Once the writing felt solid, I translated the joke into state.

The whole game lives in one object: patience, completed, ignored, open tasks, a performance log, last issue time, fired flag, start time. That object is your career. Completing a task is not “checking a box” it is surviving another review cycle. Ignoring one is not missing a reminder, it is giving the duck evidence.

Early rules I wrote down before coding:

Pressure should accumulate slowly, not spike randomly
Success should feel cold, not celebratory
Failure should feel administrative, not dramatic
Getting fired should be inevitable if you treat it like a joke

This phase was systems design disguised as comedy. Patience is the health bar. Tasks are tickets. The log is your permanent record. The duck is not a mascot. He is the win/lose condition.