Throw / Carry — Design Codex

What it is. A two-beat verb: pick up a loose object, then release it — drop, place, or hurl along an arc. The carried thing rides on the player, so holding it changes what the player can do until they let go.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. The world stops being scenery and becomes inventory you can weaponize. Any barrel, plate, or teammate is a projectile, a key, or a stepping-stone the moment your hands close on it. The pull is agency over objects, not just over yourself.

The verb

Grab (enter carry) → move under a carry constraint → aim → throw (exit carry) OR place (soft exit). Two decisions: what to hold and where to let go.

How it feels / why it’s fun

Carry is a cost, not a free pocket. The best throw mechanics make holding expensive — you move slower, can’t mechanic-dash or mechanic-double-jump, your hands are full. Every carried second is a lockout of your other verbs. That tension is the game.
The arc is a read. A thrown object obeys gravity; landing it is a lob-and-lead skill, not a hitscan. Aim ceiling lives in the arc, like anchor-peggle and mechanic-bounce.
Emergence for free. Once objects have mass, position, and effects, throwing composes — a lit torch thrown into oil is a sentence the designer never wrote. This is pattern-emergence‘s cheapest engine.

Tuning levers

Lever	Does	Sane default
Carry slowdown	Move-speed penalty while holding	0.6–0.8× base
Verb lockout	Which abilities carry disables	Dash + jump-tech off; walk only
Carry capacity	How many things at once	1 (scarcity forces routing)
Throw arc	Flat toss vs high lob	Mid-arc; aimable via hold-charge
Charge time	Hold-to-throw-farther window	0.2–0.5s to full power
Auto-pickup radius	Grab-nearest vs precise grab	Small; precise beats fumbly
Object persistence	Does it despawn on landing	Persist — landed objects are level state
Drop vs throw	Soft place under a place button	Split them; silent conflation lies
Friendly-fire	Can a throw hit an ally	On for chaos; off for pure puzzle

Slots into

Genres: genre-physics-arcade (its native soil), genre-coop-chaos (hand-offs are the game), genre-grid-puzzle and genre-puzzle-platformer (throw as a discrete, provable move), genre-survival-horror (scarce improvised weapons), genre-sandbox-survival.
Anchors: anchor-overcooked (throw an onion across the kitchen to beat the clock), anchor-katamari (carry-mass reframed as growth), anchor-it-takes-two and anchor-portal (carried objects as puzzle keys), anchor-nuclear-throne (thrown weapons as spent ammo).
Systems: system-inventory-and-ui (what “held” means on-screen), system-hazards-and-environment (throwing into hazards), system-crafting (carry ingredients to a station), system-coop-and-competition.

Twist seams

Throw but you can throw your co-op partner (perspective) — the projectile is a player. One hurls, the other becomes a directed body: cleared gaps, out-of-reach switches, a launched tackle. Now every throw is a two-brain negotiation and the carried “object” has opinions. See anchor-it-takes-two and genre-coop-chaos; the launched partner can chain into mechanic-glide or mechanic-grapple mid-flight.
Throw but thrown items keep their momentum as platforms (emergence) — a hurled crate doesn’t stop on impact; it stays a moving surface you can ride or stack. Throw your own footing ahead, then land on it. Traversal becomes level authoring in real time — pairs with mechanic-stack and pattern-emergence.
Throw but only onto things you must first place (inversion) — no native handholds; you plant an object, then hook or leap to it, as in the grapple seam of mechanic-grapple. The throw is the setup move.

How it wires to Hayao

Model carry as held-object state on the carrier plus a release event that spawns free physics. A thrown object is a body with position + velocity integrated over fixed ticks — deterministic, replayable, hashable. Any spread or bounce-scatter tie-break goes through a deterministic RNG or ordered iteration, never argless timing.
For the physics feel (arc, mass, bounce, impact), study the sandboxes/physics-lab in isolation before wiring it into a game.
If throw is a puzzle move (grid, provable), keep it a pure Move and model it the way examples/sokoban splits pushable-object logic from view — the thrown block’s landing cell is state; the arc you draw between cells is cosmetic and stays out of the world hash.
The held-object sprite, the aim reticle, and the arc preview are all cosmetic overlays. What’s held and where it lands is state.
Prove the throw feel against design/FUN.md#19-·-physics-arcade; prove puzzle levels the way a puzzle proves winnability — every solution must have a reachable throw.

Fails when…

Carry has no cost. If holding an object doesn’t slow, block, or spend anything, it’s an invisible backpack — the tension evaporates and it becomes antipattern-false-depth. Make hands full.
Aim is a lie. A reticle that promises an arc the throw doesn’t honor is antipattern-input-lie. The preview must be the physics.
Throw dominates every verb. If hurling is strictly better than walking, meleeing, or shooting everywhere, the rest of the kit goes dead — antipattern-boring-optimal. Reserve it; gate ammo by what’s actually loose in the room.
Fumbly pickup. Grab-nearest that snaps the wrong object turns intent into a wrestling match. Precise grab beats a greedy radius.
Coop throws with no telegraph. Hurling a partner they didn’t consent to is grief, not coop — surface the aim, honor the pattern-fairness-and-trust budget of system-coop-and-competition.
Landed objects vanish. If thrown things despawn, you erase the emergent-tool loop — persistence is what lets a barrel become a platform later.