SIGNAL DECAY
Game feel as gameplay. Your signal strength IS the experience.
THE MECHANIC
Signal strength controls everything: control responsiveness, particle density, audio fidelity, visual clarity. As signal decays, the game itself degrades. Controls get floaty. Audio distorts. Visuals corrupt.
Collect signal boosters to restore fidelity. But 40% are decoys that accelerate decay. They look nearly identical. The only reliable tell: real boosters emit a brief clarity pulse in the audio when you're close.
Moving fast generates interference. The best pilots learn to modulate speed, not just dodge obstacles. At 0% signal, you enter the Void: 8 seconds of degraded controls before transmission is lost entirely.
EM RESEARCH NOTE
Signal Decay applies all three Expectation Modulation techniques from the research series: feel-states (physics degrade with signal), re-contextualization (same WASD means different things at different signal levels), and performance-coupling (your speed directly affects decay rate). The audio layer adds a fourth dimension: information encoded in sound, not visuals. Players who learn to listen outperform players who only watch.