🏝️🐠 Tankrupt — Player Guide

🕹️ How to play (for players)

You run a dive resort on a shared island. Every turn you flip an event card and live with the consequences, then spend your cash on staff and rooms to keep guests happy and coming back. Happy guests pay rent; sad guests pack their bags; an empty wallet sinks you. Outlast your rivals — or out-earn them by the final bell.

Setup

1. One person starts the server (npm start) and shares the Browser URL (e.g. http://192.168.0.48:3000).
2. Each player opens the URL, enters their name, and clicks Join the Resort!
3. The first player to join becomes the Host. When 2–3 players are ready:
   • The host can adjust the number of days using the slider (3–28 days, default: 1 week)
   • The host can set an island name using the name field (or keep the randomly generated one)
   • Click Start Game! to begin

Turn structure

Each round of play is a Day on the island. The header shows your progress along with the weekday and week (e.g. Day 3 / 10 · Wed W1), and a small daytime badge indicating where the current turn falls in the round: 🌅 Sunrise for the first player of the round, 🌤️ High Noon for anyone in between, and 🍹 Sunset for the last player.

Every game starts on a random weekday and advances one day each round; weeks roll over every 7 days. When all players have taken their turn, the sun rises on a new day.

Every few days Dr. Squiddington announces the new day with a pop quiz for everyone at once — see Quiz cards below.

On your turn (highlighted with ⭐):

Final day rules

The header shows a red FINAL badge on the last day. To keep resorts sustainable and protect staff, firing staff and selling inventory are blocked — the − buttons in the Hire & Fire and Buy & Sell popups are dimmed and a hint appears. Buying and hiring still work normally (you can still invest on the final day). Bankruptcy still applies if wages can't be paid, and event cards that fire staff or destroy inventory are unaffected.

Resources

Staff

There is no upfront hire cost. Wages are charged at the end of every turn (including the turn you hired them). To hire, you must be able to afford at least one turn of wages. Each staff type also has a maximum number you may employ at once, and a minimum you must always keep — the Manager (You) starts on your team and can never be fired.

Each staff member you hire is a unique person (name, nationality). Click the 🔍 next to My Staff in your resort panel to open the My Staff Roster — a read-only popup listing everyone you employ, their job, nationality, and the wage & happiness they contribute per turn.

Hire carefully. Staff boost happiness but drain money fast — if wages exceed your balance, you go bankrupt.

Cost-efficiency improves with price. Premium staff give more happiness per euro (the Dive Instructor is the best value per point at €13.9), but their high wages and the happiness cap of 150 mean they only pay off when you have deep pockets and room left to grow. Cheap staff (Cat, Yoga) are the affordable trickle for small resorts.

Every hire gets a random persona — a first name (locale-aware where possible), gender, country of origin with flag emoji, and an avatar emoji — that sticks with them until they leave. Names show up in your resort's staff list and in the game log (e.g. "Alice hired Chiara 🇮🇹 from Italy as Dive Instructor"). The Manager persona is simply you, using your own name. Staff identities are freshly generated each game via chance.js.

Inventory (aka "stuff")

Inventory items are one-time purchases, unlike staff wages. Buying deducts the full price immediately; selling returns a percentage of the original price (rounded down) and frees up the slot. Each item has a maximum quantity you may own — some are buy-once — and a minimum you must always keep. Every resort starts with one free Walk In Deck and one free Shared Dorm that can never be sold off to ensure at least basic accommodation and diving capacities for all guests. Rooms resell poorly, so think before you build.

Inventory is split into two categories: SLEEP (where a guest stays) and FLOAT (the deck or vessel they dive from). Every turn, each guest is assigned exactly one SLEEP item and one FLOAT item, and earns that item's revenue/guest on top of the base €25. Better items pay more but hold fewer guests, so investing in upgrades pays off — until you outgrow their capacity.

Assignment is automatic and re-evaluated every turn. Guests are sorted by how long they have stayed — longer-staying guests get first pick of the best-paying rooms and boats. Once a premium item's capacity is full, the remaining guests fall back to the free unlimited dorm / walk-in deck (which earn no bonus). Click 🔍 My Guests in the bottom panel to see your happy divers — exactly where each guest sleeps, which boat they dive from, and the income they generate. Click 🔍 My Stuff to open the My Stuff Inventory popup showing detailed utilization metrics for every room and boat you own.

Event cards

Cards are shuffled and drawn one per turn. Effects are marked:

• self — affects only the player who drew it
• all — affects every resort on the island

Many card titles and descriptions include dynamic names, countries, and animals — resolved fresh on every draw using chance.js. Template syntax: {{random.first()}}, {{random.last()}}, {{random.country()}}, {{random.gender()}}, {{random.animal()}}, {{random.cocktail()}}, {{random.color()}}, {{random.pub()}}, {{random.song()}}, {{random.accessory()}}, {{random.title()}}, {{random.divesite()}}. Every draw of the same card shows a different name or place.

Categories and example cards:

• Weather — e.g. 🌀 Tropical Storm! (all: guests −2, happiness −10), 🪼 Jellyfish Invasion! (self: guests −1, happiness −20)
• Guests — e.g. 🌟 Celebrity Diver {{random.first()}} {{random.last()}} (self: guests +3, happiness +20), 🎒 Group Booking from {{random.country()}} (self: guests +3, money +€200)
• Staff — e.g. 🤿 Legendary Instructor {{random.first()}} Visits! (self: happiness +25), 🔥 Beach Bonfire Jam Session with {{random.song()}} (self: guests +2, happiness +20)
• Equipment — e.g. 🛥️ Boat Engine Explodes! (self: money −€400, happiness −10), 🎁 Gear Donation from {{random.country()}} (self: money +€200)
• Marine Life — e.g. 🦈 Whale Shark Sighting! (self: guests +3, happiness +25), 🐾 Rare {{random.animal()}} Spotted! (all: guests +1, happiness +5)
• Official Events — e.g. 📋 Health Inspector {{random.first()}} {{random.last()}} (self: money −€150), 🎊 Island Dive Festival (all: guests +1, happiness +10)
• Jokers — e.g. 🗺️ Hidden Chest! (self: +1 challenge joker, capped at 6 total)

The authoritative card list lives in server/eventCards.ts.

Event cards that would push a resort's guest count over the cap don't just waste the extra guests — up to 1 overflow guest checks in at the resort with the fewest guests instead. If several resorts are tied for fewest, the closest one in turn order gets it first, since guests are lazy — with more overflow to redirect than one resort can use, other equally weak resorts share in it too. A separate card, 📣 Local Business Promotion Campaign, directly gives every weakest resort a guest each, no overflow required.

Quiz cards

Every few days the whole island stops for a pop quiz hosted by 🐙 Dr. Squiddington, the resident quizmaster octopus — a real ocean, diving and maritime trivia question that fires for all players at once at the start of every Nth day (default: every 3rd day, configurable via quizInterval).

• It is a real-time race: every connected, non-bankrupt player sees a brief Dr. Squiddington countdown (3 seconds, non-interactive) so everyone's options unlock at the same moment regardless of network latency, then the same single-choice question with four options and a 30-second countdown to answer.

• The first player to pick the correct answer wins — everyone else gets nothing but loses nothing either. You get one guess; a wrong answer locks you out of that quiz (no penalty).

• Rewards scale with difficulty (cash plus new guests, since a guest is a compounding asset worth far more than its face value over the rest of the game):

  Difficulty	Reward
  Easy	€50
  Medium	€75 + 1 guest
  Hard	€125 + 2 guests

• Won guests check in with full identities, just like guests from event cards. If your resort is already at the guest cap, you still get the full cash; the extra guests are simply turned away.

• If nobody answers correctly before the timer runs out, the answer is revealed and play resumes with no reward paid.

The authoritative quiz list (50 verified facts) lives in server/quizCards.ts.

Challenge Jokers

Once per day (round), after drawing your event card, you can spend a challenge joker to go head-to-head against a rival for their money, a guest, or their happiness. Each player starts the game with 3 jokers (shown as the number in parentheses on the ⚔️ Challenge button). Jokers are consumed on use regardless of outcome. Some event cards can grant an extra joker — the pool is capped at 6 total, so a lucky draw once you're already stacked up won't do anything.

Challenge types — each requires the defender to have enough at stake. Money and guests can each be won via either of two mini-games:

How it works:

1. Click ⚔️ Challenge (N) and choose an opponent from the list (rivals who don't qualify are greyed out — each button shows the defender's requirement), then pick Money (Flip & Flop), Money (Coin Catch), Guest (Fish), Happiness, or Guest (Coconuts).
2. The defender sees a full-screen overlay and has 15 seconds to accept. No response = automatic forfeit (challenger wins).
3. Both players play a mini-game — each challenge variant has its own:
   • 💰 Card Flip (money challenges): each player drags a slider to predict a number 1–20, then clicks FLIP CARD to reveal their random draw. The player whose prediction is closest to their actual card wins. Ties are broken by the higher drawn card; if cards tie too, the defender wins.
   • 📸 Better Snapper (guest challenges): a dark blue screen appears; after a random 2–5 second pause a sea creature (🐡 pufferfish, 🦈 shark, 🦑 squid, 🦐 shrimp, 🦀 crab, or 🐬 dolphin) pops up somewhere on screen with a "Snap the {name}!" prompt — the first player to click it wins the round. It's best-of-3 (first to 2 round wins takes the challenge): after each round the running score (e.g. "1:0") is shown, a fresh creature is picked, and play continues until one side reaches 2.
   • 😊 Zen Zone (happiness challenges): a needle sweeps back and forth across a dial, accelerating with every pass, arcing through a highlighted "happy zone" at the top. Each player clicks STOP! to freeze their own needle — whoever stops closest to dead-center (0°, straight up) wins. A tie (or nobody stopping in time) goes to the defender.
   • 🥥 Coco Jamboo (the 2nd way to win a guest challenge): each coconut swings left/right on its own past a dashed guideline, sped up with every attempt. Click PLACE to lock it in wherever it currently is — a ring around it shows green when it's aligned with the tower, red once it's about to miss. Once the first coconut lands, a fixed corridor (two lines fanning out from that first coconut) appears. Every coconut after that must both stay aligned with the tower's top and land inside the corridor, or it falls straight past to the beach floor and never counts. You get 10 attempts total (hits and misses both count against that budget) — the game auto-submits once they're used up, or the overall timeout hits; there's no manual finish step. Height matters most (a taller tower always beats a shorter one); among equal heights, the tower with the smaller overall lean (the angle from its first to its last coconut, shown live as e.g. 20°) wins. A tie (or nobody finishing in time) goes to the defender.
   • 🪙 Coin Catch (the 2nd way to win a money challenge): coins fall from the top of the screen for 15 seconds — drag your basket left and right to catch as many as you can. Missed coins simply vanish off the bottom, no penalty. Once your 15 seconds are up your final catch count is locked in and reported; whoever caught the most coins wins. A tie (or nobody catching any) goes to the defender.
4. The winner receives the stakes from the loser. If the loser can't cover the full amount (e.g. money or happiness dropped between challenge initiation and resolution), only what they have is transferred. For guest challenges (either mini-game), the defender's lowest-income guest always changes hands.

Restrictions — the challenge button is greyed out when:

• You haven't drawn your event card yet this turn

• You've already used a challenge this day

• You have 0 jokers remaining

• Another challenge or quiz is already in progress

• No opponent qualifies (not enough money, guests, happiness, or staff)

• The moment your money drops below €0 → you are bankrupt and eliminated. This can strike at the end of your turn (when wages are paid) or instantly mid-turn if a brutal event card drains your account. A drawn-out engine explosion has ended many a promising resort.

• In a multiplayer game, if only one player remains → they win immediately.

• In a solo game (one player), there is no rival to outlast, so the game always runs to the final day — it only ends early if the solo player goes bankrupt (the island wins).

• After the final day (set by host at game start), the player with the highest score wins, calculated according to the following formular: score = happiness + (guests × 10) + (money / 100)

• When the game ends, a winner announcement pops up for everyone. Tap it to dismiss and reveal the final standings of every resort underneath — handy for comparing scores.

• After dismissing the announcement, the host gets a floating 🔄 Play Again button on the island map, and everyone gets a floating 🏆 Resort Legends button next to it. Because "Play Again" is a separate step, the host can wait while everyone studies the results, then click it to reset to the lobby so everyone can re-join and start a new game.

• 🏆 Resort Legends is a persistent Hall of Fame: every player's final result (name, resort, score, and the money/happiness/guests that made it up) is saved to scores.json in the application directory at game end, capped at the 50 best scores ever recorded across all games and restarts. Open it from the lobby (before joining) or from the post-game button above.