The thesis

What is Onchain Arcade?

Onchain Arcade is a deterministic game engine that turns classic arcade games into massive, real-time, skill-based arenas whose outcomes are audited rather than trusted. Every match is a pure function of its signed inputs, so anyone can re-run it and land on the exact same result — which is what lets skill-based awards be handed out without a house, a hidden server, or a referee.

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#The idea in one sentence

One deterministic engine computes the identical match for every player and replays it frame-for-frame — so the outcome is verified, not assertedby a server you can’t see.

Ricoshot is the founding game on that engine: a Peggle-style physics battle royale where up to a hundred players share one arena. But the game is the demo. The real artifact is an engine where a match is a pure function of its signed inputs — feed the same inputs to the same code and you always land on the same result, on any machine, forever.

That single property is what these docs are about, because it changes what a skill game is allowed to be.

#The problem with trust-me servers

Most online games — and every online prize game — run their match logic somewhere you can't look. You send inputs, a hidden server decides what happened, and a screen tells you the result. You cannot prove a desync. You cannot prove a payout was fair. You cannot prove the dice weren't loaded. "Fair" is just a claim on a screen.

Trust-me server

You take its word for it

Match logic runs where you can’t see it
Desyncs you have no way to prove
No independent replay of a result
The house could always be the referee

Deterministic engine

Everyone computes the same match

Identical logic for every player
Every result has a replay path
Scales from a duel to a huge arena
Outcomes are verified, not trusted

#Provable play, not a reskinned coin flip

This is not a slot machine wearing a game's clothes. Ricoshot rewards aim, timing and combo play; the randomness it does use (board layout, offers) is committed up front and provably fair; and the bots that fill an arena are difficulty, never a payout sink. The engine is the referee, the replay is the audit, and nobody has to be trusted.

#Why this is cool

A deterministic core is a small idea with big consequences:

Duel → stadium: 1 engine; The same match sizes itself to the crowd.
Verified, not trusted: 0 referees; Strangers can check each other's games.
Awards released: by code; A prize can follow a proof, not a person.

Put those together and you get something we don't think has existed before: a skill game controlled entirely by math, not by an operator. Free and fun to play on its own — and, if a community wants it, able to hand out awards with no house, verifiable by strangers, and eventually removed from operator control so it can't be quietly rigged, over-taxed, or switched off. A game that keeps working, and stays provably fair, for as long as anyone wants to play it.

#How to read these docs