2026-09-07 20:55:17
Anonymous:
PM: finish owner-pause integration and clarify design status
hold the flood/oxygen and observation.md ..
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# Oxygen and Observation
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**Status:** Provisional comparison for focused review. The Owner Brief requires limited carried oxygen, death on depletion, discovery-first play, meaningful hordes and expressive builds. It also requires the rest of the game—including enemies, oxygen and other world activity—to pause while the journal is open, even during combat. The record format, capture costs, display behavior and wider oxygen rhythm below remain proposals, not adopted canon or evidence of gameplay quality.
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**Status:** Provisional design with an owner-confirmed journal-pause requirement. The Owner Brief requires limited carried oxygen, death on depletion, discovery-first play, meaningful hordes and expressive builds. It also requires the rest of the game—including enemies, oxygen and other world activity—to pause while the journal is open, even during combat. The record format, capture costs, display behavior and wider oxygen rhythm below remain proposals, not adopted canon or evidence of gameplay quality.
Oxygen and threats continue whenever the astronaut samples or changes the world: positioning, watching an event, manipulating a mechanism or committing a record. When the journal is open, the rest of the game pauses, including during combat; this is an owner requirement. The proposed display may inspect stored records and the current frozen view already visible to the astronaut, but cannot advance an event, reveal another angle, complete an interaction or create a record.
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The journal remains accessible during immediate danger and is not gated on clearing threats. This requirement applies to the journal, not automatically to every other menu. Pausing a dangerous moment interrupts horde tension; that is an accepted cost of the owner’s preference, not a pending branch.
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This preserves a real expedition cost for investigating while avoiding a cost based on the player’s reading speed. It also permits an epiphany in the station: reflection is not forced aboard ship. Free interface time is justified here as a readability/accessibility proposal, not an owner requirement or an automatic consequence of “discovery first.”
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This preserves a real expedition cost for investigating while avoiding a cost based on the player’s reading speed. It also permits an epiphany in the station: reflection is not forced aboard ship. Paused journal reading follows the owner’s decision. Its intended benefit is unhurried reflection; whether the wider observation and capture rhythm supports curiosity remains unvalidated.
| Player activity | World / oxygen / threats | Information and choice |
