[Coda]

The crane game is still random -- the prizes change up randomly every hour. But since Pandora Tokens are a limited resource (you only get three per day) we want to make sure that they're worth spending, and that every game is EQUALLY worth spending them on.

I do apologize about misinterpreting what you meant by "completion" -- for games like Gravity Runner where you play until you die, dying IS completion.

The mechanism I was seeing for Gravity Runner was to show a list of possible prizes before you start the game, then give you three lives with which to collect them from where they've been scattered in the level, then you get to pick one of the ones you picked up to keep at the end. This would be fair, it would work, and it would reward skillful play, especially if the higher-value items were held to where they wouldn't show up until later. But as I had mentioned, it's impossible to make a game like Gravity Runner uncheatable. You literally only have to type one command into your web browser to turn gravity off and then you'd hover at the top edge of the screen eternally. Alternatively, one command and the game tells the server that you got a score of two million points without ever having to play. I could make it more complicated, but it won't stop cheaters. (It is for this reason that I refuse to even implement so much as a leaderboard. It WOULD get hacked.)

The same thing would be true of Invader -- destroying enemy ships could cause item balls to drop, and you have to shoot them or collect them to win the prize. But Invader likewise could easily be cheated.

... actually, I suppose I did just think of a way that Invader and/or Gravity Runner could be done to make cheating no more of an issue than it is in the Crane Game... I can't keep cheaters from cheating, but I CAN make it to where cheating doesn't give you much advantage.

... hm. Now I have to think about this.