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Game Design Document · 2026 Edition

Invasion of the Burmese Python

You are a Burmese python released into the Everglades by Hurricane Andrew on 24 August 1992. Live out a real python's life in a real, living swamp, under its real sky, until you die of old age.

James Henry Deter Jr. · Bigglesworth Studios

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For Enrique and Carlos

1 Introduction

1.1 The original introduction

1.2 Thirteen years

Thirteen years later the touchscreen snake runs in Unreal Engine 5.8, the swamp is built from USGS elevation data and the real 1992 weather record, and the python still has to earn every meter of her length. This edition keeps the 2013 table of contents as its structure and records, section by section, what has been decided and built since.

1. Summer 2012The idea, from an Animal Planet segment on constriction. “That's a superpower in nature… the touchscreen would work perfect to maneuver the snake and wrap it around prey.”
2. 6 Feb 2013 · first draftMobile Application Design Document, Bigglesworth Productions, copyright pending. iOS first; Invasion, Swamp and Arcade modes; a 20–25 year in-game life.
3. 2013 · expanded editionBigglesworth Studios, 36 pages: Practice and Demo modes, gesture controls, a camera plan, 25 species, 7 habitats and the influences. Written while studying at Full Sail University.
4. Feb–Nov 2013The “Everglade Snake” teaser, a studio recruitment video, a python feeding shoot for the crowdfunding campaign, storyboards by Kelsey Dickson.
5. 3 Jan 2014US Copyright Registration PAu003700993.
6. Jan–Feb 2014Wake Up! Florida, a mock talk show shot at Full Sail with snake handler Todd “Chief” Rowley as script consultant. A PRLog release and a RocketHub campaign pledged part of the proceeds to the Everglades Foundation. The Miami New Times called it “Myst meets Oregon Trail.” A Unity prototype (v1.5) went out for Android. The campaign did not fund the game.
7. 2014–2026Twelve years on the shelf.
8. 26 Apr 2026First Unreal commit: the python asset pack, a playable pawn, the first hunt and the first constriction loop in one weekend. The original design was re-read and aligned the next day.
9. 12 Jul 2026Migrated to Unreal Engine 5.8.
10. 27 Sep – 2 Oct 2026The coil solver, the custom alligator, Shark Valley, the real 1992 weather, the Master Design Bible, Coco, the one-take intro film, the full hunt loop, seven biomes and creature AI.

1.3 The week it came alive: 3–9 October 2026

On 3 October an 870 GB drive wipe took the development PC. The project moved to a Mac the same day and kept going. In the next seven days it took 187 commits and about 254,000 added lines across 5,833 files of code, data and assets. On 9 October it handed back to Windows at a verified stable point, and that night the studio PC was rebuilt with its local image and video models, which made the plates in this document.

Each bar is that day's commits on one scale; 9 October, with 67, is the longest. Source: IBP git history.

1.4 Who builds it

One creator directs. AI collaborators work in lanes the creator assigned. Claude writes the game code, compiles, tests and builds; Opus 5.5 is co-author on 316 commits. Codex works only on content in Blender and the Unreal Editor: rigs, creatures, UI art. Gemini makes reference and concept images, the website and read-only analysis, and never opens the engine. Each keeps its own overnight log. Cinematics and stills are made in Hybrig, the studio's own AI video tool, on local models running on the studio GPU.

Part one

The Game

“With the HUD off, any frame should read as wildlife footage.”Design pillar, §2.4

Shark River Slough · Plate, Qwen Image 2.1

2 Executive Concept

A documentary-realism stealth survival game. The player is one female Burmese python living a whole life, from a pet-store tank on the night of Hurricane Andrew to old age.

2013“Sandbox environment to navigate the Burmese Python in a new, yet accommodating environment, Everglades National Park.”

“She is the camera, the controller, the progression system, the ecological disturbance, and the emotional contradiction of the whole game: beautiful, powerful, invasive, and dangerous because she is simply surviving too well.”Core thesis

2.1 Genre, platform, audience

2.2 High concept

One python, one life, one real place. The simulation is the game: “You just play the game until the snake dies of old age.” Hurricane Andrew opens it, a rare documentary host frames it, and the systems play out the life between.

2.3 Vision, in the creator's words

• The modern Snake. “In 20 years from now I want people to look back and be like, yo, do you remember the Invasion of the Burmese Python.”
• Scale in detail, not size. “We're just going to stick to the swamp, but it better be the best swamp in any video game ever made.”
• It plays itself when you put it down. Idle, the python goes on autopilot and the camera turns documentary.
• Moving is the reward. Anyone handed the controller should want to play just to move her.
• Look over God's shoulder and copy his answers. Real geography, weather, sky and behavior.
• Coming out swinging. “I've been sitting on this needle for over a decade, so I don't want to come out looking like trash after waiting this long.”

2.4 Key features and design pillars

2.5 Goal

2013“Utilize the touchscreen to manipulate proper movement. Conquer the Everglades National Park.”

Survive, grow and live a whole python life down the water corridor to Florida Bay, and leave the swamp measurably changed.

3 Interactivity

3.1 Game modes

3.2 Controls

Touch is the native design. Every controller verb translates a 2013 gesture.

Cross is context: eat, swallow, regurgitate. Spec: Docs/UNIFIED_CONTROL_PLAN.md; steps 1, 2 and 2b done, 3–9 open.

4 Cameras

2013Third person “slightly above and behind the snake,” pinch to zoom, a camera button cycling preset angles, an overhead view named after Snake for the strike and the wrap, and lock-on from Ocarina of Time's Z-targeting. All of it survives.

5 User Interface

5.1 Startup and attract

A four-block legal slate (photosensitivity, the agency disclaimer, the Bigglesworth rabbit insignia, the Dolly Parton “Snake in the Grass” sync credit); the Bigglesworth and Unreal bumper, unskippable for 4 s; then the title over a looping Andrew vortex. After 45 s idle, attract mode begins.

5.2 Main menu

Six items. Modes are not nested; you leave one by pausing and choosing Return to Title.

5.3 HUD

Design language Field Journal × Nature Documentary: tannin panels, marl paper, sawgrass gold and one sunset-amber accent, with red reserved for danger. Cormorant Garamond for names, Inter for reading, Barlow Condensed for labels; this document uses the same set. Elements fade after 6 s, and the center of the screen belongs to the swamp. One fixed seven-slot control bar shows PlayStation glyphs on a pad and keys on a keyboard. Over it sits an era skin: the fictional station WGLD Channel 9 “Glades Watch” in CRT style for 1992, modernizing to flat graphics after 2016.

5.4 Pause screen and Field Guide

2013Time, date, weather, location and health on the pause screen “allows for full screen use during gameplay.”

The Field Guide holds 67 species plates, each sourced to USGS or NPS.

Part two

One Night,
One Life

“Whether it freed a single python is a legend. What came after is not.”The legend card, §6.1

4:52 AM, 24 August 1992 · Glades Exotics · Plate, Qwen Image 2.1

6 Invasion Mode

2013“You start the game during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and live the life of the snake through maturity.” That is still the campaign.

6.1 Opening film: “August 24, 1992”

About 2:20 in three acts (The Calm, The Storm, After). A TV radar; a strip-mall pet store called Glades Exotics (placeholder name); the card August 24, 1992. 4:52 AM.; the roof tearing away; a tank tagged “Burmese python, captive bred, $65” holding three hatchlings; floodwater; dawn; the title; and the legend card: “Whether it freed a single python is a legend. What came after is not.” A 58-second one-take cut already ships as the intro: a Powers-of-Ten descent from orbit through Andrew's eye into the tank, made in Hybrig from 13 keyframes chained with MiniMax H3.

6.2 Tutorial: Pet Store Escape Not built

Six beats: glass tank, storm pressure, broken containment (a squeeze-through), the store floor (stealth by occlusion; no full hunt yet), the exit into floodwater, and the drainage canal. It ends as the python “disappears into vegetation just before dawn, not as a villain, but as a survivor.” Status: not built. New Life currently runs title, make-a-snake, briefing, Level 1.

6.3 Campaign structure

Six chapters down a geographic water corridor. Gates: credited kills, a size threshold, and from chapter 3 a legendary animal. Total: 300 kills plus the final boss. Pine rockland is deliberately left off the route: dry, high, and it burns.

6.4 Chapter film: “Snakecide,” January 2010

The thermometer drops to 26 °F; frozen iguanas fall from the trees; officers find 9–13 ft pythons dead in the sawgrass. The player survives in a 72.4 °F limestone solution hole beside a dormant 11 ft bull alligator. The real freeze left a genetic mark on the survivors (Card et al. 2018).

6.5 Ending: “The Victor”

Main-on-end credits cut against vignettes of the life: the facility, the raccoon, a crushed $4,000 robot decoy rabbit, a Judas-snake collar, the freeze, an 18 ft Elder on a chickee, airboat hunters, the gator death roll, the range map. Post-scripts state the real numbers (§11). Stinger: a hatchling in Charlotte County, 2026. “The invasion will continue.”

7 Swamp Mode and the Snake Pit

In 2026 Swamp mode is a sandbox with a Time Machine: any date from 1851 to 2100, on the real NOAA record, with shared setup screens.

2013Swamp mode as the reward for Invasion: start anywhere you've been, at any age you've reached.

The Snake Pit (built 3 October as the Danger Room) is an 11 m-radius arena: pick an opponent from a 40-species roster with emoji cards and specimen flips, fight, read the debrief, reset instantly with R.

8 Session Experience

8.1 Character selection: make-a-snake Known issue

2013“The default Burm is a female named ‘Baby’ in reference to a python living at the Serpent Safari Park in Illinois.”

Still true. 2026 adds a python genome behind a Randomize button: head scale, girth, warmth from olive to rust, darkness, contrast, fused blotches, mottling and pattern offset. She is always a natural Burmese python; a broad head leans her toward Jaws, a heavy body toward Coil, a slender one toward Stealth and Strike. Known issue: Randomize and Start fall off screen at 1280×720.

8.2 Saves, death and the next life

2013 had three save slots and resumed after a snake's life expired. In 2026 death (old age, a gator, the cold) is final for that snake and closes with an obituary card. The next life starts at the pet store or as a hatchling from her own clutch, and the world she changed carries forward.

Part three

The Body Is the Interface

“Anyone handed the controller should want to play just to move her.”Vision, §2.3

Contact, Orient, Immobilize, Lock · Plate, Qwen Image 2.1

9 Play Control

9.1 Snake movement

Stick pressure is one dial: still, sneak, stalk, slither, burst. Speeds run from about 50 cm/s creeping to 265 cm/s at a burst; the keyboard slithers at 0.78 pressure. Movement scales with body temperature and size.

9.2 Sneaking

2013“The closer you get to your targeted prey, an audible heartbeat will signify the proximity. The tempo increases the closer the gap.”

Kept. There is no sneak button. Water hides her (0.85), night hides her (0.35), and on a perch she is spotted at 35% of normal range with 70% less noise.

9.3 Striking and constriction

2013“Once connected, the user must wrap the prey up by swiping the touchscreen in circles to constrict.”

L2 loads the S-coil against a sweet-spot bar; a dead-center release lands at 2.4× velocity in about 35 ms and stuns for 2.6 s. Once latched, constriction is not damage over time: the squeeze cuts the prey's blood flow in proportion to its pressure. In the engine's physiology test a full squeeze renders an alligator unconscious in 5.4 s, a loose coil held for 120 s does not, and the heart stops 7.5 s after unconsciousness under a held coil. In water deeper than 120 cm, drowning compounds it.

9.4 Swallowing

2013“This process occurs in rapid fashion but not an immediate gulp… The bigger the kill, the bigger the growth benefit.”

Head-first only, within 165 cm of the snout, as a 14-second three-shot documentary sequence. Afterwards she is encumbered (up to −50% speed, no strike) until digested; holding Cross regurgitates to flee. Carcasses are fresh for 4 game hours, tainted from 4 to 10 (a 28% “meat poisoning” hit), scavenged after.

9.5 Surviving

• Growth comes only from digested mass, at 32% efficiency young and 8% old. Mass follows about 0.9 × L^2.8: 6 kg at 2 m, 44 kg at 4 m. Length caps at 5.75 m; the Florida record is 5.72 m.
• Start: 0.62 m and 0.25 kg. Largest meal: 1.10× her mass, +3% per Jaws point.
• Levels: one per ~25 cm, about 20 in a life, each an instinct point across Stealth, Strike, Coil, Jaws, Constitution and Senses (10 max, +5% each). A life is about 150–250 hunts.
• Vitals: Vitality (below 30% she limps), Stamina (2.2%/s in a burst; Exhausted below 15%), Caloric reserves (digest only above 24 °C body temperature), Breath (a 50 s bar standing for 45 min of real apnea).

9.6 Climbing and swimming Built 9 Oct

2013“If young, slither in trees and after building mass, sneaking on the ground.”

Built 9 October. Only hatchlings and juveniles climb. Contact starts a climb; a branch holds her if its circumference is under half her length; mount and dismount blend over 0.25 s; from a perch she drop-strikes 250 cm out and 450 cm down. Swimming reads real water depth; Gather submerges; a submerged Commit is an ambush.

10 Concept Art and Production Design

10.1 Visual style

2013“The app is to appear as though it is a documentary show similar to an episode of Animal Planet… If it looks real it will be taken more seriously.”

Kept and sharpened: scale in detail, not size; nothing bought, everything custom or CC0; reference first; no clones; every creature judged in close-up beside the alligator. The 2013 cel-shaded option is parked.

10.2 Audio environment

2013“As many possible sound effects and noises that you would hear out in the middle of the Everglades National Park. The natural orchestra.”

Positional, recorded sound in stereo through Atmos and binaural; real thunder that falls silent beyond 20 km; the prey's heartbeat in the hunt.

10.3 Music

No music during play. Music is reserved for the films. See §19 for the open question.

10.4 Cast

2013“Any living thing appearing in the app must be known to exist in The Everglades National Park,” with gators, panthers and manatees given priority.

The rule stands. A documentary host appears rarely, at life-stage turns; casting is open (§19).

Part four

The Real Invasion

“She was not the first. She was one more.”The python's own line, §11.1

Python and alligator · Plate, Qwen Image 2.1

11 Alien Invasive Species

Burmese python, Python bivittatus. The game is fiction built on a true story. This is the true story as the agencies and the science tell it in 2026.

11.1 Origins

The US imported 127,356 live Burmese pythons from the late 1970s to 1994, mostly from Thailand and Myanmar, and 160,655 from 1994 to 2011, almost all from Vietnam. A road-killed 3.58 m python was collected on US-41 at the park's northern edge in 1979. The first two documented inside Everglades National Park were found near West Lake in December 1995. By 2000 the population was described as breeding and established.

The game holds both, under its creative-truth rule and the python's own line: She was not the first. She was one more. Genetics agree the founders were few: nuclear diversity is about half that of native populations, and 13 of about 400 snakes carry Indian python DNA (Hunter et al. 2018).

11.2 Impact

Radio-collared marsh rabbits released in the park: pythons caused 77% of deaths within 11 months, against none at sites without pythons (McCleery 2015). Cotton rats and black rats are 45% of the diet. No fish, frog, turtle or snake has been found in a Florida python, and the game makes that a rule (§12). Alligators are both prey and predator: in 2005 a 13 ft python burst after swallowing a 6 ft gator, and gators win most encounters.

11.3 Response

The Lacey Act banned import and interstate transport from 23 March 2012. Florida moved the species to its Prohibited list on 29 April 2021. Paid contractors (SFWMD since 2017, and the FWC) have removed about 19,000; all reported removals since 2000 total almost 28,000. Detection runs from 0.01% to 1.46% per survey, so the tools are inventive: radio-tagged “Judas” males that lead hunters to breeding females, detection dogs, eDNA from water samples, and in 2025, 40 heated, solar-powered robot rabbits. USGS says eradication is not possible with current tools.

Records: a 215 lb female carrying 122 eggs, found by tracking the scout male “Dionysus” (2022); a 19 ft python from Big Cypress (2023). In the 2026 Challenge, 907 hunters removed 280; Tom Rahill alone took 96. In July 2026 the FWC declared an established satellite population in Charlotte County, north of the Everglades: the setting of the game's final stinger.

12 Indigenous Species

The 2026 roster: 16 species with researched behavior scripts plus the pig frog and apple snail; 40 in the Snake Pit; 67 Field Guide plates.

2013Endangered and indigenous species included “to show them in their natural environment.”

Every animal runs on hunger, fatigue, fear and thermal comfort under the real sun and weather, and a 17-observer matrix decides who flees, watches, hides or attacks.

12.1 Diet rule and food web

The python eats only what Florida pythons eat: rodents, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, deer, wading birds and alligators up to 1.8 m. Never fish, turtles or other snakes. Much of the swamp eats her back while she is small: who wins depends on size.

12.2 The alligator

The adversary. It decides by mass ratio every 0.5 s: at two or more times the python's mass it hunts; between 0.6 and 2 it defends; below 0.6 it flees (×1.3 in water). Bite force runs to 12,900 N for a 4.2 m bull. Its lunge winds up for 0.3 s and lands 81% of the time above water and 57% below; the death roll spins once 73% of the time. Fighting comes in 20–40 s bouts. Wrapped, it can counter-bite, roll out or drag her under. Telegraph clips (tail tense 0.4 s, jaw swing 0.5 s, body coil 0.6 s) are animated but not yet wired.

12.3 Coco

Coco was the creator's rabbit and the inspiration for the Bigglesworth Studios logo. She has passed away. In the game she is all white with domestic ears; the right ear stands and the tip of the left rolls down to show the studio's magenta-pink (#CF4A9B), real folded geometry approved on 28 September 2026. She lives on the north rim of the pond. There is exactly one of her. She cannot be caught: she clears every strike. Find her resting and she is in the 2013 sploot, with lettuce.

13 Everglades National Park (River of Grass)

Real geography in truthful compression: each level is the real place its map was drawn from, with the pause-map marker in its true position.

2013Seven habitats: pineland, mangrove, coastal lowlands, freshwater marl prairie, freshwater slough, cypress, marine and estuarine.

Map edges are exits; you arrive on the opposite edge of the next map. Beyond a readable natural edge sit a 4 km horizon ring and an 8 km water plane. Terrain is USGS LiDAR. Water is typed: canal, tea-colored slough, blackwater, clear marl, brackish (5–30 ppt, 0.3 m tide), salt (30–45 ppt).

Part five

The Build

“We're just going to stick to the swamp, but it better be the best swamp in any video game ever made.”The creator, §2.3

Plate 24 · Level 1, Human Edge v2, from the player start · In-engine, Oct 2026

14 Influences

2013“Some of these influences were seeds, while other expanded upon.”

15 Technical Flowchart

2013Artificial Intelligence: “not going to be able to be fully completed until experts have been consulted.” User Interface: this heading was empty.

The answer, thirteen years on, is a research base (28 behavior files, USGS diet data, field studies) behind one shared creature mind, fed by real-world data and closed into a loop by the python's own hunting.

16 Available Technologies

2013One word under the heading: “Unity.”

17 Asset Dependencies

• The python: 4K original textures; Gemini's tan-and-chocolate hatchling skin, not yet wired.
• The custom adult alligator v2; Coco with the folded ear (in her model files, not yet in Unreal).
• Audio: 14 CC0 recordings plus NPS public domain; 8 close alligator bellows and 4 hisses.
• About 1 GB of Blender creature work and ~600 files exist only on the Mac. Don't copy the stray ArtSource/Blender/C:\Users\Owner\… folder; its name breaks a Windows checkout.

2013This heading was empty.

18 Production Status and Roadmap

As of the Mac-to-Windows hand-off, 9 October 2026, branch codex/python-constriction-prototype at c887960c.

18.1 Verified 9 Oct 2026

• Level 1 laid out from its map (1200 × 606 m); the pause-map dot is accurate.
• Climbing with drop-strike; the fixed control bar; the full hunt loop.
• Biome and weather data packaged; cheaper volumetric clouds.
• Tests: automation 9/9; climb, stealth and coil-battle self-tests PASS; constriction acceptance matrix 9/9.

18.2 Known issues

1. Make-a-snake doesn't fit 1280×720.
2. The packaged game climbs 11 hand-placed trees; the editor finds 1,374 (scattered foliage isn't registered when cooked).
3. Level 1 opens at Andrew's dawn, 05:30 in a hurricane, and is very dark.
4. Trees read as smooth pipes; the python is still black and orange; fields look bare from the air.
5. Top crash: a dangling fauna pointer in the ambient spawner (6 of 18 Mac crash logs).

18.3 Roadmap

Order: snake movement, then constriction and swallowing, then needs and ecosystem, then species, then polish and UI. First milestone: a vertical slice in Shark Valley with one complete loop (stalk, strike, constrict, swallow, grow, get hunted) at 60 fps in 1080p, then a 60–90 second trailer and a Steam page, toward PC and Mac Early Access. Controls next: a timed exhale squeeze, bite location, gator telegraphs, body-first feedback, then the creator's showcase playtest. Still to build: the pet-store tutorial and the documentary host.

19 Open Decisions 12 open

The working documents disagree here. The Master Bible wins where it speaks; these need the creator's ruling.

1. Chapters and order.Seven biomes with Prairie & Pineland as level 5 (bible), six chapters without it (runtime), or eight biomes and seven chapters (roll-up). Kill targets total 300 or 365.
2. Level 1's south exit.Tree Island (runtime data; “mostly south is chapter 3”) or the Mangroves (travel graph; shipped pause map).
3. Time scale.30× (48-minute day), 60× (24-minute day), or one real hour per game year. A life runs 20 or 60–90 hours.
4. The 2010 freeze.The chapter 4 film is January 2010, but chapter 4 spans 2002–08 and the film's python (15.4 ft) is above the chapter's band.
5. Life stages.Four incompatible models, and an XP curve that conflicts with “a level per 25 cm.” Climbing unlocks at subadult in one file and ends after juvenile in another.
6. Music.“No music, ambient only,” against a Dolly Parton sync credit on the title slate. Gameplay only?
7. The HUD.No HUD in play with vitals on pause (2013 and the earlier bible), or the permanent telemetry built now.
8. Fish.The diet rule says never; the proposed prey table includes bluegill, bass, gar and bowfin.
9. Heat and taste buttons.Five mappings across the documents.
10. Coco.Exactly one, or a 15% wild spawn. Eyes dark or ruby.
11. The host and narrator.Three ways to cast the host: the person from the creator's own video (link to re-supply); Todd Rowley with a talent release; or the creator performs it and a digital host wears it, with face capture (52 expressions per frame, the names Unreal's face rigs use) driving a 3D host in the game's own world. The Unreal bridge for that third option isn't built yet. Narration follows from whoever hosts.
12. Small facts.Landfall at 4:30, ~5:00 or 4:52 AM; Andrew as Category 4 on the film's radar and 5 elsewhere; engine 5.5 in the README against 5.8; 59, 64 or 67 Field Guide species.

20 Credits and Sources

2013This heading was empty.

Stinger · Charlotte County, 2026

The invasion will continue.

Plate 13, hatchling coloration · Qwen Image 2.1