Claim
When the stage is dark, anyone can take the light for ten dollars. It buys ten minutes. This price never moves, which is why the game can't deadlock the way a pure ratchet does.
#2648In the limelight
SpacePings
Know when the ISS is about to cross your sky
Visit SpacePingssent 1 visitors this reign
Burn rate4:42
reign total $10.00cap 10/30 min
Their whole reign, plus a cent. Buys you the next ten minutes.
Or wait — when this burns out it’s $10.00 again.
113
Visitors sent
$70.00
Burned on fame
5
Reigns ended
5
Watching now
Traffic sent · last 24 hours
Latest activity
- @stackcurious claimed the light for $10.005m ago
- Dark for 10m 5s now. Embarrassing.14m ago
- @stackcurious burned out after 8m 56s. Blackout.24m ago
- @stackcurious claimed the light for $20.0033m ago
- Dark for 10m 7s now. Embarrassing.1h ago
The Crowd
Every startup gets a free card in the dark. Buy any one of them a turn on stage — your own, or somebody else’s. Shuffled on every visit, so nobody is stuck at the bottom.
Hall of Flame
Every reign that has ended, settled. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy this table.
- Reigns ended
- 5
- Total burned
- $70.00
- Visitors sent
- 113
- Time in the light
- 48m 56s
| Card | Time lit | Burned | Cost/min | Longest | Doused / kills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🗓️ ShiftCheck@stackcuriousLongest reignBurned the most | 18m 56s | $30.00 | $1.58/min | 10m 00s | 0 / 0 |
| 2 | 📸 OkPhoto@stackcurious | 10m 00s | $10.00 | $1.00/min | 10m 00s | 0 / 0 |
| 3 | Invofox | 10m 00s | $10.00 | $1.00/min | 10m 00s | 0 / 0 |
| 4 | 🛰️ SpacePings@stackcurious | 10m 00s | $10.00 | $1.00/min | 10m 00s | 0 / 0 |
The Rules
Four rules, one light, no mercy. The whole economy fits on this page — nothing hidden, and no algorithm deciding who gets seen.
Douse
Taking the light off a live holder costs everything they have sunk into this reign, plus a cent. You get ten minutes regardless of what you paid — the excess is what it cost to take it, not extra time.
Refuel
Only the holder can buy more time, up to 30 minutes a reign. Every dollar of defence raises the bounty on your own head by exactly the same dollar. Defence and trophy are the same number.
Burnout
Fuel hits zero with nobody dousing and the reign ends, the chain resets to the floor, and the stage goes dark. The card that just burned out waits 60 seconds before it can claim again, so everyone gets a fair race at the cheap price.
One evening, in numbers
- 00:00The stage is dark. Mara claims it for $10.00.reign total $10.00
- 03:20Kenji douses her for $10.01. Mara is out; Kenji has ten fresh minutes.reign total $10.01
- 06:00Kenji sees a challenger coming and refuels $5, so he now holds fifteen minutes.reign total $15.01
- 06:00Which means dousing Kenji now costs $15.02, not $10.02. His defence funded his own bounty.douse price $15.02
- 21:00Nobody pays it. Kenji burns out. The price falls straight back to $10.floor $10.00
What that produces
- Fresh flames are expensive, dying ones are cheap
- A reign is most defensible the second it starts and least defensible at 0:30 left — same price, far less time bought.
- Camping beats bidding
- Pay the ratchet now, or wait for the burnout and take the stage at the $10 floor. Patience is a strategy the pricing deliberately rewards.
- 3am is cheap fame
- The price only ratchets while people are awake to fight over it. Off-peak, the floor is the price.
- Buying it for someone else works
- Nothing stops you putting another founder's card up there. Ten dollars is a worse dinner than it is a gift.
Lose a race because someone else’s payment landed first and you are refunded in full, automatically — the price is checked again when the money arrives, not when you clicked. Listings are free and stay free. Paid placements carry rel="sponsored nofollow", because we are selling attention, not links.