HOLLER DERBY

Folks say it started in the 1880s, when miners drinking moonshine in a Kentucky holler swore they saw something racing alongside the rail cars. Word spread up the ridge. Every full moon the locals would gather in the hollow with handmade tickets and bottles of corn liquor, betting on whatever came out of the trees. The track has moved a few times since. It always comes back. The cryptids always come. Nobody knows why they race. Nobody asks.

**Welcome to Holler Derby. Don't tell nobody where you heard about it.**

**WHAT YOU DO**

Six cryptids come out of the treeline. The tote board prices them, the odds lock, and you put money on one. Then you watch, because there is nothing else you can do. Bet **WIN**, **PLACE**, **SHOW**, or go for the **EXACTA** and call the top two in order. Cash three tickets in a row and the holler starts paying you a streak bonus. Bust out and the bookie slides a hundred dollars across the counter without looking up.

**WHAT'S OUT THERE**

Sixteen cryptids, each with their own stats and their own trick. Mothman glides. Bigfoot stomps and the whole field stumbles. The Wendigo drains the will to run straight out of its rivals. Squonk cries, melts into a puddle, and reappears somewhere ahead of where it was. The Skinwalker copies whatever the runner beside it just did. Then the track itself gets involved — fog off the creek, a meteor, a portal that swaps two runners, and a light that comes down and takes somebody off the dirt entirely.

**THE CAST**

The Bookie runs the window and has opinions about your choices. Mabel prints your ticket and is not above judging it. An old radio announcer calls the race from a plywood booth on stilts. A man in a long coat turns up in the tree line sometimes. Nobody introduces him.

**FEATURES**

- 16 hand-drawn cryptids, every frame authored pixel by pixel in code

- Four bet types, live odds priced against the field that's actually running

- Six track conditions and seven kinds of race night — Rookie, Longshot, Monster, Speed, Weird, Championship

- A career that remembers: bankroll, record, best payout, and every cryptid you've met

- A dossier that fills in as you encounter them. There is an entry numbered 00.

- Procedural CRT audio — machine hum, layered race sound, and a moment near the line where all of it stops

- Runs in the browser. One file. No downloads, no accounts, nothing phones home.

**CONTROLS**

Mouse or touch for everything. Keyboard: arrows to move, **1–6** to pick a runner,

**Tab** for bet type, **Enter** to confirm, **Esc** to back out.