Build Log
Rug'd is being built in public. This is the running log of where the project is, what's been built, and what's coming next.
Playtest access is opening soon. Drop your email to get notified first.
The first playable version of the Rug'd prototype is live internally. The core game loop is functional — players can mint cards, generate LP, deploy Sentients to the Arena, and battle through to a Capital drain win condition.
Two play modes are currently available: a basic CPU opponent for solo testing, and Hotseat mode for two players on one device. Tutorial mode is working and walks new players through the core mechanics, though it still needs polish and refinement before it's ready for wider distribution.
This is a very early prototype. The foundation is there — but balance, UI polish, and edge case rules handling are all still in active development.
The Rug'd Discord server is now built and ready to open. The foundation is fully in place — security configured, roles created, channels structured, and bots installed and active.
The server runs three bots: Wick handles security and anti-raid with automod, antispam, and join gating (7-day account minimum, no profile pictures, suspicious accounts filtered). Captcha.bot handles verification on entry — new members land in #the-waiting-room, complete a web captcha, and are assigned the Normie role. Carl-bot handles logging, tracking deleted and edited messages, member activity, bans, and role updates.
Channels are organized across community, lore, strategy, and playtesting categories — each with pinned messages setting context and tone. The invite link will be live shortly once final entry flow testing is complete.
Two major prototype features landed this cycle: a fully scripted Tutorial Mode and drag-and-drop card input. Both represent significant steps toward making the game accessible to new players without sacrificing mechanical depth.
Tutorial Mode runs as a standalone experience separate from Hotseat and CPU modes. Before the game begins, players move through a 9-slide interactive slideshow covering lore, Capital, LP, all four card types with annotated diagrams, zone flow, and the Chip mechanic. Each slide has back/next navigation, dot indicators, a skip button, and a review button accessible from the phase bar during the game. Once the game starts, a milestone system fires contextual tooltips at key moments — bridging tokens, minting, staking, deploying, combat, blocking, Soulbound attachment, Catalyst deployment, LP stress, Capital recovery, and the win condition. Each tooltip pauses the game and requires dismissal before play continues. Still being polished.
Drag and drop has been added as an alternative input method alongside the existing click-to-select system. Players can now drag cards between zones directly — hand to Wallet, Wallet to Staking, Staking or Wallet to Battlefront, and reverse bridging. Drop eligibility is driven by the existing validation system. Both input methods work simultaneously.
On the Discord side, the onboarding flow has been fully tested and confirmed working with a real member. Waiting room permissions were tightened — unverified members can no longer send messages, view-and-click only. Wick was reinstalled fresh to restore all security modules, and Carl-bot autorole is confirmed saving correctly. A known cosmetic issue has been documented: the Unverified role persists after verification but has no functional impact on access.
The prototype has been connected to a live backend for the first time. Card definitions are now stored in a Supabase database and loaded dynamically on every game launch — replacing the previously hardcoded card data. An admin panel has been built at a protected URL, accessible only to the team via authenticated sign-in.
The admin panel gives the team full control over the game without touching code. Cards can be edited live — stats, effect text, lore text, abilities, and availability can all be changed from a browser and are reflected in the game immediately on next load. A Card Creator allows entirely new cards to be designed and published through a form interface, with a live card and tile preview updating in real time as fields are filled in. A Deck Builder allows the active deck to be configured visually — choosing which cards are included, in what quantities, and promoting a deck to live with one click.
Session logging is also now active. Every completed game automatically records turn count, winner, game mode, final Capital totals, cards minted and deployed, and player feedback. This data will feed the upcoming playtesting dashboard.
Two systems completed this cycle. The CPU opponent, previously a single-tier actor, has been replaced with a three-tier difficulty system. Beginner plays logically and is designed for players learning the mechanics. Regular adds board-state awareness — the CPU adjusts its priorities based on Capital totals, deploying defensively when threatened and offensively when the opponent is low. Hard plays economy-first, managing its LP reserve carefully, staking idle tokens, and making strategic deployment decisions based on the game state. Hard mode also pre-selects its Chip using an economy-optimized algorithm before the game begins.
The active deck system is now fully wired. Previously the game always used a hardcoded test deck regardless of what was configured in the admin panel. The game now reads the active deck from Supabase on every load and uses it directly — meaning deck changes made in the admin panel take effect in the game without any code changes or redeployment. The original test deck has been migrated into the database as "Standard V1" and is the current active deck.
Two major systems were completed this cycle: a comprehensive analytics dashboard built into the admin panel, and a significant expansion of the session logging system that now captures rich per-turn data throughout every game.
The session logging upgrade moves from a simple end-game snapshot to a full turn-by-turn recording system. Every turn now captures LP totals for both players, cards minted and deployed, cards destroyed, Catalyst resolutions, combat outcomes including attack declarations and Capital damage, ability triggers, staking zone sizes, and hand sizes. This data is stored in Supabase and feeds the analytics dashboard directly.
The Analytics Hub lives at the admin panel and gives the team a real-time view into how the game is performing. It is organized into nine metric categories covering Economy Health, Game Length and Pacing, Card Performance, Ability and Keyword Balance, Catalyst Timing and Impact, Combat Patterns, Chip Selection, Player Behavior, and Meta Health. Each category surfaces charts, trend lines, and healthy range indicators so balance issues are visible at a glance rather than buried in raw data. A composite Game Health Score gives an at-a-glance read on overall game health, and a Metrics Needing Attention panel automatically flags anything outside its healthy range.
The most powerful feature is the Rug'd Intelligence Report — a button that pulls all session data and player feedback together and sends it to the Claude API, which returns a structured written analysis covering what is working well, serious outliers and balance concerns, recurring bugs mentioned in feedback, and a prioritized list of actionable recommendations. This gives the team the ability to turn playtesting data into specific design decisions within seconds.
Two players in different locations can now play each other online. Real-time multiplayer is the largest technical milestone the prototype has reached — built progressively over six weeks across foundational infrastructure, authoritative game state synchronization, and connection-failure handling.
The system is built on a Node.js + Socket.io server that holds the authoritative game state for every active match. Players create or join a six-character room code in the lobby, indicate ready, and the server hands them a synchronized initial state. From that point forward, every game action — minting tokens, deploying Sentients, declaring attacks, resolving Catalysts, capital recovery — round-trips through the server, which validates the action and broadcasts the new state back to both clients. This eliminates any possibility of one player's screen showing a different game state than the other's.
The hardening work that closed this milestone matters as much as the multiplayer itself. The server now handles mid-game disconnections gracefully with a 60-second reconnection window, recovers cleanly when a hotseat confirmation times out, performs a graceful shutdown on server restarts (telling both players what happened), writes completed games to the database for the analytics dashboard, and redacts each opponent's hand and deck from the broadcast so player information can't be inspected via the browser. The authentication layer was also migrated to a dedicated production tenant with a custom domain, eliminating a class of issues that would have appeared once external players started signing up.
The playtest is now gated. Before this milestone, the prototype was publicly accessible to anyone with the URL — fine for internal testing, but not appropriate for the next phase. The Playtest Access System gives the team direct control over who plays the game while keeping the onboarding experience smooth for approved testers.
Three things changed for players. Signed-out visitors to test.playrugd.com now land on a dedicated landing screen with sign-in, sign-up, and Discord-join calls to action. Signed-in users who haven't been approved yet see a clear "you're on the list" screen with their handle and email displayed, plus a Discord invite to stay connected while waiting. Approved testers see the same welcome screen and game modes as before — the gate is invisible to them once they're in.
Behind the scenes, an admin panel surface manages the allowlist. The team can add testers by email, see who's pending and who has signed in, revoke access with a two-click safety confirmation, and restore access in one click. Every status — approved, pending sign-in, active, revoked — is visible at a glance, and the system handles edge cases like testers who sign up before being approved (it links them automatically the moment their email matches).
With the playtest gate live, the team turned to the operational layer that will support the playtest at scale. Standard Operating Procedures have been written for every workflow a non-technical team member might run — approving a new tester, revoking access, troubleshooting a login issue, and onboarding a new moderator into the team. These live both as authoritative documentation in the repository and as a manager-facing reference in the team's Notion workspace, so anyone helping run the playtest has a clear, step-by-step guide for every situation.
The team's internal documentation was also restructured. The technical roadmap, which had grown to a single large document covering every phase of the build, was split into focused documents by topic — closed phases as archive references, current work as a living plan. This change makes the operational backbone of the project easier to maintain as the playtest grows and as new contributors join.
With real-time multiplayer and the playtest gate both live, the focus shifts to making the first-time experience smoother for new testers. The next milestone redesigns where players land when they sign in and adds a clearer path to the game from their profile page. It also introduces a second team role — moderator — so trusted community members can help approve testers and handle support requests without needing full admin access.
After that, the team has a queue of refinements scheduled: a small UI fix on Catalyst interrupt timing, per-player turn timers to keep matches paced cleanly, and then the largest upcoming feature: the Rug'd Intelligence Hub. The Intelligence Hub will replace the current profile page with a full strategic headquarters — a radial knowledge graph of every mechanic, faction, and concept in the Rug'd universe, paired with each player's stats, collection, deck builder, and game launcher. It is the experience that turns Rug'd from a card game into a world.
Playtest access is opening shortly. If you want in, the best thing to do is join Discord and follow the build. Funding and supporter conversations are also actively open — Rug'd is still very early stage, and the team is looking for people who believe in the vision.