existing command as the tray action. Selecting a different bubble switches the preview without spending a move or submitting a command.

For every ordinary connection, the graph line terminates directly at its semantic control without a duplicate choice token, sequence number, or repeated action label. A reachable goal retains its Ochre marker and runs a continuous two-beat size heartbeat on both desktop and phone. The effect is suppressed by either reduced-motion preference while the static goal treatment remains. On phones, the goal uses the same compact preview and exposes an explicit Finish action in the detail tray. Repeating activation on the selected goal bubble confirms the same Finish command. Multiple semantic edges to the same entity are grouped into one move; all facts remain attached while the deterministic primary fact is shown. Forward connections never offer an entity already present in the active navigation route.

The raw knowledge graph deliberately retains useful inverse relationships, but the server removes active-route targets before ranking the playable frontier, issuing command tokens, or calculating hints. It also rejects a cyclic target if a client attempts to submit one directly. Back pops the active route and is therefore the only way to retrace a path; after retracing, the abandoned branch may be chosen again. This prevents two-node and longer navigation loops without permanently locking a player out after a mistaken choice or deleting valid knowledge from the shared graph. Dense real entities may have dozens of Wikidata neighbors, so the server projects at most six distinct destinations into the current board. The projection is deterministic, rotates across relationship types, and retains a distance-reducing edge whenever one remains route-safe. A branch can still end when every remaining edge would repeat the active route or when the underlying graph has no playable continuation; in that case the contextual Back recovery applies. The board layout uses fixed deterministic 26rem columns and vertical lanes derived from the session snapshot, so the same graph state produces the same positions without a hand-authored scene. Vertical lane spacing adapts gently to frontier density: one or two lanes receive 11rem of breathing room, each additional lane removes 0.5rem, and six or more lanes retain a 9rem minimum gap. A distant goal marker receives a wider 52rem terminal gap from the active frontier, while a goal that becomes an immediate move joins the ordinary choice column. The camera and Fit Map bounds use that same layout geometry. The current card docks its right edge over the current token, and the distant-goal card mirrors that treatment from its left edge. Each card masks half of its token so routes visually leave the current entity and enter the destination through one shared anchor. Only the rightmost frontier contains command tokens or move controls. Historical columns contain semantic entity and relationship summaries with read-only inspection controls.

On phone-width screens, the same deterministic board is projected into a top-to-bottom flow instead of shrinking the horizontal atlas. The current entity is the only full card and opens close beneath the HUD. Compact history labels remain above it, active choices occupy at most two columns below it, and the distant goal remains a centered compact marker whose label wraps in full. Decorative map tokens and visible choice pins are slightly smaller than their desktop counterparts, while their semantic controls keep full touch targets. One or two choices receive more breathing room; larger frontiers add rows without stacking six full cards down the canvas. A reachable goal joins the same compact choice constellation and reveals its Finish action in the detail tray and beside the selected bubble. Choice names always wrap in full rather than using an ellipsis. Each two-node row uses the tallest measured label block in that row, vertically centers a shorter neighbor inside the shared height, and adds only that row's required extra spacing before the next row. The first activation previews any compact choice; a second activation of that same choice confirms it, while activating another choice switches the preview without moving. Crossing the phone breakpoint clears ephemeral preview state, selects the appropriate card or constellation presentation, and refits the active stage. Node identities, links, commands, scoring, and the desktop and tablet board geometry do not change; desktop and tablet continue to use direct full cards. After a phone move, camera fitting includes the immediately previous node, current entity, and every active frontier choice so the complete next decision and inline Back target remain reachable without manual panning. Returning from an exhausted branch keeps the desktop camera stationary. On phones, the same recovery preserves the zoom but applies the smallest necessary vertical correction so the taller recovered current card cannot sit behind the HUD and its new choices remain inside the map viewport.

Before presenting a frontier, the server searches the pinned graph for a path to the round target that does not revisit any entity in the active route. If no such path remains, the current node is treated as exhausted and exposes no false choice, so one Back returns to the last decision that can still lead forward. A direct dead-end decoy remains valid when it appears beside at least one route-safe target path. When dense ranking limits the frontier to six destinations, the first move of that safe path is retained even if global distance ranking would otherwise hide it.

The timer is visually prominent but is not a live region, preventing screen readers from announcing every second. Interactive nodes remain semantic DOM controls with full labels and fact sentences; the map rendering is decorative and may disappear without removing a playable move. Operating-system increased-contrast and forced-color preferences strengthen native controls automatically; there is no separate in-game contrast mode.

The decorative Three.js layer uses raised, low-poly atlas tokens with discrete cel-shaded bands, ink outlines, and physical shadows; it never owns input or game rules. If WebGL is unavailable, a deterministic SVG fallback still shows the same nodes, depth cues, links, and discarded states. The immutable result trail retains the complete relationship explanation for every move. Its documentary artwork uses a centered contain treatment in a 5:4 frame, backed by a soft full-frame version of the same image.

Score

Let d* be the known shortest distance, m the moves used, t elapsed seconds, T the difficulty time window, and p hint penalties.

efficiency = d* / max(m, d*)
speed      = max(0, 1 - t / T)
score      = clamp(round(1000 × (0.80 × efficiency + 0.20 × speed)) - p, 0, 1000)

Difficulty windows are 120, 180, and 240 seconds for easy, normal, and hard.

Hints

  • Compass arms route-selection mode. The player then selects a visible route to evaluate that relationship group without moving, costing 75 points.
  • Lens marks a relationship group on a near-optimal route, costing 150 points.
  • Map Fragment reveals a valid future bridge entity, costing 250 points.

Selection is graph-derived. Generated language may describe a hint, but it never chooses one. Hint feedback uses plain language and never exposes raw property IDs as player instructions. On desktop and tablet, route count and map help share the compact map header with the move prompt. A narrow rail on the map's right keeps zoom, Fit map, and Current at the top, then distributes the three hint tools in a compact stack below a short divider. Hint explanations open inward on hover or keyboard focus while the score penalty remains visible. The rail uses icon-only navigation and no persistent panel or button outlines. Floating hint feedback never intercepts map input, and the node canvas contains no persistent visible controls. Phone layouts omit the canvas toolbar and reduce the horizontal hint dock to one 44px row of icons and numeric penalties; complete tool names, penalties, availability, and state remain in their accessible button labels.

Multiplayer lobbies

Two to four active players enter a Lobby and receive the same round. Only the host sees the Lobby's Share control. It opens the platform's native share sheet when available and otherwise copies or reveals a canonical /lobby/{CODE}/join link. Opening that link shows a minimal invitation naming the host and asks the visitor to confirm before joining or reopening an existing membership; the link never joins a guest automatically. The same browser window can therefore be reused without silently abandoning its current state.

The host starts one synchronized countdown for every active participant. The server-owned end timestamp is also the command boundary: a move submitted at or after that instant is accepted even if the browser has not yet received the race.started event, while an earlier move remains locked. Opponents see move count, hint use, and a coarse progress band—not current nodes or routes. The first valid server-recorded finish wins; moves, hints, and server time break near-simultaneous ties.

The first finish opens a 30-second grace period for unfinished players. Its countdown stays visible in the compact Multiplayer strip and on the result surface without covering the map HUD. Unfinished players may continue until the exact server deadline. At that deadline their multiplayer sessions become expired, further commands are rejected, and their clients can move to results instead of remaining stuck in an apparently active game.

Finishing the race opens a second 30-second decision: every active player may vote yes or no to another round. The vote resolves when everybody has answered or the deadline passes. With at least two yes votes, those players remain active, receive fresh synchronized sessions for a new eligible route, and reuse the same Lobby code; no-voters and non-voters become inactive. With fewer than two yes votes, the Lobby closes with not_enough_players and directs its former players elsewhere.