GO, STOP
It's 1999. You owe a Busan loan shark ₩200,000,000, and the only thing you're good at is Go-Stop — Korea's flower-card game. Match cards, stack multipliers, call "Go" to double it all. Interest is due every third night. Miss it and they send someone.
You owe ₩200,000,000 to men who don't take excuses.
It's 1999. You're at a folding table in a Busan back room, and the only thing standing between you and the collectors is a deck of 48 hwatu cards.
GO, STOP is a roguelike deckbuilder built on the card game Koreans have been playing for a hundred years — at funerals, at family gatherings, and in rooms like this one. Match the months. Steal the floor. Turn flowers into cash before sunrise.
NEVER TOUCHED A HWATU CARD? NEITHER HAD MOST OF OUR PLAYTESTERS.
There's no tutorial to sit through. Month numbers sit right on the cards, the codex is one click away, and the game explains each trick the first time it happens. By the second night you'll be reading the floor like you grew up doing it.
THE CHOICE THE GAME IS NAMED AFTER
Hit your target and the table asks you one question: take the money, or call "Go" and let it ride. Every Go doubles the multiplier. It also raises the bar and gives your rival another chance to snatch the round out from under you — and if he does, he takes the pot and your wallet with it.
Stopping is safe. Stopping is also how you end the night short of what you owe.
CHEATING IS A MECHANIC. GETTING CAUGHT IS A PROBLEM.
Slip a card off the bottom of the deck. Shake three-of-a-month to double your collection. Drop a bomb and bury the floor. Every trick works — right up until the man across the table notices, and then you're paying for it.
WHAT YOU BUILD ALONG THE WAY
Fifty charms that break the scoring rules in ways they probably shouldn't. Sixty ghost cards that don't belong in any real deck. Consumables, card editions, hands you grind sharper run after run. Eight cities, eight bosses, each one playing by house rules he made up himself.
THE DEBT DOESN'T SLEEP
Principal grows every time you move to a new city. Interest lands every third night whether you're ready or not. You can always borrow more — that's how they get you.
Three nights a city. Eight cities between Busan and Seoul. One ledger, and your name's at the top of it.
