Dilution is the ramp
Past sixteen symbols the deck samples without replacement, so every pick waters down every other. The difficulty curve is your own greed — skipping a draft for one gold is often the strong move.
[ ARC ] // Cabinet 12
Shardspin
Your rig samples the deck onto a 4×4 grid out in the colorless Outlands. Every spin pays crystal energy toward the dome tithe; every draft is another symbol diluting the sixteen slots. Pay all eight tithes and the sector holds — miss one and it goes dark.
[ 12a ] // Design
Why it plays the way it does_
One fixed resolution order
Destructions, then transforms, then payouts, always in slot-index order, all from one seeded generator threaded through the state. Same seed, same run — a daily-seed mode is a one-line feature, and a payout bug is reproducible instead of anecdotal.
The tithe collector is honest
Eight payments on a published schedule, then endless mode grows them ×1.6 on a six-spin cycle. You always know the number and the deadline; the tension is engine-building against a clock, not a surprise bill.
Scores are saved on this device. A shared leaderboard needs an account, and travellers are not wired to the arcade yet.