Built from the app's own pieces: the parchment toys, gold Play button, Fredoka and Lilita type, the real field stills, card art and starter coins. The 10 new animals use the round-1 renders from aa-animals-review (the lead's picks) as placeholders, with stand-in coins until the icon renderer makes real ones. XP and levels are leaf green everywhere, so they never look like acorns or gold.
Your animal now stands on the stump, so you see your pick in the 3D clearing before you play. Tapping the level opens Challenges. Locked animals show the level that unlocks them and their acorn price; tapping one opens its sheet with Buy.
The trophy card gains an XP box. Each reason ticks in, the bar fills, and the level-up stamps in. When a level unlocks an animal, the unlock moment (screen 5) plays right after, then you come back to this card.
Three dailies and three weeklies, written for this game's rules: real cards (Steal, Void, Dodge, Reflect, Gridlock) and real moves (handing a minus card to a rival, winning rounds). Progress counts only from the server's record of real games. A finished challenge pays its XP on that game's end screen; no Claim button to forget. The full pool is in the build plan.
The second tab on the same page. A dirt path like the one around the stump, one stop per level. All 10 animals sit on it, with acorns and free Lucky Star rolls between them. Scroll the phone to see levels 1 to 32.
Built to the roll screen's bar: a full-screen splash. The level coin spins in and bursts into a beam in the animal's own color (the honest tell), a black silhouette drops onto the stump with a heavy squash, light floods it into color, the name slams in, and the animal starts a cartoon hop. In the app this is the real 3D animal doing its intro emote; the render here is a stand-in. Use now sets it as your animal.
The Animals tab now lists the 14 animals. Each animal's skins move into its own sheet, so the grid stays short. Tap any tile for its sheet with the Use button. Locked animals keep their name and show the unlocking level, so players know what they are working toward. A locked animal's sheet also offers Buy for acorns; Frog shows the state when you are short.
Assumptions. A game pays 100 XP for finishing, 25 per round you win and 75 for winning it. A median game is 6 rounds (balance report), so a typical game pays about 150 XP. Dailies pay 100 each, weeklies 400 to 500. A regular player plays 2 games a day (the roadmap's figure) and finishes 2 of 3 dailies and 2 of 3 weeklies: about 600 XP a day. A casual player plays 1 game and finishes 1 or 2 dailies: about 300 a day.
The curve. Level 2 costs 150 XP, so every first game unlocks Cat. After that each level costs 50 more than the last (250, 300, 350...). All 10 animals are unlocked at level 30: about 6 weeks for a regular player, 12 for a casual one. Past 30 each level costs 1,650 XP and pays 250 acorns, with a free roll every 5 levels.
Buying early. Any locked animal can be bought for 150 acorns per unlock level (Bunny 600, Dragon 4,500). A new player's 1,000 starting acorns reach Duck at most. A regular player earns about 9,600 acorns on the way to level 30 (75 a game on average plus level rewards), so Dragon bought early costs about half of that, or 45 rolls: a real trade against skins. Reaching the level of an animal you already bought pays half its price back in acorns, so no level reward is ever dead.
Levels between the animals pay 100 to 300 acorns, plus a free Lucky Star roll at levels 5, 10, 20 and 25. The full 1 to 30 list is on the level road (screen 4).
Where the data lives, how challenges rotate, how levels gate the picker and Collection, how bots pick, and the PR-sized steps: build-plan.md