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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://pcmtg.mintlify.app/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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1.1 Product Vision: The Co-op Game Disguised as Ideological Battle

At its surface, Political Compass Memes: The Game (PCMTG) is a competitive, irreverent, and highly tactical card-based debate simulator. By forcing players to role-play within their quadrants and utilize satirical “Meme,” “Item,” and “Policy” cards, PCMTG transforms toxic online arguments into a structured, shared puzzle. The game embraces the rough, brutally honest, and chaotic aesthetic of internet meme culture. It leans into the tribalism and hyper-specific jargon of the “Very Online” political ecosystem.

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1.3 The Anti-Meta Design Philosophy

Modern multiplayer games are frequently ruined by “meta-gaming”—the practice of mathematically optimizing the fun out of a game by reverse-engineering the dominant strategy. PCMTG actively resists being “solved”. Success requires ideological intuition, an understanding of human behavior, and the ability to read the room over pure mathematical calculation.

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Mechanism 1: The Esoteric Win Condition (3D Euclidean Distance)

Victory is determined by an esoteric win condition rather than health depletion. Players attempt to pull the vector of a News Stub toward the “neutral center” of the compass (coordinates 0,0,0). The winner is the player who achieves the smallest squared Euclidean distance to the origin after all cards are played simultaneously.

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Mechanism 2: The Hidden Z-Axis (Populism vs. Elitism)

Every News Stub and Meme Card possesses a hidden third dimension. Positive Z represents Populism (grassroots, mob rule), while Negative Z represents Elitism (institutional, vanguard). Each quadrant interacts with this axis uniquely:
  • AuthRight: HONOR (Populism) / FAITH (Elitism)
  • AuthLeft: UNITY (Populism) / LOYALTY (Elitism)
  • LibLeft: PRIDE (Populism) / KARMA (Elitism)
  • LibRight: CHAOS (Populism) / YOMI (Elitism)
Because the exact Z-vector is hidden by the server, players must use human intuition to gauge a headline’s populist or elitist undertones.

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Mechanism 3: The “Based” Button & The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The “Based” button introduces a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. If a player feels they are losing the mathematical tug-of-war, they can hit “Based” to forfeit their claim to the win.
  • The Lone Wolf: If only one player hits it, they suffer “Utter Humiliation”—a massive currency and ELO loss.
  • The Grand Consensus: If all four players hit it, the mathematical round is aborted, yielding massive rewards for everyone.

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Mechanism 4: Dynamic Policy Disruption

Policy Cards act as global rule-benders. For example, an AuthRight player might drop a “Defense Production Act” that completely freezes the Y-axis for the round, instantly invalidating opponents’ vertical strategies.