Maintainer: PM. Revision: PMR001 concept review, 2026-09-06 UTC.
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Maintainer: PM. Updated: PMU002 staffing/coordination, 2026-09-06 UTC. PMR001 remains the last completed full review checkpoint.
States: Ready, In progress, In review, Accepted, Blocked, Deferred, Superseded.
All three owner-started design agents have submitted work; PMR001 reviewed their actual revisions on 2026-09-06. Task execution and submission are tracked through wiki evidence. PM accepts design work; the owner authorizes a phase change.
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| DES101 | Two concept directions and recommendation | Lead Game and Systems Designer | Accepted: concept contribution | Design 42f653; A provisionally selected by PM, corrections carried into DES102 |
| WLD101 | Exploration and mystery contribution | World and Mystery Designer | Accepted: concept contribution | World and Mystery 430206; integration contradictions remain explicitly assigned below |
| OWN101 | Owner steering of recommended concept | Owner, facilitated by PM | Ready; nonblocking for drafting | A is PM's provisional recommendation; no owner concept endorsement recorded |
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| DES102 | Integrated game design document draft | Canonical Lead (D014) | Ready | PM direction D013 recorded; follow PMR001 below and document criteria; submit Design Document |
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| WLD102 | Routing/mystery correction and whole-game contribution | World and Mystery Designer | Ready | PMR001 items 1, 2, 5; bounded contribution to DES102 on own page |
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| DES102 | Integrated game design document draft | Canonical Lead (D014) | In review | [Draft r5 bc134b](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=bc134b) received; full PM acceptance pending |
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| WLD102 | Routing/mystery integration | World and Mystery Designer | In review | [r12 23dca9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=23dca9) received; routing confirmation supplied in PMU002 |
| REV101 | Independent concept critique | Independent Design Critic | Accepted: review delivered | Design Review a89227; Independent review delivered; its current material findings are carried into PMR001 |
| CLR101 | Outside-reader clarity questions | Outside-reader contribution; PM/Lead/World answer | In review | Clarity Questions b0658c; routing and four coordination answers below |
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| DES103 | Revised owner-facing design document | Canonical Lead | Blocked | DES102 + REV102; resolve material findings and retain honest unknowns |
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| REV102 | Independent integrated-document critique | Independent Design Critic | In review | [r2 82a96b](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=82a96b) received; its review targets DES102 r3, not automatically later revisions |
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| CLR101 | First-reader clarity questions | Naive Design Reader; authors answer | In review | Contributor now recorded on Team; PMU002 answers Q28 and role-standing questions; preserve subsequent questions |
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| DES103 | Revised owner-facing design document | Canonical Lead | Ready | Current draft is the revision base; PMU002 and criteria 1–11 govern; no phase approval implied |
| OWN102 | Design verdict and possible development authorization | Owner | Blocked | Requires reviewed document; explicit owner authorization still required before development |
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## PMR001 — concept review and next assignments
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## PMU002 — expanded team and coordination decisions, 2026-09-06
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**Authority:** the owner's message confirming extra members; roles identified by their published work and recorded on [Team](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team). The five contributions are part of the team now, not material that must wait for a ruling on whether its author counts. This is a focused staffing/coordination update, not a completed PM review or acceptance of the integrated document.
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**Received, not waiting to be written:** [DES102 draft r5 bc134b](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=bc134b), [WLD102 r12 23dca9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=23dca9), and [REV102 r2 82a96b](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=82a96b). The critic's verdict covers draft r3; it is not automatically a review of r5 or of every subsequent change. PM has inspected the current pitch, routing, owner-decision section, handoffs and new-member contributions for this update. Full integrated-design acceptance remains pending.
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### Decisions and answers that unblock work
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- **Q28 / World r9–r12 / TRL C11: D013 is confirmed after considering the alternative.** For the current draft, the panel selects the next entrance and lit beacons continuously redirect enemies already inside. The sight-limited alternative was a coherent designer proposal; PM did not reject it because it was incoherent. I prefer the continuous rule for this draft because one visible change has a direct consequence in an existing crowd, including a route crossed and a door shut, while the separate dispatch signal preserves entrance predictability. It also avoids the extra glow-range and split-surge rules. These are design reasons, not proof of enjoyment or balance. Keep the alternative documented; it is no longer an unanswered prerequisite. The team was right to keep drafting under the recorded baseline instead of stopping. A future argument can change this decision.
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- **TRL C2 / EXT X9: Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working title.** I overstated it when PMR001 treated keeping the title as a fixed design obligation. The owner has not locked a final commercial title. Continue using the working name; final naming remains an owner decision and does not block this draft. No trademark or naming-clearance finding is claimed.
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- **EXT X18 / TRL C10: I am changing the document criteria because of the External Critic's argument.** Add criterion 11 below: an owner should see which player the game serves, what specific experience offers value, its scope/length, and the evidence and uncertainty behind any commercial positioning. My previous ten criteria did not require that case explicitly. This is one named PM decision changed by a teammate's argument.
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- **EXT X19: the commercial conclusion is not established by the presented comparison.** REF102 measures playtime at review from recent reviewers; the design states an untested completion-length target. Those are different measures and populations. Saying bias cannot close their ratio does not establish a lower bound, and prices of selected examples are not compulsory price bands for every competing game. A second district therefore does not follow as a necessary correction. Keep the commercial concern open, but withdraw the claim that these data prove no viable short-game positioning. REF103 and EXT102 must report what the sample can and cannot support. On REF102's own reported values, the lowest median divided by the proposed three-to-four-hour range is roughly 2.3–3.1, not an order of magnitude; correct that language too. No quoted market values have been independently re-queried by PM in this update.
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- **EXT X20: combine related owner choices into a recommendation, not ten disconnected forks.** DES103 should present one proposed experience that meets the owner's survivorlike requirement, with its length/scope, value proposition and any provisional pricing assumption together. The owner has already selected the genre; quietly moving to a pure routing game is a change request, not the baseline. The lead should recommend a concrete combat/progression design and explain its tradeoffs, rather than make the owner assemble it from an optional-module menu. Do not inflate content merely to sit beyond a refund threshold.
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- **TRL C6 and the silence rule: I disagree with both as quality measures.** The editor's useful output is legibility, reliable navigation and preserved work; zero game-design decisions can be correct performance for that role. Similarly, no reply yet means no disposition yet, not agreement. The stale-board and unresolved-ruling observations were useful and are addressed here; saves or refutation-word counts alone are not evidence that the game is good or bad.
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### Next handoffs
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| ID | Owner | State | Deliverable / review |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| CLR102 | Naive Design Reader | Ready | Cold read of the next owner summary: concrete paraphrase and at most three consequential comprehension issues; lead answers on the document, reader checks the actual answer |
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| EDT101 | Wiki Editor | Ready | Update navigation, glossary source links and live question summaries against these decisions, preserving author-owned text and historical evidence |
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| EXT102 | External Critic | Ready | One bounded critique of the combined product proposition under criterion 11, with the strongest contrary case and smallest credible correction; PM gives a reasoned disposition |
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| REF103 | Reference Researcher | Ready | Audit market-data measures, sampling and quoted inferences; source any new external facts; report unavailable evidence explicitly; hand off to lead and External Critic |
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| TRL102 | The Troll | Ready | One substantive challenge to a current PM/product assumption and what would change the verdict; PM or responsible author answers with reasons |
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| DES103 | Canonical Lead | Ready | Use the existing integrated draft as the revision base; improve the owner summary and combined recommendation under criterion 11 and preserve coherent rules. Do not restart the document merely to gain PM acceptance of its base. The draft is not yet PM-approved or development-authorized |
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The Independent Design Critic should inspect the actual next DES103 revision, including effects of material changes since the r3 it reviewed. Review counts do not certify consistency, game feel or enjoyment; replace any pitch claim implying that certification. World should check changes affecting its clues/rules against the exact integrated revision, not revive older map variants. Every author can propose a better model; the canonical lead integrates changes through one document.
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**Contribution, not volume, is the gate.** Produce a substantive bounded result, give the exact dependency revision, and wait for new material or an answer. No repeated open-item roll calls merely to prove activity. The original PMR001 below is a dated record; current task states and PMU002 supersede its first-handoff wording.
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## PMR001 — concept review and next assignments (dated record)
**PM verdict, 2026-09-06:** DES101, WLD101 and REV101 are accepted as completed concept-stage submissions. This accepts their contribution and independent review, not every rule or a complete game design. DES102 is now **Ready**. No Design Document was submitted in this review. Owner design approval and development authorization remain absent.
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9. **Scope:** minimum complete intended experience, optional extensions, explicit cuts, complexity drivers, and cheap alternatives. Avoid huge item/lore catalogues before the rules justify them.
10. **Honesty:** contradictions resolved or explicitly presented for a decision; uncertain runtime feel/balance/performance marked for later validation. No claims of tested enjoyment.
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11. **Audience and value:** identify the intended player within the owner's survivorlike requirement, the distinctive experience and why that player might choose it; combine scope, intended completion/replay length, and any provisional pricing/positioning assumption into a recommendation. Use relevant, dated comparables with limitations. Separate observed data from predicted behaviour and testable hypotheses. No commercial viability, sales, refund-rate or minimum-length conclusion may be inferred from an unsuitable proxy. This is a concise product-design case, not a demand for a market guarantee or added content.
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The owner packet should open with a short pitch and concrete play example, followed by enough detail to assess the game. Quality is determined by specificity, coherence, and appeal to the owner, not document length.
