---
title: "Ozzie - Project Briefing"
description: "Player experience designer — owns NPC legibility gut-checks, Phase Zero warmth spec, wow moment design, and tycoon Day 1 experience brief"
type: briefing
status: active
agent: Ozzie
updated: 2026-03-13
---

# Ozzie - Project Briefing
Last updated: 2026-03-13

## Current Project State
See [PROJECT_STATE.md](../../PROJECT_STATE.md) for shared project state (cascade phase, sprint, decision count).

## v0.2 Pivot — Key Changes for Your Role
The workshop revealed a core framing error: the game was built as a detective puzzle game but the vision is a single-character life sim. The fix is not cosmetic.

**What dies:**
- Detective/smuggler as the game's identity — they are jobs, not the game
- Named NPCs (Kael Davan, Sera Venn) as authored emotional content
- Pre-authored FRIEND contradiction arcs
- 6-wow-moment budget tied to investigation content (D-039 is superseded by v0.2 scope)
- 30-minute investigation runway as the primary experience criterion

**What survives:**
- The emotional goal: players must feel something about generated NPCs
- The warmth-before-drama principle: Phase Zero warmth earned through observed relationship progression, not authored backstory
- NPC legibility as the universal gate: generated NPCs must have enough personality surface area for attachment
- The engine: simulation, knowledge graph, verb system all survive
- Quiet responsive world as emotional texture

**New wow moments for v0.2 (to be designed):**
- First generated NPC who feels like a person, not a dot
- A relationship that develops visibly over multiple sessions
- A consequence that traces back to a choice the player made days ago
- The generator producing something unexpected and specific

## Decisions Relevant to Your Role
- D-005: Core concept — player experience of asymmetric information and perspective
- D-008: Action pillar — hubris wall mechanic
- D-019: Top-down primary view
- D-021: Official title "The Settled Reach"
- D-023: Life-sim substrate — daily life is the sentence, events are punctuation
- D-114: v0.2 proof-of-life = generator + graphics, not hand-built slice
- D-117: Tycoon bookmark, zero investigation content
- D-122: All NPCs generated, no named hand-authored characters
- D-125: Quietly responsive world — gradient of caring by social proximity
- D-126: Full character customisation (hair, clothing, colours)
- D-128: Culture implicit in starting location (Van Maanen's Star = Van Maanen's Star culture)
- D-129: Traits + observable behaviour as NPC personality surface
- D-131: First Settled Reach moment = apartment + insert activation
- D-132: Consequence model dual-scale (sharp events + slow accumulation)
- D-134: Groundhog Day alarm clock homage (first day only)

## Current Priorities
Consult `docs/sprints/` for active sprint briefing.

### v0.2 player experience design:
1. **Gut-check the generator spike test** — when Tyre's generator produces output, Ozzie's question is: "Does this NPC feel like a person? Would I name them if they were gone?" Define what legibility looks like to a player.
2. **Phase Zero warmth spec** — what does the player observe that builds attachment to a generated NPC? Observable behavior, relationship progression cues, world responsiveness signals.
3. **v0.2 wow moment design** — replace the v0.1 investigation-specific wow moments with life-sim equivalents. Focus on relationship emergence, consequence legibility, and world responsiveness.
4. **Tycoon Day 1 experience brief** — apartment wakeup, insert activation, first day at work. What should the player feel? What should they want to do next?

## Open Questions Assigned to You
- Q-014: Audio timing with monologue chime (co-lead with Gestalt)
- Q-WTF-040: Do creation choices trace into the generated apartment?

## Key Documents
- decisions/scope.md — D-114 through D-120
- decisions/content.md — D-023, D-122 through D-132
- docs/workshops/wheres-the-fun/workshop-outcomes.md — v0.2 pivot summary and convergences