LADDER v1.0 - corporate roguelike deckbuilder

Climb the ladder.
Survive the org.

A roguelike deckbuilder set in the tech world of 2026 - where you work beside AI agents, ship code you didn't write, and discover that "just use Claude" is both a solution and a curse.

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Roguelike deckbuilder 25–40 min runs 4 playable characters Bit, the AI companion No ads · No gacha
The setting · FY2026

One company. The same fiscal year. Four ways to lose your mind.

It's an unnamed mid-stage tech company - three thousand people, twelve years old, profitable but quietly slowing, mid-pivot to an "AI-native" posture nobody can quite define. Every roadmap deck has an AI section. Every team is told to "leverage agents."

All four playable characters work here, at the same time. The Demanding PM you fight as an Engineer? That's the player in the PM campaign. The reorg that wrecks your quarter is a line item in the CEO's board deck. Claude, Cursor, agents, MCP servers - they aren't heroes or villains here. They're just the new furniture in an old office.

The core idea

Beat the boss if you like.
The meter is the job.

Most enemies have real hit points - shipping damage is shipping. But the run is won by filling the Promotion meter before the quarter ends, and the worst things on the calendar don't die at all. They resolve.

Scope Creep

999 HP. You will not zero it. Ship four Deliverables and it stops - sliding quietly into someone else's sprint.

The Skip-Level

999 HP, zero interest in your damage. Reach Visibility 5 and they lose interest first - off to micromanage another team.

Perf Review

The final boss has real HP and three phases: Performance Summary → Tough Questions → Final Verdict. Win and you're promoted. Lose and you're PIP'd back a level.

Theme is the mechanic

The satire is in the rules - not the flavor text.

Every card below is real - names, costs, numbers, flavor, straight from the deck you'll draft. The shortcuts genuinely work. The bill they leave behind is genuinely due.

sample hand · The Engineer - switch characters in "Four lives" below

1AI-Leveraged · L3+
Vibe Code

+ 9 Damage · + 1 Tech Debt

"It works on my machine and also in prod, apparently."

0AI-Leveraged · L3+
Prompt Engineer

Modify (cost -1) · + 1 Tech Debt

"Twenty minutes crafting the prompt. Output ships in ninety seconds."

0AI-Leveraged · L5+
Let Claude Ship It

+ 8 Damage · + 1 Tech Debt

"Looks plausible. Lands clean. Blast radius unknown."

1Deliverables · L5+
Pay Down Debt

- 5 Tech Debt · + Draw 1

"Spend a Tuesday on the boring problem. Future-you thanks present-you."

1Meetings · L3+
1:1 Check-in

+ 4 AI Literacy · + 3 Credibility

"30 minutes. No agenda. They tell you what's actually going on."

1AI-Leveraged · L3+
Vibe Code with Them

Delegate 19 Dmg · + 1 Tech Debt

"They prompt. You squint. The PR ships. The tech debt is yours."

1Deliverables · L4+
Delegate Two in Parallel

Delegate 8 Dmg · Delegate 8 Dmg

"Two tickets. Two engineers. Two Slack DMs. By lunch, both are running."

1AI-Leveraged · L4+
Claude Drafts the 1:1

+ 5 AI Literacy · + 2 Org Standing

"Claude takes the notes. You handle the eye contact. The Report notices both."

1AI-Leveraged · L4+
Claude-Drafted Spec

+ Commit Milestone · + 1 Tech Debt

"Six bullets out of the chat window. The acceptance criteria are 90% there."

1Politics · L4+
Pre-Sell the Roadmap

+ 3 Roadmap Credibility · + 1 Momentum

"Three coffees, two Notion docs, one all-hands shout-out. Then the slide."

0Burnout · L4+
Cut the Meeting

+ 2 Delivery Velocity · + 1 Momentum

"Decline. 'No agenda, sorry.' Two hours back. Sofia notices."

2AI-Leveraged · L4+ · Rare
Agent-Generated Roadmap

+ Commit Milestone · + 2 Tech Debt · + 1 Context Rot

"Three OKRs, four prompts, eleven Notion docs, one regret. It scopes ambitiously."

3Politics · L3+ · Rare
Bold Strategy Memo

+ 5 Vision Capital · + 2 Board Credibility · + Draw 1

"Eight pages. Three options. One recommendation. Markus reads it twice."

2AI-Leveraged · L3+
Claude in the Keynote

+ 3 Vision Capital · + 2 Visibility

"Demo runs live. Agent does the thing. Room claps. Eng messages Margaret afterwards."

1Deliverables · L4+
Freeze Open Reqs

+ 2 Runway · + 1 Burnout

"Forty-two open reqs on hold. Recruiting calls land in voicemail. Two months back."

1Optics · L3+
Credit to the Team

+ 1 Momentum · + 1 Owed Favors

"The win goes out under Sofia's name in the all-hands. Yours is the one nobody had to say."

Five numbers that cut both ways.

The same forces that carry a run can quietly end one. Read the room.

Burnout
Stacks each time you push too hard. Enough of it and your own hand turns against you.
Momentum
Ship something good and the next thing comes easier. Lose the thread and it evaporates.
Visibility
Work nobody sees doesn't count. Get seen - but remember the skip-level is watching too.
Tech Debt
The price of every shortcut. The AI cards are fast - this is the invoice that follows.
Context Rot
Lean on the agent too long and it forgets what you're building. Your AI cards quietly get worse.
Credibility
Your health bar now. Every delegation spends a little; every save rebuilds it. At zero, the org stops listening.
Headcount
The other health bar. Reports burn out, quit, or get poached - and a manager with no team is just a tired IC.
AI Literacy
Your reports' fluency with the agents. Raise it in 1:1s and delegation compounds. Ignore it and the tools use them.
Org Standing
How the floors above rate your team. Claude can draft the update; the standing only moves if the work is real.
Owed Favors
The ledger nobody writes down. Spend them to unblock; collect them by saying yes at exactly the right moment.
Delivery Velocity
How fast the roadmap actually moves. Cut a meeting, gain some. Schedule a meeting about velocity, lose some.
Roadmap Credibility
How much the room believes your slide. It drops with every slip - and the Quarterly Review fires when it runs dry.
Stakeholder Trust
Six named partners - Lin, Lukas, Henrik and the rest - each with a trust meter your plays route through. It decays the moment you stop tending it.
Engineering Capacity
What Engineering can actually absorb this sprint. Promise past it and the roadmap becomes fiction with dates.
Context Rot
Agent-drafted specs are fast until the agent forgets what the product is. Your AI cards quietly get worse.
Runway
Months of cash left, and it burns every single turn. Every other number on this screen is an argument about this one.
Board Credibility
What the Board thinks of your story this quarter. The mandate gets renewed on this meter - or it doesn't.
Vision Capital
Permission to say "trust me" one more time. Keynotes mint it. Missed quarters spend it at a terrible exchange rate.
Visibility
The market has to see the story. Analysts, keynotes, the street - silence reads as drift.
Burnout
Yours. The one number that follows you home from the boardroom.
The org chart · four playable lives

Same building. Four completely different games.

Each character isn't a reskin - it's a different win condition, a different deck, a different way the job breaks you. Start free with the Engineer.

The Engineer at a desk lit by terminal-green code Free base game L3 Software Engineer → L7 Staff
The Engineer

Write it, or let it ship.

"Some cards are craft. Some cards are 'Let Claude Ship It.' The only strategic question is when to lean on which."

The free base game. Climb from L3 to Staff by shipping features and dodging perf theater - deciding, every single turn, whether to write the code yourself or hand it to the agent. The shortcuts work. The Tech Debt and Context Rot they leave behind do not go away.

The tension
Craft × AI-leverage
Win condition
Fill the Promotion meter
Final boss
Perf Review (3 phases)
You manage
Burnout · Tech Debt · Context Rot
Play free L3 + L4 free - full climb via in-app unlock
The Engineering Manager, arms crossed, before a headcount board DLC · free first tier L3 EM → L7 VP of Engineering
The Engineering Manager

You build the people now.

"You don't do the work anymore. You build the people who do - including yourself."

You stopped writing code. Now you manage three to five named reports - each with their own morale, skills, and AI literacy - and you delegate instead of attack. Your credibility is one health bar. Your team's headcount is the other. Let either hit zero and the run is over.

The axes
AI Literacy × Politics
Win condition
Keep credibility & team intact
Final boss
Your own EM Perf Review
Two health bars
Credibility · Headcount
Try the first tier Premium DLC · L3 EM tier free
The Product Manager mid-pitch, palm open toward a wall of floating sticky notes DLC · free first tier L3 APM → L7 Director of Product
The Product Manager

Align the room. It's never aligned.

"You can't ship code. You can only align the room - and the room is never aligned."

There is no code to hide behind. Your health bar is Roadmap Credibility - every slip bleeds it, and the Quarterly Review fires when it runs dry. You work the room through six named cross-org partners - Lin in Engineering, Lukas in Sales, Henrik the Director - whose trust decides whether your plays land. You win by delivering the roadmap. Promotion is just a side effect.

The axes
Stakeholder-Trust × Velocity
Win condition
Roadmap Delivered
Final boss
Quarterly Roadmap Review
You manage
6 cross-org partners · their trust
Try the first tier Premium DLC · L3 PM tier free
Margaret Holloway, the CEO, composed at the boardroom table before a night skyline DLC · free first year Year 1 → Year 5: the Cap-Table Exit
The CEO - Margaret Holloway

The ladder isn't up. It's time.

"You're already at the top. The only direction left is 'still here.'"

Margaret's climb isn't vertical - each tier is one fiscal year. You don't get promoted; you survive the year, the Board renews your mandate, and the clock resets. Five years in, the cap table resolves into one of four graded endings - and "still here" turns out to be the most honest win there is.

The axes
Market-Position × Org-Health
Win condition
Survive the treadmill
Final boss
The Cap-Table Exit
Four endings
S·IPO / A·Acquire / C·Survive / F·Out
Try year one Premium DLC · first fiscal year free
Ships with a coworker · Cognit-metered AI

The one coworker actually on your side.

Every character climbs with a companion: Bit for the Engineer, Tally for the EM, Cal for the PM, Quorum for the CEO. It reads the run in front of you, nudges before the misplay, and debriefs the loss without scheduling a meeting about it.

  • Four brains, one dial. Quick, Smart, Sharp, or Genius Bit: pick, per message, how hard it thinks. Bigger brains burn more Cognits.
  • Grounded in the actual run. It sees the cards, enemies, and meters in front of you. Not a chatbot with a skin; a coach with the board state.
  • Metered in Cognits. Every reply costs Cognits, the same AI-credit currency your fictional employer rations. A daily trickle keeps casual chat free. The satire is load-bearing.
  • Optional, with a real off switch. Turn it off and the whole game is playable and winnable. When it's on, replies come through LADDER's own relay and your chats never feed analytics.

"Yes, the game about surviving AI at work ships with its own AI agent. It takes better standup notes than you do."

Bit, the Engineer's companion: a small retro CRT-monitor robot with a friendly green screen face
Bit online · idle
smart bit
event · the agent opened 9 PRs overnight

three compile. six are "directionally correct." review #4 before it reviews you.

you played · Let Claude Ship It

heads. it shipped. i'm as surprised as you are. banking the momentum before prod notices.

boss next · Perf Review, phase 1

performance summary first, tough questions after. lead with the migration, bury the incident. visibility 4, burnout 6. pace yourself.

scripted preview · the real Bit is cloud-smart and Cognit-metered
The shape of a run

A quarter of your life, in 25–40 minutes.

Built portrait, one-handed, for the commute - not the desk. Each run nests like the calendar it's drawn from.

Encounter

3–7 min

One combat, event, rest, or shop - a single meeting on the calendar map.

Sprint

8–12 min · one month

Four or five encounters across a weekly calendar, with forks: ship-heavy or politics-heavy?

Run

25–40 min · one quarter

Four sprints, then the boss. Finish on a coffee break; pick it up on the train home.

The Boss

your reckoning

Perf Review, Quarterly Roadmap Review, or the Cap-Table Exit. Win → promoted. Lose → PIP'd back a level.

Theme is the mechanic

Tech Debt taxes your shortcuts; Context Rot rots your AI cards. The joke lives in the rules, not the flavor text.

Four lives, one company

Engineer, Manager, PM, CEO - same fiscal year, same building. An enemy in one game is the player in another.

AI-Leveraged cards

Vibe Code, Spawn Agent, Prompt Engineer, and the infamous "Let Claude Ship It" - a coin flip between brilliance and a hallucinated bug.

No tutorial. No popups.

You learn the game by playing your first Monday morning - not by tapping through a wall of coach marks.

Runs you can finish

25–40 minutes, portrait, one-handed. Designed for the moments between meetings, not in spite of them.

Offline. No account.

No login, no server, nothing to sign up for. Your runs live on your device. The AI companion is the one exception - it talks to LADDER's own relay, and only when you use it.

From inside the building

Flat-vector art, end to end.

A dark executive war-room, the fiscal year counting down in red
The fiscal year, burning down in real time.
A dim room with a blank whiteboard and two empty chairs
1:1 with your manager. Sit down.
A small robot agent typing code at a keyboard
The agent shipped nine PRs. Three compile.
A long glass-walled office corridor receding toward warm light
Pick the next node. There's always a fork.
An arena screen reading IPO OPEN in green under spotlights
S - IPO. A bigger treadmill, now with analysts.
A desk by a window at golden hour over a city skyline
Promoted. The ladder just got one rung taller.
The model · honest by design

Free to start. Actually free.

No ads, no energy timers, no gacha. The free game is a real game - not a trial dressed up as one.

The base game

The Engineer

Free to download & play.

  • L3 + L4 free, forever - full card pools, real bosses, complete winnable runs.
  • One in-app unlock extends the climb to L7 Staff.
  • The unlock extends the game - it never gates the fun.
Download free
Premium add-ons

The rest of the org

Each a full, different game.

  • Engineering Manager, Product Manager & CEO - each ships with a free first tier to try.
  • Buy any character on its own, any time.
  • Or grab the Org Chart bundle for all four at a discount.
Meet the roster
No ads No energy timers No gacha No loot boxes No pay-to-win No FOMO
Objections, handled

Questions you're allowed to ask in this meeting.

No. If you've sat in a standup, sighed at a roadmap, or watched a deadline slide, you already speak the language. The jokes land a little harder if you ship code for a living - but nothing in the game requires it.

No. The Engineer's first two levels are a complete, winnable roguelike - full card pools, real bosses, real runs. The in-app unlock extends the climb to L7; it doesn't paywall the part that's fun.

You don't kill the boss - you fill a meter. Enemies resolve the way work actually resolves: scope creep stops once you've shipped enough, the skip-level loses interest. And each of the four characters is a structurally different game, not a reskin - different win condition, different deck, different way the job breaks you.

No. LADDER is offline-first - no account, no login, no server. Your runs and progress live on your device. The AI companion is the one online feature: its replies come from LADDER's own relay, and the game never requires it.

No. It has a real off switch, and the full game is playable and winnable with it off. When it's on, it coaches - reads the board, flags the misplay, debriefs the loss - and every reply is metered in Cognits, with a daily trickle that keeps casual use free. Your chats never feed analytics, and it never plays for you.

It's making fun of the system, not you. Hype cycles, perf theater, metric cults - those are the targets. The people, and the AI furniture they work beside, are treated with affection. The game laughs with you, not at you.

A full run is one quarter - about 25–40 minutes. A single sprint is 8–12. You can play one encounter on a coffee break and resume the run later. It's built for portrait, one-handed play.

Out now

The mandate
is yours.

Download LADDER and play your first Monday morning. The Board meets in ninety days.

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Free to download · No ads · No account required