CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I've been thinking about a pay-once standalone version of CM as well.
Modified server rules could work something like this:

Everyone gets 500 play points (dollars?), and if at the end of the day your total is less than 500, your 500 starting points are returned to you. Or return 100 points every hour up to 500 if you want the game to be playable more often. There's no need for a rake, since the money isn't real, but unfortunately, this game doesn't "matter" as much. But it fixes the fundamental issue of "I paid $2 for this game, but I can't play it anymore because I ran out of money". Even Castle Doctrine let you keep playing after you died.

If you want to offer "dlc" you could say "Pay an extra dollar, add an extra hundred points to your daily maximum points" or something like that.

But would anyone play a pretend money game? I'm not sure. I think one of the big problems here is although the audience for indie games is large, and the audience for real money games is also large, I'm afraid the intersection between those two groups is small.

Edit:
This could still work in-theme with a reskin. Give the play-money players cute Hello Kitty/Lisa Frank style board choices or whatever, then if they want to play for real there's the occult version available at Cordialminuet.com

2nd Edit:
Heck, if we want to attract the f2p crowd, we could say "Everyone gets an account for free that refreshes to 50 coins every hour, 10 coins every 6 minutes", then pay a dollar, get an extra hundred added to your daily maximum. There are a ton of ways Jason could incentive people to pay for an increase in daily maximum, but I'm not sure that's a game design space that interests him. This way people can find out if they're good at this game before they invest any money.

A solid case about match length and ante structure would be to look at JA's play strategy. In my experience, JA rarely plays past round 7, and almost never past round 10. I'm guessing it's to avoid rake along with avoiding risk

idunno anything about all that, but I think I found the hidden message about the time the God Of Destruction compelled Jason to do some terrible things to his wife after a marathon. I think he ran into a skunk while trying to escape. It went a bit like this:

a romance,
my last race.
I fight twins,
scold her, run,
fall, club
a cafe's EMS.
wow. Talc's
top. ugh. let
we who tar fur
cub's anal jet
harm one's
burn. Stinging.

Hmm. Solving the mystery on the back might lead to the last amulet somehow. But it's a tough one, and given JA's secrecy, I don't think we'll ever get to see the back of #10.

As for what the backs look like... dots, circles, lines... maybe a triangle or two.

You could try turning on colorblind mode to change the color of the sliders. I've started choosing columns by using the number keys, 1-6. First press selects your column, second selects opponent's. Enter bets, F folds. Maybe that will work for you?

Wow, that's impressive. Late last night I managed to get a board ending with all picked numbers along the diagonal, with mine in the bottom left corner and my opponent's in the top right. I was rolling dice to choose my columns at the time, and the resulting board was chilling.

It's my understanding that you avoid the next round's ante if you leave after your opponent's score has been revealed, but before the three "communicating" dots appear.

I think if you Fold then Leave you pay the ante of the next round? I'm not sure on this one.

So... noon? Or Midnight? I'm not very good with Clock Form.

Have you heard of MetaFilter? It's a much nicer place than reddit. I've only been to reddit a few times in passing, mostly for high profile AMAs. MetaFilter works differently, allowing everyone to post straight to the font page. Cordial Minuet and Jason's other recent games (Sleep is Death and Castle Doctrine) have been "on the blue" a few times. Jason even showed up in the comments of the post when it was in the news back in September.

Personally I don't feel like MetaFilter is the right venue for posting about the launch contest, so I haven't posted about it there. I just don't have much more to say than "Hey, the game launched", which usually isn't good quality discussion for that site, but as a replacement for redit, it's pretty good.

Edit Edit: Wikipedia says HN is HackerNews

**********************************

Life is pulsing opposite mirror Pairs,

Death is ONEness of Godism.

****************************************************************************************

ONE - DOES NOT EXIST,

EXCEPT IN DEATH STATE.
ONE IS A DEMONIC RELIGIOUS LIE.
*************************************

The current rules state not just one amulet per person, but also one Prize per person.

Splitting the second through fourth prizes like this is going to amplify the algorithm, especially considering second prize on day one is equal to fourth prize on day twelve. Running optimization on that would be much easier if you assume "Always choose the most money", but you still end up in some tricky situations where if I chose 4th day 12 instead of 2nd day 1, the prize distribution changes drastically.