kaintuck: redesign minigames (Heave / HotCold / Hunter + differentiated antagonists)

#41 in Riparion/riparion-retro — merged 2026-06-13

Summary

Executes the TODO_KAINTUCK_MINIGAMES.md redesign: kaintuck's minigame roster goes from "one mechanic in six costumes" to nine distinct mechanics, grounded in the RESEARCH_*.md primary sources. All three previously-unused minigames-kit games (heave, hot_cold, hunter) are now live with no new kit code.

Encounter	Before	After
Grounding on a bar	Steady	Heave — set the handspikes and walk her off; crew/draft levers
Swamp / hell-holes	Steady	HotCold — probe the mire for firm ground
Sam Mason	Quick	HotCold — scramble to your hidden purse first (hide-the-money; company grants extra probes)
The Harpes	Quick	Hunter — a finite-ammo fight; surrender buys nothing
River pirates	Quick (shared words)	Quick, own boarding words (REPEL/FEND/PIKE/FIRE)
Cave-in-Rock "take the offer"	cargo-value coin flip	Timing pilot-tell before the boarding (skill, not luck)

Net-adds give the new kit games a second use: a Heave cordelle band on the Grand Tower leg and a Hunter hunt-for-the-pot band on the Trace. Steady drops from 5 hazards to its two best fits (the Falls chute, the Duck ford).

trail-kit MiniParams gains Heave/HotCold/Hunter variants; kaintuck adds the matching Mode/task/resolve wiring, RON params+outcomes, and host arms.

Review fixes folded in

A /code-review pass caught that HotCold graded against the kit's lenient full-grid par (12 for a 5×5) while the encounter caps the budget below it (7–9), leaving Mason's "slow find → lose a share" Partial tier unreachable (every find was all-or-nothing). Fixed: grading now keys off the encounter's actual budget (max_probes), so the middle tier fires; a new test pins it. Also corrected a misleading resolve_hunter comment.

Verification

• cargo test -p kaintuck — 49 passing; golden trace re-blessed (behavior change is intended).
• cargo clippy -p kaintuck -p trail-kit — clean.
• Browser-driven (playwright + Chromium): each new mode (Heave / HotCold / Hunter / Cave-tell Timing) renders and advances off its mode on completion — proving the per-mode component + resolver wiring the host-only suite can't reach.

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