**Owner-set premise, 2026-09-07: the astronaut and the unofficial space station.** This is the game's premise, not another team candidate. It supersedes incompatible earlier visions and PM provisional selections. Details not specified by the owner remain design proposals. A premise decision is not approval of the complete design or permission to develop.
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You are an astronaut whose broken ship forces an emergency landing at the nearest space station. The station is unofficial. Its emergency signal says **“stay away!”**, and it refuses to answer your hails. You have no choice but to dock.
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### The arrival
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1. **Oxygen limits exploration.** The station’s artificial atmosphere is broken. Away from your ship, you carry a limited supply of oxygen and can find additional canisters. The ship can produce unlimited oxygen, but your carrying capacity is limited. Running out kills you.
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2. **The station is hostile.** Zombies and other strange creatures attack on sight. Taking enough damage kills you. “The Flood” means massed enemies.
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3. **Death is not the end.** You wake up aboard your ship after dying. The explanation is hidden somewhere in the station.
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4. **Survivors become your colony.** You can send rescued humans to your ship, where a small community grows.
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5. **The station holds mysteries.** Puzzles, traps, mechanisms and at least two alien languages offer clues to what happened, why you revive and how you can leave. Survivors can help you understand what you find.
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You are an astronaut. Your ship is broken, forcing you to land at the nearest space station you can find. The station is unofficial. Its emergency signal says **“stay away!”**, and it refuses to answer your hails. With no alternative, you land at its dock anyway.
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## Intended experience
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### The five facts — owner canon
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A survivorlike focused on exploration, experimentation and mystery. The owner’s priorities are **“I discovered something incredible,”** followed by **“I made a ridiculous build work.”** Fighting hordes and developing powerful combinations must be meaningful parts of the game.
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1. **Limited oxygen away from the ship.** The station's artificial atmosphere is broken. You can carry only a limited amount of oxygen when leaving the ship, and can find additional oxygen canisters around the station. The ship can produce an unlimited amount of oxygen. Running out of oxygen kills you. Unlimited production aboard the ship does not mean unlimited portable oxygen.
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2. **A hostile horde.** The station contains zombies and other strange creatures that attack you on sight. Taking enough damage kills you. The Flood is this mass of enemies, not literal water.
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3. **Death returns you to the ship.** When you die, you wake up aboard your ship. Why this happens is a mystery whose evidence is somewhere in the station. No cloning, time loop, simulation, alien mechanism or other answer has been selected.
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4. **Rescued people become a colony.** You find human survivors and can send them to your ship, where they form a small colony. How rescue works and how life aboard the ship develops still need design.
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5. **The station has secrets to decipher.** Strange puzzles, traps, mechanisms and **at least two alien languages** are present. Survivors and clues in the station may help you understand what is happening, why you keep reviving and how you can leave.
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Discoveries can reveal a larger world, change the meaning of something already seen, or expose history while the player searches for power. Deep secrets and personal note-taking are welcome. Revisits should offer a changed environment, enemies, understanding or ability to interact.
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### The experience this must deliver
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Equipment competing with salvage for inventory space is a desired tradeoff. Enemy manipulation can be useful, but should not be the main subject of experimentation.
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Hold the Flood remains a **survivorlike centred on exploration, experimentation and mystery**. The owner's desired reactions remain, in order: “I discovered something incredible,” then “I made a ridiculous build work.” Horde survival and player-developed power must be convincing parts of ordinary expeditions, not merely automatic attacks attached to a sequence of puzzle rooms.
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The shipboard colony should grow into a home: an authored, non-procedural cast the player knows, helps and cares about. It provides upgrades and an emotional reason to explore and defend people. Its exact management systems remain undecided.
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Discovery can reinterpret something visible all along, reveal an unexpectedly larger world, or uncover history and mythology while the player seeks useful power. A notebook full of observations is welcome. Not every historical discovery must unlock a door, upgrade or mechanical action: changed understanding is a valid payoff.
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The player needs clear immediate goals and understandable controls and survival information. Mystery must not depend on bad UX. Encoded songs are rejected. The former city-depends-on-creatures twist is rejected.
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Equipment competing with salvage space remains a point of enthusiasm. Exact rack dimensions, oxygen storage and starting equipment are not fixed by the owner. Enemy manipulation can support a build but is not the central science. An extraordinary combination should result from player choices and learned interactions, not solely permission to trigger one specially authored room.
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## Scope and constraints
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The ship's rescued people should give exploration an emotional and moral purpose as well as opportunities to improve capabilities. The owner's standing preference is an authored, non-procedural cast the player knows and cares about. No particular cast size, survivor job system, escort mechanic, recurring upkeep or permanent survivor death is approved by the premise.
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- **Design only.** No game code, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations or playtests until the owner explicitly authorizes the relevant phase.
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- **Unity and Steam** are selected.
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- Prefer **free existing assets**. Purchases and rare custom/authored game assets require owner approval. **No AI-generated art**, including concepts and placeholders.
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- Desired scope: about **30 hours to apparent credits**, **90 hours total to the real ending**, and **100–200 hours total for the deepest optional secrets**. These are ambitions, not demonstrated duration or feasibility.
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- Inspirations: Noita, Backpack Hero, Pathogenic, Cult of the Lamb, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Blue Prince, and the owner’s example of Magcraft’s spectacular combinations. They inform experiences, not a checklist of copied systems.
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Clear immediate goals and readable survival information are essential. The player may not understand a language or the revival mystery; they must still understand oxygen remaining, health danger, basic controls and what they are currently trying to achieve. Bad UX is not a mystery mechanic.
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## Still undecided
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### Open design decisions — propose, do not silently declare canon
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- **Expedition pressure:** oxygen capacity/depletion/refill behaviour, carrying cost, canister placement and how retreat, exploration and growing combat power interact. Do not introduce rationing of the ship's unlimited oxygen production by accident.
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- **Death and persistence:** distinguish oxygen death and damage death; specify retained/lost equipment, discoveries, journal records, station changes and rescued people. The fact of revival is fixed; its explanation and its exact gameplay consequences are not.
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- **Build development:** starting gear, meaningful choices during an expedition, future starting options and two genuinely different approaches to the same objective. Existing fixed-damage, water-only, rack-size and catalogue restrictions are prior proposals, not owner limits.
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- **Rescue and ship life:** how a discovered person reaches the ship, what risks/costs are visible, who needs oxygen and how survivors change relationships, knowledge or expedition possibilities. Only the astronaut's revival is established; do not assume everyone revives.
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- **Languages and mysteries:** distinct purposes for at least two languages, fair evidence and partial understanding, survivor contributions, wrong interpretations and recovery. Do not turn the languages into a replacement song cipher or require bespoke lyrics. Textual puzzle/language design is allowed; production art, glyph assets and recordings remain gated.
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- **Progression and resolution:** a clear first practical objective, the station's spatial structure, changing return purposes, the revival investigation, escape and deeper secrets. The station's identity, creators, cause of the catastrophe and reason for its warning are questions, not answers supplied by the premise.
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### Scope and production constraints
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The owner's ambition remains about **30 hours to apparent credits**, **90 hours total to the real ending**, and **100–200 hours total for the deepest optional secrets**. Those are desired milestones, not measured duration, proven feasibility or permission to fill time with oxygen refills, grinding or repeated solved routes. No district/deck count is fixed.
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Unity and Steam are selected. **Design only** until the owner explicitly approves a compelling design and authorizes development: no game code, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations or playtests. Prefer suitable free existing assets. Purchases and rare authored game assets require owner approval. **No AI-generated art**, including concepts and placeholders.
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The harvest-dependence twist and information-hiding songs remain rejected. The drowned city, Hearth/furnace story, Bell House, Choir network and prior neutral clinic expedition are not the canonical setting or progression. Individual interactions or design lessons may be proposed again if they genuinely fit this station; renaming old machinery into space is not an integration plan.
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### Team ownership and next delivery
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The Visionary shapes and protects this owner-set identity; the Lead integrates the design. Existing specialists develop their domains against these facts. [Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) assigns one connected first-sortie design: oxygen, horde/build choices, a discoverable clue, a survivor/rescue opportunity and return/revival consequences, followed by a reason to venture out differently. This is a written design, not a prototype. [Team](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team) defines responsibilities. Discussion stays in [project chat](/chat/); current rules and consequential unresolved choices stay in articles.
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## Visionary working design — first sortie and two portable builds
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**Proposal beneath the owner-set premise; details are reversible.**
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**Identity in one sentence:** *Hold the Flood* is a build-crafting survivorlike about an astronaut forced into a forbidden station, pushing farther on finite oxygen while a horde thickens, discovering portable component interactions and alien rules, and sending survivors back to a ship that slowly becomes a home.
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**Feeling:** isolation and dwindling breath; curiosity strong enough to risk one more room; the catharsis of a machine assembled under pressure suddenly erasing the mass; relief when the airlock closes and someone else is alive inside it. The theme is **knowledge turns survival into rescue**. Power matters because it buys time, reach and another person—not because a number rose.
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### First sortie — get the flight coupler and answer a life sign
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The emergency docking damaged the ship's flight controls. A scan locates a compatible two-cell **flight coupler** in the station's Dock Service Hub and one human life sign in a sealed booth beside it. The current goal is plain: **retrieve the coupler and return to the ship**. The survivor is a visible optional rescue, not a surprise fail condition. The warning, the silent station and the reason death returns the astronaut to the ship remain mysteries.
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The suit's main oxygen tank is filled freely aboard the ship and does not occupy the equipment rack. Away from the ship, oxygen drains at a steady displayed rate. A one-cell station canister refills a fixed displayed amount and is consumed; taking one sacrifices component, salvage or return capacity. The HUD marks the estimated direct-route return reserve without pretending unknown rooms are safe. Running out causes a clearly identified hypoxia death. Damage death is identified separately; both wake the astronaut aboard the ship.
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The astronaut steers while their equipped weapon fires automatically. The Flood enters in a continuous, visibly escalating mass rather than waiting in puzzle rooms. Kills and dangerous caches provide charge. The direct corridor reaches the coupler fastest but passes the densest spawn; side routes take oxygen and expose component caches, canisters, the survivor and a safe service bench. Pressure asks one repeated question: **turn back with what you have, or spend breath to become strong enough to bring home more?**
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At a powered service bench, action pauses and the player may install a recovered component into open rack space, replace one, or keep it as cargo. Links and the resulting action are previewed before commitment; no inventory sorting occurs while dodging. A scanned pattern persists in the notebook after death and lets the ship's ordinary repair bench refit that recovered type on later departures, but does not create free copies. Carried components, salvage and the coupler drop at the death location; opened routes, scanned patterns and survivors already launched to the ship remain. These persistence rules are proposals; the revival cause is not.
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### The same coupler objective, two materially different builds
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The eight-cell rack is a working size, not owner canon. The main suit tank and basic Cutter sit outside it. Both cache branches are signposted by recognizable hardware rather than random upgrade names, so route choice can pursue a family while exact component variants still reward exploration.
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| Path | Acquisition and rack | Reusable interaction | Oxygen pressure, payoff and weakness |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **Portable storm** | Take the exposed transformer branch, recover Coil (2), Arc (1) and two Batteries (2), and fit them at its service bench. Carrying the coupler (2) commits seven cells; the final cell is an oxygen canister, Kit or salvage—never all three | Coil creates a short induction field centered on the astronaut. Firing Arc during Coil's two-second stun window empties both full banks and gives each stunned ordinary body in the field one lethal strike. It works in any room; conductive flooring may enlarge the field but is not required | The player must spend oxygen reaching the long cache branch, collect twenty charge near the horde and step close before firing. The reward is a portable screen wipe and clear escape window. Heavy, Crust and bodies outside the field survive; without Arc, Coil only makes space, and without Coil, Arc keeps its ordinary cap. The cargo-heavy rack has almost no rescue margin |
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| **Lure and lance** | Take the signal-store branch, recover Portable Beacon (1), Rivet Driver and brace (1), and one Battery (1). With the coupler, five cells are committed, leaving three for oxygen, Kit, salvage or a rescue cost | The Beacon draws reachable ordinary Flood toward one point. While it is lit, the Driver automatically targets the densest line between astronaut and beacon and pierces that line. This works in any corridor or open floor with sight and a reachable lure; no authored apparatus is required | The payoff is sustained lane-clearing and more carrying range, not a wipe. The player spends less oxygen on acquisition but must maintain position while the Beacon drains, then retrieve it or abandon it. Heavy/Crust block the line; flankers, broken sight and an empty bank collapse the formation. It is safer for exploration until the geometry fails, when it has no panic clear |
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The storm path buys burst with breath, twenty charge and nearly the whole rack. The lure path buys time and cargo with attention and positional risk. Both can solve the Hub, both develop during ordinary horde play, and both remain useful on later station decks. Neither is a key for one room. Exact damage, charge, cells and oxygen duration remain tuning proposals.
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### Rescue, discovery and the reason to go out again
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The trapped survivor is inside a sealed maintenance booth connected to a one-person transfer capsule. The player may leave them safely in the booth and return later, or spend one found oxygen canister to pressurize and launch the capsule to the ship. No escort AI, hidden timer or permanent off-screen death is assumed. Once launched, that survivor remains aboard even if the astronaut dies afterward.
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The first fair language discovery is practical, not a cipher. Angular **control script** repeats beside air seals, vents and service benches; each symbol is paired with a visible machine state, so a safe bench lets the player infer “seal” before risking it at an airlock. That observation is recorded as a hypothesis and works anywhere the symbol recurs, opening an oxygen-saving return route. A visually distinct **witness language** appears on personal objects and memorial surfaces; it carries names, testimony and history, never basic control instructions. The rescued survivor recognizes that the scripts serve different purposes but cannot translate the second one completely. Alien-language rules remain World design proposals and require non-color-only presentation; no bespoke glyph art is authorized.
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Back aboard, the coupler restores only enough control to show that another flight component is missing; the ship cannot leave yet. The rescued person occupies a real cabin, speaks about the station as lived experience and changes the next lead. The ship refills the suit without charging currency. The next reason to venture out is both practical and human: find the missing flight component, more oxygen capacity and evidence explaining why the station warned the astronaut away—and decide whether another life sign is worth a longer route.
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### Vision test and exclusions
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Every active mechanic must change at least one of five decisions: how long to stay on finite oxygen; how to survive the growing mass; which portable interaction to pursue; what carrying space to surrender; or who/what reaches the ship. Discovery must change a later action, route, loadout, interpretation or relationship. The colony is authored survivors and visible ship changes, not population production, oxygen upkeep or jobs busywork.
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Retain provisionally: automatic horde combat; finite expedition oxygen with unlimited ship refill; equipment-versus-cargo space; enemy-earned charge; readable component caches; safe field fitting; portable cross-component rules; persistent observations/routes; revival with an unknown cause; optional recoverable rescues; two languages with different jobs. Retire from the active foundation: encoded songs, drowned-world dependency, Choir as a room-specific build proof, mandatory water machinery, shelter-only build development, recurring colony chores and any explanation of revival before evidence earns it.
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This is a written player-experience contract, not evidence of fun, balance, readability, performance, feasibility or duration. The owner has fixed the astronaut/station facts, not approved the proposed coupler, survivor transfer, rack size, components, persistence or language roles.
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**Vision continuity checkpoint — 2026-09-07.** Project-room messages **61–65** were handled individually after cursor 60; last successfully processed message ID: **65**. [Build Paths dd4746](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths?revision=dd4746), [Equipment 579de8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment?revision=579de8), [TRL-WB1 6faf48](/Disagreement%20Register/Echo%20Relay?revision=6faf48) and [Clarity 0c17e7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=0c17e7) were read. Message 63 supplies the governing premise above; message 65's setting-neutral submission is superseded by this station-specific revision, while its portable build distinction survives. Earlier continuity remains in [Brief e2e390](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=e2e390).
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## Earlier proposals and decision history
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Earlier team-authored proposals, the prior inspiration analysis and numbered decision log remain intact in [the preceding Brief revision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=e2e390). They are historical evidence, not competing current instructions. Continuing owner constraints are restated above; where an older decision conflicts with this premise, the owner's current premise wins. Historical reviews remain in [PM Reviews](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews).
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The cause of revival, the station’s history, the escape solution, death losses and persistence, oxygen quantities, starting equipment, build systems, rescue logistics, colony mechanics, map structure and the languages’ details all require design. No previous team proposal settles them.
