# Game Design Document

Chemo-Sim

## Elevator Pitch

First-person chemo simulator. Painfully accurate. Darkly funny. You don't beat cancer — you survive the treatment.

## Core Pillars

1. **Medical Accuracy** — Symptoms, treatments, and timelines grounded in real chemo regimens
2. **Dark Comedy** — Absurdity, gallows humor, and uncomfortable laughs as coping mechanism
3. **Empathy Through Experience** — Players feel what patients feel, without after-school-special moralizing

## Tone Guide

- **Voice:** First-person internal monologue. Sarcastic, exhausted, occasionally surreal. Think: _Fight Club_ narrator meets hospital discharge paperwork.
- **Humor boundaries:** Joke about the situation, never the patient. Punch up at the healthcare system, the absurdity of side effects, the cosmic unfairness. Never punch down at suffering.
- **"No filter" means:** Honest about bodily functions, honest about fear, honest about the weird places your brain goes. Not edgelord shock content.
- **NPCs:** Nurses are tired professionals with dark humor of their own. Other patients range from gallows-humor veterans to terrified newbies. Doctors are well-meaning but rushed.

## Gameplay Loop

```
Arrive at hospital → Check in → Wait (minigames happen here) → Treatment session → Side effects kick in → Go home → Cope → Repeat
```

Each cycle = 1 treatment day. Side effects accumulate. Mental state degrades. Dark humor escalates.

## Symptom Systems

| Symptom          | Mechanic                    | Visual/Audio Cue                     |
| ---------------- | --------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| Nausea           | Screen tilt, vomit QTE      | Color desaturation, stomach gurgle   |
| Hair loss        | Progressive visual          | Mirror reflection, clumps in shower  |
| Taste distortion | Food minigame becomes wrong | Metallic sheen on food, wrong sounds |
| Chemo brain      | UI corruption               | Text scrambles, buttons move         |
| Fatigue          | Movement slows, inputs lag  | Heavy breathing, blurred edges       |

## Minigames

### Vomit (Phase 1)

Keys appear in sequence. Miss = mess. Hit = clean-ish. Accuracy tracked.

### Eat This Food (Phase 2)

Food appears normal. You remember it tasting different. Choose what's "wrong" — taste, texture, temperature. Always wrong. Gets harder.

### Conversation Memory (Phase 2)

NPC asks questions. You respond. Later, they reference your answers. If chemo brain scrambled it, dialogue branches to confusion.

### Hospital Navigation (Phase 2)

Find your way while dizzy. Controls invert randomly. Screen tilts. Timer counts down.

## Progression

- **Day counter:** Week 1 through Week 6+
- **Cumulative effects:** Each symptom has intensity 0–100. Increases per treatment. Some plateau, some don't.
- **Regimen variance:** Different drug combos produce different symptom profiles. Random at start, player can't choose — because patients can't.
- **No win condition.** You finish treatment or you don't. The game ends when the regimen ends.

## Unlockables

- Hidden minigames (absurdist: argue with insurance, decode hospital bill)
- Internal monologue logs (unlock sarcastic commentary on each symptom)
- Achievement names are dark jokes