Thumberdome

How a bout goes

Two fists come out through red curtains at either end of the arena, open, and take hold. The crowd is silent until the hands join; then the gong lets the thumbs go.

The thumbs circle for an opening. A lunge comes down, and if it catches the other thumb it pins it right where it was caught, anywhere on the hand, so long as it came down on top rather than underneath. A pin held long enough wins the round; the only way out is to wriggle. A lunge that lands on nothing costs nothing but stamina, and the thumb is back up the moment you let go — the game answers every movement and every press.

Everything costs stamina — circling least, the lunge more, holding somebody down most of all — against a pool that comes back on its own, so a long bout is two tired thumbs making worse decisions. Best of three.

The opponent

You play against the game, at one of four levels: the Rookie, who presses at nothing and rests whenever it is tired; the Regular, who only presses at a thumb it can catch; the Veteran, who comes down on your misses; and the Champion, who reacts in under a fifth of a second, baits, holds ground and keeps enough stamina in hand for a pin.

They are one simple state machine — circle, lunge, bait — that sees the game a little late. How late is the whole difference between them, along with how often each points at the wrong place and how hard each fights out of a pin.

Where it is now

The grey capsules are gone. Two realistic, fully rigged arms come through the gates, in a sand-and-stone Colosseum built around them, with sound, and an announcer who stands on the far gate watching every move — press C and the view cuts to him.

Next is the pin itself: a study of how one thumb really bears down on another, so that a pin only holds with the top thumb truly over, two thumbs side by side shove against each other instead, and the announcer counts the pin out with his hands in the air.

Every number in the fight — reach, timing, how fast an escape builds, what each move costs, how each opponent plays — lives in one tuning asset, so changing how it feels never means a rebuild. The world around it is being written and is not settled yet.