RubberSnap
Online party game, 2–8 players · UE 5.8 · 2026
Take turns snapping rubber bands on a melon, bet on which band pops it, and whoever pops it gets splattered.
Role: solo designer: design direction, economy design, the burst quality bar, playtests. Built with: UE 5.8.2 Blueprint, online multiplayer (listen server), Chaos fracture, Claude Code. Timeline: Sep 6 – Oct 13, 2026. Status: approaching Feature Complete; Steam Deck build running.
| By the numbers
22 → 7 ms
Worst frame of the burst after a physics fix
150 ms
8-player sync holds at 150 ms lag and 3% packet loss
50 rounds
8-bot soak: total chips constant every round, so the economy is truly zero-sum
7.6 vs 13
Bands to pop a lime vs a gourd, measured over 96 rounds
| The design house
1. The room watches one object
Every tell is on the fruit (squash, creak, cracks, bands piling up); the UI only confirms.
2. Every band is a choice under pressure
Short turns, a small hand of special bands and a hidden burst point mean nobody is ever safe.
3. Losing is funny, not punishing
The economy is zero-sum, broke players get topped up, and nobody is eliminated mid-match. Virtual chips only: no buying, no cash-out, ever.
| Inside the design
The fun
The whole room stares at one fruit. Every snap is a bet against a hidden burst point, and the fruit itself tells you how close it is. The payoff is shared and loud: the pop, the splatter, and everyone who bet on the right band.
PARTY · ONLINE · STEAM DECK
Decision: tells without leaks
The burst point is hidden per round, but every visual tell is driven by a public tension value. Players read the fruit; nobody can read the answer.
SYSTEMS · FAIRNESS
Decision: fruit you can read, bots that play fair
Bigger fruit are tougher (lime 0.7× → gourd 1.25×) and you can see which fruit it is, so betting becomes a reading exercise. Bots take the same seats and inputs as humans and never read the hidden threshold, so a human can beat them by reading the same tells.
ECONOMY · AI
Proof: the burst quality bar
The pop is the whole payoff, so it got a quality bar: the burst’s worst frame went from 22 ms to 7 ms after a physics fix, in the packaged build.
PERFORMANCE · CHAOS FRACTURE