Spellcasting
Speed and Tempo
Pace is judged by the shape of the speed curve, not raw speed: drawing a whole spell faster costs nothing, but rushing or dragging one part does. The ideal curve follows how careful hands move: slower where the path bends (the two-thirds power law of human motion), nearly stopping at each sharp corner (about 65% slower), and easing in and out over the first and last 12% of the stroke. Tempo is the whole cast measured against the breath window, which starts at the first touch.
| Spell | Speed within each stroke | Tempo across both thumbs | Breath window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Repel | Steady down, brake hard into the corner, snap outward: slow, stop, go | Both thumbs start, corner and finish together | 600 ms |
| Coil | One continuous flow with no stops; eases slightly through the top and bottom turns | Thumbs mirror each other moment by moment | 700 ms |
| Gale | Quick rise, brake at the tip, quick fall | Same peak at the same moment on both sides | 600 ms |
| Facet Seal | Left glides at an even speed all the way round; right stops at each of its three corners | Thumbs move at different rates by design; sync checks they drift exactly as the two shapes require, and start and end together | 800 ms |
| Brace | Out, brake, down, brake, back: two hard stops | Both thumbs start, corner and finish together | 600 ms |
| Mend | One continuous flow; eases slightly round the bottom | Thumbs mirror each other moment by moment | 650 ms |
| Bevel Lash | Left stops at the triangle's two corners; right is one even stroke | Thumbs move at different rates by design; start and end together | 850 ms |
| Prism Snare | Left stops at three corners, right at two | The thumbs brake at different moments; start and end together | 900 ms |
Thumb sync allows about 80 ms between the thumbs' start and end times before it costs a third of the timing score. A spell can set its own breath window (Coil, Facet Seal, Mend, Bevel Lash and Prism Snare do); the default is 600 ms, and it is meant to grow later with player level and gear.
Overall quality weights the parts: shape 35%, corners 20%, sync 20%, pace 15%, size 10%. Coil and Mend override them (shape 40%, pace 20%, sync 20%, corners 10%, size 10%), since they have no corners to judge. A cast fizzles below 45% overall, when either thumb's shape scores under 30%, or when breath runs out. Quality sets power: a cast just over the fizzle line hits at 0.6x, a perfect one at 1.5x, with most of the gain at the top, so precision keeps paying off. Perfect needs zero error, which no hand produces; careful test draws land around 88–96%. All of these numbers are tunable on the device and are first guesses until playtesting.
Weights in the game
The default weights every spell uses unless it overrides them, read from Assets/Scripts/Scoring:
Coil overrides them
Mend overrides them
- Fizzle line
- 45% overall
- Shape minimum
- 30% on each thumb
- Sync tolerance
- 80 ms
- Power range
- 0.6x to 1.5x