2026-09-08 16:13:45
Anonymous:
Respond to focused review: correct fidelity, scope counts, dependencies and estimates
hold the flood/whole game outline.md ..
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# Hold The Horde — Whole Game Outline
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**Status.** First-pass planning scaffold, not owner-approved canon and not a promise of duration or production scope. The opening direction is selected; later mechanisms, story interpretations and ending actions below remain proposals. “Apparent,” “deeper” and “secret” describe layers of discovery, not confirmed endings. The 30/90/100–200 hour figures are owner ambitions that this desk outline cannot validate.
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**Status.** First-pass planning scaffold, not owner-approved canon and not a promise of duration or production scope. The opening direction is selected; later mechanisms, story interpretations and ending actions below remain proposals. “Apparent,” “deeper” and “secret” describe layers of discovery, not confirmed endings. In particular, irreversible departure and revival being limited to the station field are optional story/gameplay assumptions, not established facts. The 30/90/100–200 hour figures are owner ambitions that this desk outline cannot validate.
## The whole-game spine
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| Layer | Expedition goal and pressure | New player action | New interpretation earned |
|---|---|---|---|
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| **Opening: one part, two machines** | Restore the docking-collar isolation bridge with the loose Fork Relay while the first horde crosses a constrained lane. Keeping the relay in the rig improves combat; installing it keeps the patient-bay shutter closed. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, choose whether the same part serves the rig or station, fight through the consequence, return and see what death preserves and shifts. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the selected Option A direction, while its exact room tuning remains proposed. |
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| **Early expeditions** | Reach R-3, complete one short cooperative survivor rescue, claim the first small family of functioning parts, and test builder service marks against doors, air and power. | Reconfigure a three-part rig, decide what occupies pack capacity, escort through one prepared crossing, and record observations rather than receive a translation. | The hospital still has operational logic; people remember it incompletely; the journal preserves evidence, not truth. |
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| **Middle expeditions** | Pursue several regional objectives: stabilize a useful route, recover ship-repair assemblies, investigate patient transfers, and bring a small authored cast home. Hordes make stopping to observe costly. | Choose between competing viable builds, lend and reclaim parts aboard, use local language predictions, exploit or repair persistent station connections, and decide whether to try an optional treatment. | “Corruption” may be an intervention in the astronaut’s active profile rather than a death tax. This is a question the player can investigate, not a settled explanation. |
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| **Apparent ending layer** | Assemble enough recovered ship function to leave. Before the irreversible departure, clearly state that leaving the station field ends its revival effect. | Depart and receive a coherent apparent close, or postpone departure and keep investigating. No secret counter or hidden death threshold removes either choice. | Escape solves the astronaut’s immediate problem but does not explain the hospital, its disappearances, or the source of revival. Exact credits timing and what follows departure remain owner decisions. |
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| **Opening: one part, two machines** | At Cargo Turn, remove the isolation bridge that the ship needs and bring it aboard. A loose Fork Relay found there may be deployed so the service rack and patient-bay shutter remain powered, costing time and leaving the part installed; keeping it instead preserves the part but consumes carrying space. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, decide whether to deploy the loose part or keep it, survive the resulting shutter state, and learn which property returns after death. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the selected Option A direction, while exact rooms, timing and starting rig remain proposed. |
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| **Early expeditions** | Reach R-3, complete one short cooperative survivor rescue, recover an initial part set under the replaceable found-parts default, and test builder service marks against doors, air and power. | Reconfigure a three-part rig, decide what occupies pack capacity, complete one prepared crossing with the survivor, and record observations rather than receive a translation. | The hospital still has operational logic; people remember it incompletely; the journal preserves evidence, not truth. |
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| **Middle expeditions** | Pursue several regional objectives: stabilize a useful route, recover proposed ship-repair assemblies, investigate patient transfers, and bring a small authored cast home. Hordes make stopping to observe costly. | Choose between competing viable builds, lend and reclaim parts aboard, use local language predictions, exploit persistent room-group connections, and—only under the replaceable voluntary-treatment default—decide whether to try treatment. | “Corruption” may be a deliberate change to the astronaut rather than a death tax. This is a question the player can investigate, not a settled explanation or a rule forbidding other personal consequences. |
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| **Apparent ending layer** | Under the optional departure assumptions, assemble enough recovered ship function to leave and explicitly preview that departure is irreversible and ends revival. | Depart and receive a coherent apparent close, or postpone departure and keep investigating. No secret counter or hidden death threshold removes either choice. | Escape solves the astronaut’s immediate problem but does not explain the hospital, its disappearances, or the source of revival. Departure, credits timing and field-limited revival all remain owner decisions. |
| **Deeper layer** | Reach the hospital’s sealed central system through accumulated operational knowledge, survivor evidence and station connections. | Make an explicit, previewed choice about an unchosen central mechanism—for example, isolate a template process, restore a safer one, or leave it untouched—then accept a visible consequence for revival and the colony. | The player can distinguish some mechanisms and consequences without the game declaring the station’s ultimate metaphysics. The example actions are replaceable until story and corruption directions are chosen. |
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| **Optional secret layers** | Complete personal investigations, rare utterance exchanges and the late whole-station connection puzzle. | Build the entire playable station into one physical ship-rooted network, test cross-language hypotheses, and revisit places for consequences rather than checklist residue. | The station itself becomes a manipulable historical object. The deepest discoveries may complicate every prior account without supplying a single omniscient answer. Whether any secret is required for a “true ending” is unresolved. |
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| **Optional secret layers** | Complete personal investigations, rare utterance interactions and the late whole-station connection puzzle. | Connect every actually placed playable room or bound group while preserving every selected local binding, test cross-language hypotheses, and revisit places for consequences rather than checklist residue. The exact graph and joining mechanism remain proposals. | The station itself becomes a manipulable historical object. The deepest discoveries may complicate every prior account without supplying a single omniscient answer. Whether completion freezes the whole layout, and whether any secret is required for a “true ending,” are unresolved. |
Discovery must change play at every layer: a route sign predicts an operation; an operation opens or safely alters a path; the path yields a component, person or bounded fact; and that result changes a later preparation or interpretation. Lore that supplies none of those consequences is optional texture, not spine content.
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Late expedition goals are represented by the deeper and optional-secret rows rather than a separate act: they turn accumulated regional work into central access, consequential action and the entire-station objective.
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## One concrete later expedition: the pressure ledger
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This is a replaceable middle-game example, not established fiction. After Yeva is home, she recognizes the identifier on a photographed R-3 pressure log but cannot infer where its line now runs. Dorn can lend his collar receiver, while the player’s relay-family part can either power that receiver before departure or remain in a Fork-based combat rig. Listening yields one pressure value and a suspect channel—not a route or proof—while keeping the part provides stronger lane control. Either preparation remains viable.
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This is a replaceable middle-game example, not established fiction. After Yeva is home, she recognizes the identifier on a photographed R-3 pressure log but cannot infer where its line now runs. The player seats a relay-family part in Dorn’s collar receiver, listens, retrieves the part, then prepares the expedition. This cooperative preparation costs time aboard; it does **not** create scarcity, consumption, upkeep or a choice between the reading and carrying the relay. Listening yields one pressure value and a suspect channel—not a route or proof.
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Inside the station, builder service marks let the player predict which of two valves performs “sample” and which performs “purge.” A visitor-language source/destination pair then predicts that the line was redirected through a decontamination ward. The player tests the prediction in world time, holds a horde at the valve, and finds an **Impact Dynamo** powering the abandoned sampling loop. Removing it ends that shortcut but earns a new build change: motion or impact can now trigger the player’s Barrier Plate or Pulse Projector, enabling a mobile counterwall instead of the opening’s fixed sensor rig.
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Inside the station, builder service marks let the player predict which of two valves performs “sample” and which performs “purge.” A visitor-language source/destination pair then predicts that the line was redirected through a decontamination ward. The player tests the prediction in world time, holds a horde at the valve, and—under the replaceable found-parts progression default—finds an **Impact Dynamo** powering the abandoned sampling loop. Removing it ends that shortcut but earns a new build change: motion or impact can now trigger the player’s Barrier Plate or Pulse Projector, enabling a mobile counterwall instead of the opening’s fixed sensor rig.
The ward ledger shows only that a named transfer occurred after the time Yeva believed transfers had stopped. It does not say why, who survived or which witness was right. Back aboard, Yeva revises one accusation and asks the player to look for the destination ward; Dorn retains a different reading. Thus one expedition connects observation, two language tests, an earned expressive build change and a human consequence without converting evidence into authorial truth. Its room layout, character names and recovered part remain replaceable.
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| Opening | Two legible trigger/payload chains; first shared-use relay choice. | Empty ship and a visible reason to return to R-3. | First repeated service mark recorded with its observed result. |
| Early | A small part family supports at least two meaningfully different three-part rigs. | First short rescue; survivor contributes a bounded capability and personal lead. | Builder marks support one tested operation; visitor patterns are noticed but not translated. |
| Middle | Several viable rigs trade safety, control, mobility and carrying capacity; a recovered part enables a new behavior, not a numeric tier. | A small authored cast creates preparations, disagreements and linked personal objectives; no upkeep economy is assumed. | Each language supports multiple predictions and at least one corrected hypothesis; historical routes are marked as possibly stale after shifts. |
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| Late/deep | Local build grammar scales into station connection work without making one universal loadout. | Survivors react to central choices according to what they know and what the player shared. | Cross-language evidence opens or reframes a route; utterance interaction remains bounded and never becomes an all-purpose oracle. |
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| Late/deep | As a candidate analogy only, local build grammar may inform station-connection work without making one universal loadout. | Survivors react to central choices according to what they know and what the player shared. | Cross-language evidence opens or reframes a route; utterance interaction remains bounded and never becomes an all-purpose oracle. |
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For this example, builder operational marks are one alien language, while visitor source/destination pairs and later utterances are tentatively two registers of a second. Whether those visitor fragments are one language, two related languages or evidence of a third is unresolved; the language map must settle the relationship while preserving the Brief’s minimum of two alien languages.
## Provisional finite content bands
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These are comparable scoping proposals, not commitments, production forecasts or implied playtime. A “region” is a coherent expedition territory; a “room module” is an authored reusable encounter/discovery space; a “chain” is a multi-step discovery with a gameplay consequence.
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These are comparable scoping proposals, not commitments, production forecasts or implied playtime. A **region** is a coherent expedition territory. A reusable **room module** is an authored layout/encounter pattern; one module may produce multiple **placed playable room instances**, and the late whole-station objective concerns those actual instances, not the catalogue count. A **discovery chain** is a multi-step investigation with a gameplay consequence. A **major set-piece** is an exceptional encounter or sequence and may also host a chain, room or objective; cross-listed units are not additive workload.
| Trap or station-mechanism families / placed instances across both occupant eras | 5 / 12 | 9 / 24 | 14 / 40 |
| Language discovery chains, split across at least two languages | 4 | 8 | 12 |
| Colony projects with a person-specific consequence | 5 | 9 | 14 |
| Major mystery or personal investigation chains | 4 | 7 | 11 |
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| Region-binding converter sites, including the final station-scale use | 2 | 4 | 6 |
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| Persistent-connection opportunities, including the final station-scale use; mechanism TBD | 2 | 4 | 6 |
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Even the STRETCH column does not justify 30, 90 or 100–200 hours. Missing measurements include average expedition and revisit length; how often death creates a genuinely new route rather than repetition; clue discovery and correction rates; viable-build count after dominance testing; horde encounter variety; dialogue/state volume per survivor; gating and backtracking costs; accessibility pacing; and the proportion of players who pursue secrets. Only later implementation, play evidence and production costing can relate inventory to duration or feasibility.
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Even the STRETCH column does not justify 30, 90 or 100–200 hours. Counts still missing include oxygen canister and carrying-capacity variants, starting loadout alternatives, resource sinks, objective reuse, branch scenes, clue permutations and technical state combinations. Measurements still missing include average expedition and revisit length; how often death creates a genuinely new route rather than repetition; clue discovery and correction rates; viable-build count after dominance testing; horde encounter variety; dialogue/state volume per survivor; gating and backtracking costs; accessibility pacing; and the proportion of players who pursue secrets. Only later implementation, play evidence and production costing can relate inventory to duration or feasibility.
## Missing design work and rough active-work estimates
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The PM must assign ownership; the roles below are recommended single owners. Ranges estimate focused design time for one role, exclude waiting, review, implementation, asset production and playtesting, and assume current sources remain usable. They are neither deadlines nor safe to sum into a schedule.
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| Missing area | Proposed owner | Predecessor | Completion criterion | Rough active work |
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|---|---|---|---|---:|
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| Expedition/region topology and gates | Systems | This outline; selected opening | Every layer has entry condition, return value, alternate route and explicit dependency; no circular gate | 8–14 h |
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| Shift, latching and final station connection | Systems | Connecting the Station; owner’s stabilization answer | Death transition, persistence, converter limits and whole-network completion are one contradiction-free rule set | 6–12 h |
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| Build acquisition and part catalogue | Systems | Progression Options; Build Rules; content band choice | Each part has source, reusable behavior, counter-cost and at least two supported combinations; no generic stat ladder | 10–18 h |
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| Horde encounter progression | Systems | Combat Rules; Horde Creature Proposals; region topology | Each region has readable pressures, build interactions, retreat case and escalation purpose | 8–14 h |
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| Apparent/deeper story path | Design Lead | Hospital Story Directions; owner story choice | Scene-and-evidence map supports departure and continued investigation without declaring an unchosen truth | 10–18 h |
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| Corruption/treatment consequences | Systems | Resurrection and Corruption; owner corruption choice | Access, consent, benefits, hazards, reversibility and ending interaction are explicit; ordinary death stays unpunished | 5–9 h |
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| Survivor cast and rescue/home arcs | Design Lead | First Survivor; Rescue Rules; Coming Home | Chosen band has distinct rescue, contribution, relationship changes and bounded knowledge for every survivor | 12–22 h for SMALL; add 2–4 h per survivor |
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| Two-language discovery map | Design Lead | Language and Journal; Language Expedition; Utterance Discovery | Every chain records evidence, test, correction path and concrete action unlocked; neither language becomes exposition | 8–15 h |
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| Content feasibility pass | PM | Owner chooses a band; preceding specifications | Dependencies, reuse assumptions, authoring load and unvalidated duration claims are recorded for owner decision | 6–10 h |
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| Whole-game coherence review | Reviewer | Readable versions of all selected specifications | Finds missing pillars, hidden dependencies, unsupported duration claims and contradictory player rules, or records no material objection | 4–8 h |
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## Owner decisions still required
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1. After a local binding, does that connection stabilize permanently, or can deaths continue rearranging it? The station-wide mechanism cannot close until this is answered.
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The PM must assign ownership; the roles below are recommendations. Unless labelled “rules only,” each range covers a **SMALL-band specification**, not all authored content in that band. Author rows estimate focused author time and exclude waiting, independent review, implementation, assets and playtesting; the Reviewer row estimates review itself. Each row produces only its named specification and cross-references its predecessor rather than rewriting that predecessor’s rules. Ranges overlap in calendar time and are planning guesses, not proven throughput, deadlines or a complete schedule.
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| Missing area | Proposed owner | Band / depth | Predecessor | Completion criterion | Rough active work |
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| Expedition/region topology and gates | Systems | SMALL; 4 regions/12 objectives, outline not room scripts | This outline; selected opening | Every layer has entry condition, return value, alternate route and explicit dependency; no circular gate | 8–14 h |
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| Shift, latching and final station connection | Systems | All bands; rules only | Connecting the Station; owner’s full-station behavior answer | Death transition, permanent local bindings, joining limits and whole-station completion are one contradiction-free rule set | 6–12 h |
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| Build acquisition and part catalogue | Systems | SMALL; 12 behavioral part briefs | Progression Options; Build Rules; band choice | Each part has source, reusable behavior, counter-cost and at least two candidate combinations; no generic stat ladder | 10–18 h |
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| Horde encounter progression | Systems | SMALL; 4 regional pressure briefs, no balance tuning | Combat Rules; Horde Creature Proposals; topology | Each region has readable pressures, build interactions, retreat case and escalation purpose | 8–14 h |
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| Survival economy and starting loadout | Systems | SMALL; paper rules and one opening loadout only | Oxygen and Observation; Build Rules; topology | Capacity model, canister behavior, loot competition, replenishment, survival readouts and starting kit are explicit without claiming balance | 6–12 h |
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| Trap and station-mechanism progression | Systems | SMALL; 5 families/12 placed-instance briefs | Story direction; language map; topology | Both occupant eras have distinct readable logic, counterplay, reset/persistence behavior and at least one discovery consequence per family | 6–12 h |
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| Apparent/deeper story path | Design Lead | SMALL; beat/evidence map, not scripts | Hospital Story Directions; owner story choice | Map supports proposed departure and continued investigation without declaring an unchosen truth | 10–18 h |
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| Corruption/treatment consequences | Systems | All bands; rules only | Resurrection and Corruption; owner corruption choice | Access, consent, benefits, hazards, reversibility and ending interaction are explicit; ordinary death is not silently made a punishment | 5–9 h |
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| Survivor cast and rescue/home arcs | Design Lead | SMALL; 5 cast arcs/3 scenes each, no final dialogue | First Survivor; Rescue Rules; Coming Home | Each has a distinct short rescue, contribution, relationship change and bounded knowledge | 12–22 h |
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| Two-language discovery map | Design Lead | SMALL; 4 chains, relationship of registers resolved | Language and Journal; Language Expedition; Utterance Discovery | Each chain records evidence, test, correction path and action unlocked; neither language becomes exposition | 8–15 h |
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| UI and accessibility information contract | Systems | All bands; paper states/flows, no usability claim | Survival, combat, journal and language specifications | Immediate goal, oxygen, capacity, target, build causality, pause and journal-history states are specified with accessibility requirements and failure messaging | 8–16 h |
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| Save/persistence and authoring constraints | Technical Design specialist, if staffed | All bands; technical-design discovery/spec only | Shift/persistence rules; topology; content schemas | Save authority, death transaction, persistent-world state, content identifiers and authoring constraints are testable on paper without implementing them | 8–16 h |
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| Content feasibility pass | PM | SMALL; dependency/cost roll-up | Owner chooses a band; preceding specifications | Reuse assumptions, authoring load, overlaps and unvalidated duration claims are recorded for owner decision | 6–10 h |
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| Development/validation handoff scope | PM | All bands; plan only, phase remains gated | Stable v1 specifications and owner phase decision | Required prototypes, technical spikes, usability/balance/performance checks, staffing and approval gates are named without performing them | 6–12 h |
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| Whole-game coherence review | Reviewer | SMALL specification set; one focused review | Readable versions of selected specifications | Finds missing pillars, hidden dependencies, unsupported duration claims and contradictory player rules, or records no material objection | 4–8 h |
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The superseded first estimate table summed arithmetically to **77–140 role-hours** for a SMALL-cast specification: Systems 37–67, Lead 30–55, PM 6–10 and Reviewer 4–8. Adding the previously omitted survival, traps, UI, technical-persistence and handoff scopes makes this planning inventory **111–208 role-hours**: Systems 57–107, Lead 30–55, future Technical Design 8–16, PM 12–22 and Reviewer 4–8. The sum is an audit of listed labor, not elapsed time or a completeness proof. TARGET/STRETCH content authoring and all implementation and validation effort remain unestimated; SMALL specifications and later authorized evidence must establish per-unit work and reuse, so multiplying only survivor hours would be misleading.
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## Decision backlog for PM sequencing
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These should not be sent to the owner as one questionnaire. The PM should sequence each when it blocks its named successor while other independent work continues.
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1. **Whole-station behavior:** local room/group bindings already remain connected through shifts. After the *entire* station is connected, does the whole layout stabilize, or do rooms keep moving while every established connection survives? The station-wide mechanism cannot close until this is answered.
2. Which hospital-story direction, if any, should lead: captive ascendant, departed being/template engine, or a revision? No exact explanation or ending is canon.
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3. Should ordinary revival remain evidence-only with optional voluntary treatment, or should death itself alter the astronaut? The outline assumes the former only as the safer replaceable default.
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3. Should corruption be accessed mainly through voluntary treatment, or should death itself alter the astronaut? The replaceable default assumes voluntary access and adds no ordinary death penalty; it does not rule out other owner-chosen personal consequences.
4. Should functioning found parts be the progression spine, with fabrication limited to repairs/adapters, or should observation-led fabrication dominate?
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5. Is voluntary departure the apparent-credit action, and may the player postpone it indefinitely? The outline proposes yes to both.
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5. Is voluntary departure the apparent-credit action; is it irreversible; does leaving end revival; and may the player postpone it indefinitely? The outline uses yes as one replaceable package, not as fact.
6. Must the whole-station connection unlock a deeper ending, or remain an optional secret whose reward is interpretation and access?
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7. Which provisional content band should be costed first? Choosing one authorizes planning around counts, not a duration claim or implementation phase.
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7. Can rescued people be lost after reaching the ship, and if so under what visible, non-arbitrary rule? The current outline assumes no answer.
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8. Is the colony only an authored home/preparation space, or does it also have management decisions? No resource upkeep, staffing economy or passive timer is assumed.
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9. Which provisional content band should be costed first? Choosing one authorizes planning around counts, not a duration claim or implementation phase.
Until those decisions are made, this outline is a dependency map: it shows a complete shape of play while keeping its most consequential answers visibly open.
