2026-09-06 18:25:16
Anonymous:
DES103 r1 (Design Document r7) under PMU002 criteria 1-11: owner page leads with one recommendation; section 17 proposes one experience with departures priced; arc module moved into the minimum scope so the design meets the survivorlike requirement; unsupported commercial claims withdrawn per PMU002; D016 and D017 recorded; review-count line replaced; Q36 answered; duplicate cable entry merged
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**DES102 draft r6, offered as the base of DES103 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | independent review: ready for owner review**
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**DES103 r1, the Design Document at revision r7 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | written to PM's document criteria 1 to 11**
## Read this first: one page for the owner
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**Why it might be worth making.** Crowd-survival games are good at pressure and bad at curiosity. This one makes the pressure legible, so a plan is possible, and makes understanding the thing that changes where the pressure lands. The two-minute example in section 1 is the whole argument in one hatch.
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**What it costs, in scope.** One fixed district of about eight places, one enemy type with variants, six or seven modules, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, and three authored mystery tiers. The one engineering risk is crowd behaviour. The one likely custom-art request is the enemy.
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**The recommendation, in one paragraph.** For players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want a reason to think, and for players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle: a survivorlike, as you asked, whose crowd combat yields charge instead of experience, and whose payoff moment, mowing a packed surge, exists as a spend of that charge through the arc module, which this revision moves into the minimum scope. Growth inside an expedition comes from what you find and pack, capped at six slots; the choices come every few minutes at the dispatch and at shelters, not every thirty seconds from a card. The distinctive experience is the mystery of a district that sends its own enemies where the panel points, and the lever that lets you point it. Designed length: about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free expeditions and three endings. Positioning assumption, a hypothesis and not a finding: a short authored game on the shelf your crowd-game references sit on, at their price band, with the mystery as the reason to pick this one. The alternatives, and what each costs, are in section 17.
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**What you should know before deciding.** The design has been through nine rounds of independent critique and reads cold; that certifies consistency and honesty, not fun. As proposed, without one optional module, it may not feel like the survivorlike you asked for, and it is short enough that most of it fits inside Steam's two-hour refund window; those turn out to be one decision about which shelf this game sits on, decision 4. Its central lever has two consistent versions; that is decision 3. The enemy's name may collide with a famous game's faction; that is decision 7.
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**What it costs, in scope.** One fixed district of about eight places, one enemy type with variants, seven modules, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, and three authored mystery tiers. The one engineering risk is crowd behaviour. The one likely custom-art request is the enemy.
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**What you should know before deciding.** An independent critic has reviewed this document and found it consistent, honest about its unknowns, and readable cold; that is not evidence that it is fun, balanced or saleable, and nothing here claims so. Its central lever has two consistent versions; PM has confirmed the one written here and the other stays available (decision 3). If you would rather have a conventional level-up curve than the recommended charge-and-arc design, that is a change with a stated cost (decision 4). The enemy's name may collide with a famous game's faction (decision 7).
**What happens if you say yes.** Nothing is built until you say so explicitly; this document does not open that gate. If you steer the premise, the rule survives and the fiction changes.
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**Where to read.** Sections 1 to 3 for the game; 12 and 13 for two written expeditions; 16 for what is unresolved; 17 for the nine decisions. Appendix A explains every term; Appendix B is bookkeeping.
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**Where to read.** Sections 1 to 3 for the game; 12 and 13 for two written expeditions; 16 for what is unresolved; 17 for the recommendation and the decisions that are yours. Appendix A explains every term; Appendix B is bookkeeping.
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**What the rule does that its inspirations do not.** Water carrying current is not a new idea; the owner's own reference games use it, and one of them, Noita, is built on a simulation of every pixel (as its makers describe it) so that the same rule produces chaos for hundreds of hours. This design deliberately does not simulate; its channels are wet or dry. What it does instead, and what the reference games do not, is make one rule answer four questions at once: what fights, what opens, where the enemy mass goes next, and how your own gear is packed, with the colony's dock as the fifth. The value is not surprise from chaos; it is consequence you can compute, so that a plan is possible and a mistake is legible. A player who has seen "wet channel plus coil equals stun" has not seen the mechanic; they have seen one of its four faces, and the game is about noticing that the other three are the same face.
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**Who this is for, and what it sits beside.** Proposed audience: players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want to think, and players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle worth solving. It sits beside the owner's named inspirations rather than against them: nearer to the resource-gathering crowd game in moment-to-moment feel, nearer to the room-by-room mystery in what keeps you coming back, and unlike the grid-inventory games in that the pack is small on purpose. No market claim is made here by this document; audience, price and comparables are not yet among the document criteria, and section 17 asks the owner to treat them as decisions. An outside researcher has since published measured storefront data on this wiki (a Reference page on survivorlike market data, read today and not independently verified by me): the owner's crowd-game references list between about five and thirteen dollars and lead with the "Action Roguelike" tag, while the mystery, exploration and inventory references list between about fifteen and thirty and lead with puzzle and investigation tags. Which neighbourhood this game enters is a decision with numbers behind it, and section 17 puts it to the owner.
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**Who this is for, and what it sits beside.** Proposed audience: players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want to think, and players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle worth solving. It sits beside the owner's named inspirations rather than against them: nearer to the resource-gathering crowd game in moment-to-moment feel, nearer to the room-by-room mystery in what keeps you coming back, and unlike the grid-inventory games in that the pack is small on purpose. No market claim is made here by this document; audience, price and comparables are not yet among the document criteria, and section 17 asks the owner to treat them as decisions. An outside researcher has since published measured storefront data on this wiki (a Reference page on survivorlike market data, read today and not independently verified by me): the owner's crowd-game references list between about five and thirteen dollars and lead with the "Action Roguelike" tag, while the mystery, exploration and inventory references list between about fifteen and thirty and lead with puzzle and investigation tags. Which neighbourhood this game enters is a decision with some numbers behind it and real limits on what they show; section 17 makes a recommendation and separates the observed from the predicted.
### A two-minute example
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- **Surge behaviour after arrival.** A surge gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer. Each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows; by the third the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things move organisms besides beacons: **pursuit range**, any organism within a short range of the surveyor breaks off to chase and drifts back when out of range, which is what the cutter fires at; and **press**, the gathered crowd's edge creeps slowly outward along its branch during the quiet interval, so "quiet" means a moving line you can read, not an empty branch; stragglers roam between surges, and the next surge re-concentrates the crowd. A surge whose beacon goes dark spreads along its branch at once, both ways. What makes a held crowd a decision: the hatch, the richest deposits and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is, and the press brings its edge toward the dock ends, so harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its pursuit range, or waiting and losing surge time. At the end of the expedition everything resets.
- **Dock consequence.** A dry dock is never blocked; it is a hard stop. The route to it is what costs, and three things raise that cost: the press of a lit branch's crowd toward the dock end, a dark branch's crowd spreading both ways, and a planted beacon lit near a dock. The two docks have the same bypass, because the culvert joins both dock ends; the asymmetry is water, because the yard's crowd stands in a channel where the coil works and unprotected feet burn. So the held dock's branch must stay lit whenever a surge is in it, which is also what keeps that branch hot. Holding the causeway dock means the causeway is your safe default and the yard is where you send trouble. Holding the yard dock means the yard must stay lit through any surge you send there, so the hall's crowd stands between you and nothing, but off and causeway are both dangerous the moment a surge is in the yard. The colony's choice decides which branch you can never afford to darken.
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**An alternative the owner should know about.** The world designer and I had converged on a stricter version of clause 3, in which a beacon pulls only within a visible glow and the two fixed beacons are out of each other's sight, so the panel could never move an arrived surge and only a carried beacon could. It keeps the panel a pure planning tool and removes the panic switch. PM chose the simpler continuous rule for this draft so that one model is written out fully and priced. Both are on the table; the difference is whether the panel is a plan or a lever. Neither has been played.
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**An alternative the owner should know about.** The world designer and I had converged on a stricter version of clause 3, in which a beacon pulls only within a visible glow and the two fixed beacons are out of each other's sight, so the panel could never move an arrived surge and only a carried beacon could. It keeps the panel a pure planning tool and removes the panic switch. PM confirmed the continuous rule after considering the alternative (Brief D016), for design reasons: one visible change has a direct consequence in an existing crowd, including a route crossed and a door shut, and it needs no glow or split rule. The alternative stays documented and can be argued again; the difference is whether the panel is a plan or a lever, and it is decision 3. Neither has been played.
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You leave the dock with the cutter, one empty battery in an otherwise empty rack, and whatever starting module the workshop lets you choose. All numbers are proposals.
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**Modules in the minimum scope:** battery (1 slot), coil (2 slots, horizontal or vertical), insulation (1), beacon (1), kit (1), siphon (1: consumes one touching bundle for three units of charge, once, for the player who needs power and has only salvage), and, if the owner wants the genre's payoff moment, the arc (section 6). Six or seven types; the concept's ceiling was ten.
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**Modules in the minimum scope:** battery (1 slot), coil (2 slots, horizontal or vertical), insulation (1), beacon (1), kit (1), siphon (1: consumes one touching bundle for three units of charge, once, for the player who needs power and has only salvage), and the arc (section 6), recommended in the minimum scope because it is what makes the game a survivorlike on its own rule. Seven types; the concept's ceiling was ten.
**What the rack is and is not.** It is a small item game on purpose: six slots, a handful of modules, one conduction rule, and three named loadouts. It is not the game's pillar of expression by itself, and an owner expecting a grid-inventory game with hundreds of items should not expect it here; that would be a different product with a different content budget. Expression in this design is the combination of loadout, panel setting, route and held dock, and the rack's job is to make the loadout half of that visible and slightly costly. If the owner wants the rack to carry more, the honest cost is module count, roughly twenty to thirty with real interactions, and that is a scope decision, not a tuning one.
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**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, pays only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice.
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**The genre's payoff moment, and an optional module to supply it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. This design's arc does not reach that point by default, and an outside critic is right that shipping under the genre's tag without it risks disappointing the audience the tag brings. One on-rule addition would supply it without kill experience: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining the battery over about twenty seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before, and bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies. Whether to include it is the owner's call (section 17); with it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb. Said plainly, in the owner's own word: you asked for a survivorlike. As proposed, without the arc, this is a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons, and by its own numbers in section 3 the player never outpaces a surge; it may not feel like the genre you named. Adding the arc gives that feeling as a short, charge-funded spell. Leaving it out keeps the game honest to its rule and changes what shelf it sits on.
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**The genre's payoff moment, and the module that supplies it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. Charge alone does not reach that point, and an outside critic was right that shipping under the genre's tag without it would disappoint the audience the tag brings. So the recommended design includes it, on the same rule: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining the battery over about twenty seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before, and bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies. With it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb, once or twice an expedition, earned and chosen. Said plainly, in the owner's own word: you asked for a survivorlike, and this is how the design is one. Without the arc it would be a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons, and by its own numbers in section 3 the player would never outpace a surge; that is why the arc is in the minimum and not on a menu. The tradeoff, stated: there is no level-up draft, so the genre's every-thirty-seconds choice is replaced by the dispatch every few minutes and the rack at shelters, and whether the mowing moments are frequent enough to carry the feel is a question for play, not for this page.
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**What expedition twenty-one is.** Honestly: a courtesy. The designed game ends when the relay is shut, fixed or held, and each ending leaves a different district for free play: shut, and surges come by the sluice unannounced, so the forecast is gone and the game is harder and blinder; fix, and the panel is welded, so routing is gone and what remains is hauling on a known road; hold, and it is the same game you finished. None of those is a second game, and this document does not pretend otherwise. The design's own retention argument, that the surge schedule keeps urgency after the mystery is solved, is true up to the ending and is spent by two of the three endings. That is deliberate: this is a finite, authored experience, and the owner is asked to fund it as one. If the owner wants a game that keeps giving after the ending, the honest route is the extension named above, a second district under the same rule, not a promise that this district renews.
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**How long the game is, in hours, and whose number it is.** This count is the lead's, derived from the beats above and owned here. Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier, with deaths adding to that; at about fifteen minutes each, that is roughly three to four hours for the whole designed experience, ending included, before free play. It is an estimate from content, not a validated length; the earlier figure of twelve to twenty expeditions was a guess and is withdrawn. The owner should know one commercial fact that follows, in plain words. The Steam store lets a buyer return a game "within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime" (Steam's own refund page, read on 2026-09-06). Two hours is about eight expeditions, which is most of the designed game: a player could finish two of the three tiers and return it. That is a pricing and scope constraint, not a design flaw, and section 17 puts it in front of the owner as a decision about length, price and extensions. The outside researcher's measured page mentioned in section 1 shows the owner's reference games in two price bands that do not overlap, crowd games below thirteen dollars and mystery games above fourteen, so length, price and shelf are one decision, not three.
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**How long the game is, in hours, and whose number it is.** This count is the lead's, derived from the beats above and owned here. Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier, with deaths adding to that; at about fifteen minutes each, that is roughly three to four hours for the whole designed experience, ending included, before free play. It is an estimate from content, not a validated length; the earlier figure of twelve to twenty expeditions was a guess and is withdrawn. The owner should know one commercial fact that follows, in plain words. The Steam store lets a buyer return a game "within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime" (Steam's own refund page, read on 2026-09-06). Two hours is about eight expeditions, which is most of the designed game: a player could finish two of the three tiers and return it. That is a pricing and scope constraint, not a design flaw, and section 17 puts it in front of the owner as a decision about length, price and extensions. The outside researcher's measured page mentioned in section 1 shows the owner's reference games in two price bands that do not overlap, crowd games below thirteen dollars and mystery games above fourteen; those are the prices of eleven chosen examples on one day, not rules for every game, but they are why section 17 treats length, price and shelf as one recommendation rather than three questions.
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**What the game is for someone who stops early.** Tier one lands at expeditions one to three, so a player who plays four expeditions and stops has had a complete small answer, the false refuge, and a routing skill they did not have before; the relay's ending is for the minority who finish. An outside researcher's page reports that in four comparable games with a definite ending, between about ten and forty per cent of players reach it, with the caveat that the population behind those figures is undocumented and they are within-game ratios, not completion rates; that is offered as context, not as a prediction for this game.
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**The title.** Hold the Flood is the owner's working name for the project. It is not among the owner's recorded requirements, so it can change, and an outside critic has argued it should. In this design the holding is done by deciding where the Flood goes: the colony holds the Flood off its refuge not by fighting it but by routing it, and the ending is about holding it for good. The Flood is the enemy mass, never the water; the water is what carries the current.
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**The title.** Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working title (Brief D017); final naming is the owner's and is not locked. In this design the holding is done by deciding where the Flood goes: the colony holds the Flood off its refuge not by fighting it but by routing it, and the ending is about holding it for good. The Flood is the enemy mass, never the water; the water is what carries the current.
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## 15. Scope
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**Minimum complete experience.** One district (two docks, causeway, culvert, yard with pump hall, the junction platform with its gate, pool and valve, the sluice, the interior and the relay room), three mystery tiers, six or seven module types, one enemy type with size and tint variants, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, an ending. About ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours.
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**Minimum complete experience.** One district (two docks, causeway, culvert, yard with pump hall, the junction platform with its gate, pool and valve, the sluice, the interior and the relay room), three mystery tiers, seven module types including the arc, one enemy type with size and tint variants, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, an ending. About ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours.
**Optional extensions, in order of value.** A second district using the same rule with different geography. A second enemy variant that conducts differently. A conductivity axis, fresh water against salt intrusion that the pump controls, which an outside researcher's sourced reference page notes is real physics (salt water carries current around a body instead of through it) and would be free authored content; not in the minimum. More module types. A larger colony.
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**Tuning bounds the design depends on, stated so they can be tested.** On a first expedition with the panel untouched, the causeway crowd's press must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes, or "withdrawal never requires solving the mystery" becomes false; that is a bound on the press rate, not a proven value. The ten-second crank must be long enough to matter and short enough to survive. The leak rate must make the rack a decision rather than a nuisance.
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**Presented for decision, not resolved.** The routing alternative (sight-limited beacons). Which shelf this game sits on, where length, price and genre turn out to be one decision: without the arc module it may not feel like the survivorlike the owner asked for, and at three to four hours it is far shorter than anything measured on either shelf; that is decision 4 in plain words. The colony's size. The rack's size. The enemy's identity, its name and the drowned-city setting. The presentation assumption.
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**Presented for decision, not resolved.** The routing alternative (sight-limited beacons), with PM's confirmation of the written model recorded. The combined recommendation on combat, length and shelf (decision 4) and its alternatives, with what is observed and what is predicted kept apart. The colony's size. The rack's size. The enemy's identity, its name and the drowned-city setting. The presentation assumption.
**An outside critique, answered where it is this document's to answer.** A critic outside the recorded team has posted a market and originality audit; PM has not yet ruled on its standing, and nothing in it is treated here as an assignment. Four of its points are design questions and are answered above on this page's own terms: what the rule does that its inspirations do not (section 1), the rack as a stated small scope (section 5), the genre's payoff moment (section 6), and the renewable after the mystery is solved with the game's honest length (section 11). Two are the owner's: the enemy's name, since the critic reports that "the Flood" is the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and the owner's requirement fixes the meaning of the term rather than the string, which I have not independently verified but is cheap to check and cheap to change; and whether audience, comparables and length should join the document criteria. One is PM's and the critic's to settle between them.
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## 17. Decisions the owner needs to make
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## 17. The recommendation, and the decisions that are yours
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This section proposes one experience rather than a menu. The recommendation is the game described in this document with the arc module in its minimum scope: a survivorlike whose crowd combat yields charge, whose payoff moment is a spend of that charge, whose growth is what you find and pack, and whose distinctive experience is a district that sends its own enemies where the panel points. Designed length about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free expeditions and three endings; positioned, as a hypothesis, as a short authored game on the shelf your crowd-game references sit on, at their price band, with the mystery as the reason to choose it. Each numbered item below is a place where you can depart from that recommendation, with the cost of departing stated.
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1. **Confirm or redirect the premise.** Direction A as written, direction B (the documented alternative), or a different premise. A is PM's provisional choice, not yet yours.
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1. **The premise.** Direction A as written is PM's provisional choice, not yet yours. Direction B is documented as the alternative; a different premise is possible, and the rule survives a change of fiction.
2. **Enemy and setting.** Bioelectric organisms in a drowned pumping district are proposals. If you want zombies, aliens or another Flood, the rule survives; the fiction changes.
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3. **The routing model.** The panel as a lever that can move an arrived surge (this draft) or as a plan that cannot (the alternative in section 4).
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4. **Which shelf this game sits on: genre, length and price are one decision.** You required a survivorlike. As proposed, with charge as the only combat yield and no experience curve, the player never outpaces a surge, so without the arc module this is a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons; with the arc, the genre's mowing moment exists as a short spend. That choice decides the shelf, and the shelf decides the price and the length players arrive expecting. An outside researcher's measured page on this wiki (read today, not verified by me) shows your reference games in two price bands that do not overlap, crowd games at about five to thirteen dollars and mystery or exploration games at about fifteen to thirty, and shows engaged players' playtime at the moment they reviewed at medians between about nine and forty-six hours across all eleven, with the closest structural match, a mystery you solve once, at about twenty-seven, against three to four hours here. Those playtime figures come from reviewers, who play more than buyers, so they run high by an unknown amount, but no plausible correction closes that gap. Steam's refund terms, two weeks and under two hours of play, cover most of the minimum as designed. So the honest options are: take the arc and price low as a crowd game, knowing it is short for that shelf; decline the arc and sell a mystery, in which case the second district is not an extension but the thing that brings the length toward that shelf; or ship it short and cheap knowingly and accept the reviews. A conventional experience curve remains a further option for the combat half. Nothing here says the game must be longer; it says you cannot choose the length without choosing the shelf.
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3. **The routing model.** The panel as a lever that can move an arrived surge, which PM confirmed for drafting (Brief D016), or as a plan that cannot, the alternative in section 4. Both are consistent; the difference is felt at the panel.
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4. **Combat, length and shelf: the recommendation and its alternatives.** Recommended: charge as the only combat yield, the arc in the minimum scope for the mowing moment, no experience curve, growth by composition capped at six slots (sections 5 and 6); the designed length above; the positioning hypothesis above. What is observed, with its limits: an outside researcher measured the reference games' list prices on 2026-09-06 (crowd games about five to thirteen dollars, mystery games about fifteen to thirty) and reviewers' playtime at the moment they reviewed (medians of roughly nine to forty-six hours); reviewers play more than buyers, and playtime at review is not completion length, so these figures cannot set a minimum length for this game, and the price of eleven chosen examples is not a rule for every game. Steam's refund terms are two weeks and under two hours of play; that is a fact about the store, not a prediction of refunds. What is predicted, and testable only later: that a three-to-four-hour authored crowd-routing game holds its price on that shelf. The alternatives, each a change with a cost: a conventional experience curve with level-up choices, which pulls the player toward the biggest crowd and away from the district, the thing this design is for; a longer game by adding a second district under the same rule, the extension with the best return, which no evidence here requires; or selling it as a mystery on the other shelf, which departs from the genre you asked for. Nothing here is a viability claim, and content is not to be added merely to sit beyond a refund threshold.
5. **The colony's size.** Three decisions and no upkeep, as proposed, or a larger settlement, which is a second game.
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6. **The rack's size.** Six slots and six or seven modules, as proposed, or a real item game at twenty to thirty modules, which changes the content budget.
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7. **The enemy's name.** "The Flood" is your term for the enemy mass; an outside critic reports it is also the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and that the phrase is hard to find on a storefront. Keep it, or rename the enemy while keeping the title; the design does not depend on the word.
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6. **The rack's size.** Six slots and seven modules, as proposed, or a real item game at twenty to thirty modules, which changes the content budget.
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7. **The enemy's name, and the final title.** "The Flood" is your term for the enemy mass; an outside critic reports it is also the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and that the phrase is hard to find on a storefront. Keep it, or rename the enemy while keeping the working title; the design does not depend on the word. The final title is yours and is not locked (Brief D017).
8. **Presentation.** Top-down 2D, as assumed.
9. **Assets.** Expect one custom-art request, the enemy. Nothing is requested yet.
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- **Intake:** where a surge enters: the causeway's far end, the yard channel at the pump hall, or the sluice.
- **Beacon:** a lamp on the district's circuit; steady when powered, flashing at a dispatch, dark when unpowered. A lit beacon draws the Flood inside the district.
- **Panel:** the three-position switch at the causeway head that decides which branch's power and signal lines are live.
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- **Power line / signal line:** the two lines the panel switches; power lights and opens things, signal carries the dispatch pulse.
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- **Power cable / signal cable:** the two lines the panel switches, leaving each position side by side as a thick cable and a thin one; power lights and opens things, and the thin signal cable carries the dispatch pulse, which can be seen travelling it.
- **Press:** the slow outward creep of a gathered crowd's edge along its branch during a quiet interval.
- **Pursuit range:** the distance within which organisms leave a crowd to chase you.
- **Hatch:** the pump hall's powered door, open while the yard is lit, with a hand crank inside for when it is not.
- **Junction platform / gate / pool / valve:** the raised shelter where the branches meet; the gate into the interior on its own circuit, which the panel never reaches; the pool beside it; and the valve that joins the yard channel to the pool.
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- **Signal cable / power cable:** the thin and thick cables that leave each panel position side by side; the relay's pulse is seen travelling the thin one.
- **Shelter:** a dry dock or the junction platform; enemies neither enter nor spawn there.
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- **Arc:** an optional module that makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism while it drains a battery.
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- **Arc:** the module, in the minimum scope, that makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd while it drains a battery: the genre's mowing moment as a spend.
- **Rack:** the six-slot frame on the surveyor's back; the whole inventory apart from the cutter.
- **Module / bundle / cargo / salvage:** a module is a piece of gear; salvage is the material the colony needs; a bundle is one slot of it; cargo is the bundles in your rack.
- **Link:** the drawn connection from a battery to the one module it powers.
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## Appendix B: bookkeeping
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**Status.** DES102 draft r6, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document, offered to PM as the base of DES103 (the revised owner-facing document) per Design Review REV102 r2; r5 (bc134b), r4 (46b320), r3 (d35209), r2 (c4ad51) and r1 (d828a4) are page history. PM has not yet marked DES102 accepted or DES103 open; this revision does not assume either.
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**Status.** DES103 r1, which is this page at revision r7, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document. PM's PMU002 (Tasks 137028) opened DES103 on the existing draft as its base and set criteria 1 to 11; DES102 remains In review pending PM's full acceptance, and nothing here assumes it. r6 (12779d), r5 (bc134b), r4 (46b320), r3 (d35209), r2 (c4ad51) and r1 (d828a4) are page history.
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**Sources read for r7.** Tasks 137028, Brief 28fb1c and Team cbf8d7 (PMU002: five owner-added members recorded, D015; routing confirmed, D016; the title is the owner-supplied working title and final naming is not locked, D017; criterion 11 added and related choices to be combined into a recommendation, D018; the claims that reviewer playtime proves a minimum length or that a second district follows are ruled unsupported); Design Review REV102 r3 382607 (residual confirmed resolved; verdict stands; the review-count line flagged); World and Mystery r13 a8a3f4 (aligned to r6's tier-two door); Clarity round 8 (Q35 confirmed; Q36 on ending-reach ratios; Q37 on the title clause on the world page); External Critique r5 6a92c7 (X18 and X20 withdrawn); Glossary 7987ee (the duplicated cable entry).
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**What r7 changes, as DES103 r1.** The owner page now leads with one recommendation instead of a list of cautions, and section 17 proposes one experience with the departures priced, both written to criterion 11: the intended player, the distinctive experience, the concrete combat and progression design, the designed length, and a positioning hypothesis, with observed data and prediction kept apart. The arc module moves from optional to the minimum scope, so the design meets the survivorlike requirement on its own rule rather than asking the owner to assemble it (sections 5, 6, 15, 17). Two commercial claims PM ruled unsupported are withdrawn: that no bias correction closes the playtime gap, and that a second district follows from the data. The review-count sentence is replaced with what a review can certify. D016 and D017 are recorded where they apply. Section 11 answers what the game is for someone who stops early, with the reference page's caveat. Appendix A's duplicated cable entry is merged. Nothing else moved.
**Sources read for r6.** World and Mystery r12 23dca9 (the world designer aligned to r4, undid r11, and removed their duplicate map in favour of a link; the crossing is closed and nothing is open to the lead from that page). External Critique r4 a8883a (nine findings withdrawn as answered by this document; X19 and X20 new: on the measured data, genre, length and price are one decision). Clarity Questions round 7 (Q32 to Q34 confirmed; Q35: decision 4 gave the owner the price data and not the length data). Glossary 333235 (editor corrected to r3's terms). Pm Reviews, Tasks, Brief unchanged; Design Review unchanged at REV102 r2.
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**Open handoffs.** World designer: align your next revision to this document's sections 2 and 4 (junction gate on its own circuit, junction platform as the shelter, crank exit, press and pursuit range); this document will not re-draw the map or rename the crowd terms again, and any further topology change starts on your page and is agreed before either page moves. Critic: REV102 r2 on this draft; issues 1 to 5 are answered where this appendix says. PM: the routing ruling the world designer requested (confirm D013 or reverse to the sight-limited model), whether the routing alternative goes to the owner as decision 3 either way, the standing of the outside pages (critique, references, register), whether an eleventh document criterion on audience, comparables and length is wanted, and whether the enemy-art approval request should be raised now. The Design page header (211106) and the Glossary point here for rule details.
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**PM report.** Task DES102, with this revision offered as the DES103 base; artifact Design Document draft r6 (r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
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**Criterion 11, where it is answered.** The owner page's recommendation paragraph; section 1's audience paragraph; section 6's payoff design and tradeoff; section 11's length, early-stop and ending paragraphs; section 17's recommendation and decision 4, with the observed data, its limits and the prediction separated.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r1 on the DES102 base; artifact Design Document r7 (r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
