The hook
Mode shifts
The mountain is not the content. The mountain is the thing that keeps interrupting itself.
Every so often you roll into a volume that changes the rules — the camera cuts, the physics get swapped out from under you, and for twenty-five seconds you are playing something else entirely. Then it spits you back onto the course, mid-roll, with whatever you won.
Three exist. They were built in this order on purpose: each one puts more weight on the joint between the game and the mode than the last, so if the architecture was going to snap, it snapped early and cheaply.
▸ MODE SHIFT THE LIST
Bowling
The floor becomes a lane. Ten pins. Your marble was already the right shape for this.
Side-scroll run
The camera cuts to a flat side view and the world loses an axis. One stick, one jump, twenty-five seconds.
The duel
The gargoyle that’s been watching you from the wall this whole time would like a word. Turn-based. You have two moves and some HP.
The prototype stops at three. A shipped version wants eight to twelve — which is why the mode contract was designed before any of them were built, and why the duel exists to prove it.