2026-09-06 19:13:23
Anonymous:
DES103 r7 (Design Document r13) against PMR003 and REV103 r2: expedition six arrival/stun/burst sequence made consistent (discharge at 8:20 with sixty in the water, eight-second stun, burst on the recovering crowd); 'can reach'; stale handoffs replaced; valve table, relay-versus-door supply and coil-route crowd qualification stated as lead proposals for the world designer; state table and both ledgers moved to Appendix C; nothing else moved
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**DES103 r6, the Design Document at revision r12 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PMR002, REV103 r1 and criteria 1 to 11**
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**DES103 r7, the Design Document at revision r13 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PMR003, REV103 r2 and criteria 1 to 11**
## Read this first: one page for the owner
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There is a switch at the head of the causeway that decides which side of the district gets power. If you run to it and throw it to the yard, the hatch will open and stay open. The yard beacon will light. And in ninety seconds the surge will come in here, not there, because the Flood goes to the lit beacon.
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You could instead take the tool on your back, a coil that stores a charge, wade into the channel wearing insulation, and discharge it. The water carries the current to the hatch and it opens for a few seconds: long enough to get through. The yard's beacon, on the same circuit, glows steady for those seconds, so anything that can see it and has no nearer light starts toward it; but it never flashes, so the next surge still enters by the causeway. You have spent the charge you spent the last surge harvesting.
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You could instead take the tool on your back, a coil that stores a charge, wade into the channel wearing insulation, and discharge it. The water carries the current to the hatch and it opens for a few seconds: long enough to get through. The yard's beacon, on the same circuit, glows steady for those seconds, so any crowd that can reach it and has no nearer lit beacon starts toward it; but it never flashes, so the next surge still enters by the causeway. You have spent the charge you spent the last surge harvesting.
Or you could do what the experienced player does: throw the switch, let the hatch open, stand in the channel's edge in insulation, and wait. When the surge wades into the water to reach the beacon, you discharge the coil into the water they are standing in. They stop, stunned, and shed charge you can pick up. The hatch is open. The battery is full. You invited the Flood into the water where your coil was waiting.
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The rule is the same in all three. What differs is what you knew. The same three routes as states, so they can be checked against section 4:
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| Route | Panel | Powered circuit | Lit beacons | Crowd from the first surge: where, and what it targets | Hatch |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| Throw the switch | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard (steady, and it will flash at the next dispatch) | Holding at the causeway's far end; the causeway beacon is now dark, the yard beacon is the only lit one it can reach, so it retargets and starts across the junction toward the yard | Open while the yard is lit |
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| Coil only | Causeway | Causeway by the panel; yard for a few seconds, by the coil | Causeway (steady, flashes at dispatch); yard steady for the discharge only | Holding at the causeway beacon, which stays lit and is nearer than the yard's, so it does not move | Open for the discharge's few seconds |
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| Switch, then coil | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard | Crossing to the yard and, at the next dispatch, the second surge entering the channel there, where the coil is waiting | Open while the yard is lit |
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The rule is the same in all three. What differs is what you knew. The same three routes are tabulated as states, so they can be checked against section 4, in Appendix C.
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- **Tier two, the junction and the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: the valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the valve and light the yard at the panel; the lamp on the pool lights and the gate opens, and stays open while the yard is lit, so the tier is reachable with no module at all, at the price that the yard is hot; the pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing. The coil is the quiet way in: valve shut, a discharge in the pool, a few seconds of open gate and nothing else lit. Behind the gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Tier three stays a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key.
- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a room at the sluice's head, is what calls the Flood. The chain below is the world designer's (their revision r16, which merged this document's access chain with their relay chain); their page owns it and this section mirrors it. Prerequisites: the junction gate opened in tier two, and the crew's note from behind it, which has two sides: a three-valve order drawn against the inked plan, and the crew's own conclusion, "relay on the head channel; drain it and it stops; clamp it and it holds one line; we chose neither."
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*Reaching the room.* Notice: the relay room's door, at the sluice's head on the interior route, is on the sluice's own circuit, dead like the junction's was, with a dark indicator lamp beside it. Compare: the junction valve, already known, joined the yard channel to the pool; the sluice's head sits one pool further along the same water, behind two more valves the player has walked past, and the note's three positions match those three valves against the plan. Infer: the note is the order that joins the yard's water all the way to the sluice's head, so current from a lit yard, or a discharge in the pool, reaches the door; the same rule as tier two, one pool further. Act: set the three valves as the note says, light the yard at the panel or discharge in the pool, and watch the sluice-head lamp light when the water is joined. Consequence: the door opens while the yard is lit, and the price is that the whole district's water is now one energised body, so every crowd with a lit beacon to reach holds at the yard's, the yard is hot, and the sluice itself is the Flood's open way in behind the room.
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*Reaching the room.* Notice: the relay room's door, at the sluice's head on the interior route, is on the sluice's own circuit, dead like the junction's was, with a dark indicator lamp beside it. Compare: the junction valve, already known, joined the yard channel to the pool; the sluice's head sits one pool further along the same water, behind two more valves the player has walked past, and the note's three positions match those three valves against the plan. Infer: the note is the order that joins the yard's water all the way to the sluice's head, so current from a lit yard, or a discharge in the pool, reaches the door; the same rule as tier two, one pool further. Act: set the three valves as the note says, light the yard at the panel or discharge in the pool, and watch the sluice-head lamp light when the water is joined. Consequence: the door opens while the yard is lit, and the price is that the whole district's water is now one energised body, so on the panel route every crowd with a lit beacon to reach holds at the yard's, the yard is hot, and the sluice itself is the Flood's open way in behind the room; on the coil route, a discharge in the pool energises the joined water for seconds, and a crowd held by a lit causeway beacon stays where it is. The three valves, as a table the world designer is asked to confirm or replace: the junction valve (yard channel to pool), found shut in tier two, set open; the pool valve (pool to head pool), found shut, set open; the head valve (head pool to the sluice-head channel), found shut, set open. Only connectivity matters, not order; the success condition is the sluice-head lamp lighting while the yard is lit, and any valve left shut leaves it dark.
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*Inside the room.* Notice: on the relay's face a drum turns with three marks per cycle, and the forecast countdown on the surveyor's board ticks exactly with it; at a dispatch the drum's mark passes a contact and the thin signal cable leaving the room pulses. The forecast has been this drum all along. Compare: beside the drum, a lever with three positions, cabled to the panel at the causeway head, so the panel has been a remote for this lever; a clamp hangs beside it, unused; a drain valve sits shut on the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay; the note names both and chose neither. Understand: the relay is a device under the power clause, working only while its channel carries current; the drum decides when, the lever decides where; nothing here is new, since a drain valve cuts a channel as the field pump did in the yard, a clamp fixes a lever, and the relay obeys the same rule as a hatch. Infer: three things can be done with what the player already knows, each persistent because it is done to the district and not to the player. Act: **shut**, open the drain valve; **fix**, set the lever and clamp it; **hold**, leave the room as found and record the choice at the dock. Each is one interaction; none consumes salvage; the cost was reaching the room. Consequence: the district changes for good, the expedition still ends at extraction as usual, and the colony's board records which.
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*Inside the room.* Notice: on the relay's face a drum turns with three marks per cycle, and the forecast countdown on the surveyor's board ticks exactly with it; at a dispatch the drum's mark passes a contact and the thin signal cable leaving the room pulses. The forecast has been this drum all along. Compare: beside the drum, a lever with three positions, cabled to the panel at the causeway head, so the panel has been a remote for this lever; a clamp hangs beside it, unused; a drain valve sits shut on the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay; the note names both and chose neither. Understand: the relay is a device under the power clause, working only while its channel carries current; the drum decides when, the lever decides where; nothing here is new, since a drain valve cuts a channel as the field pump did in the yard, a clamp fixes a lever, and the relay obeys the same rule as a hatch. Infer: three things can be done with what the player already knows, each persistent because it is done to the district and not to the player. Act: **shut**, open the drain valve; **fix**, set the lever and clamp it; **hold**, leave the room as found and record the choice at the dock. Each is one interaction; none consumes salvage; the cost was reaching the room. Consequence: the district changes for good, the expedition still ends at extraction as usual, and the colony's board records which. Two supplies, stated once, as a lead proposal for the world designer to confirm: the relay has always run on the sluice-head channel that feeds it, its own water, which is why the drum turns on every expedition; the door is on the pool side's dead line and is fed only when the valves join the water to a lit yard or a discharge. The drain valve empties the relay's feed and stops the drum, and touches nothing else: the panel's power positions, the beacons and the hatches are on the district's own circuit and keep working after shutdown.
*Each ending, next expedition.* **Shut:** no dispatches and a dark forecast board; the Flood arrives only by the sluice, on an unannounced timer, as trickles that grow over the expedition rather than announced surges, and with no lit beacon to reach they spread along the interior route and then both branches; beacons, hatches and the panel still work, so a lit beacon still draws whatever is inside; existing crowds keep their targets; the expedition still ends at fifteen minutes and the docks are still hard stops, so withdrawal is by the culvert as ever, with nothing to read but the crowd itself; the held-dock choice matters less and the forecast relay repair is spent. **Fix, to causeway or yard:** every dispatch enters by the clamped branch, whose beacon flashes at every dispatch for good, and the other branch never receives a surge; the clamp fixes the signal cable only, so the panel's power positions still work, either branch can be lit or darkened at will, and no door is open or shut forever; the other branch's crowd can still be drawn there by a lit beacon or spread there when one goes dark, so its dock is safer, not safe, nothing beyond what the press bound promises; the choice is good only when the clamped branch is the one away from the held dock, and a colony that later switches its held dock has clamped the Flood onto its own road. **Hold:** unchanged, except that the colony knows the relay could have been stopped and was not, and the board records it. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game; nothing about the ending is paid in salvage. Free expeditions continue after any ending under that ending's rules.
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**9:40.** Extraction, three bundles and a coil, one point of health down, an empty battery. The player banks three bundles. The notebook holds: the culvert is safe and marked; the surge comes in where the lamp flashes; the yard lamp is dark and the hatch is shut; there is a switch at the causeway head with cables to both lamps; something drains a battery that touches salvage.
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Nothing was solved. Everything needed to solve it was seen.
| 5:00 | same, arranged; one drip | two motes dropped and collected; stored 2 |
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| 5:30 | coil 2, battery 1, bundles 3; full | three drips; 2 leak away within the minute; stored 0 |
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| 9:00 | same | two motes dropped and collected; leaked away before 9:40; stored 0 |
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| 9:40 | extracted with 3 bundles, coil, empty battery | expired by leak 4; spent 0 |
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Nothing was solved. Everything needed to solve it was seen. The slot and charge ledger for this expedition is in Appendix C.
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**7:50.** Discharge. The twenty-four organisms still standing in the channel stop, stunned for eight seconds, and shed two large motes, ten units. The coil's battery, emptied by the discharge and now the one with the most room, takes them all back; the arc's stays at eight. The player is clear of the crowd before it moves.
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**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is at the channel's edge in insulation and discharges again into the fresh surge: about sixty of them are in the water; six large motes, thirty units, of which the coil's battery takes ten and the arc's takes two to reach full; eighteen expire on the ground. Both batteries full.
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**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard: eighty organisms begin entering the channel over the next half minute, where the first crowd is recovering from its stun. The player waits at the channel's edge in insulation.
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**8:20.** The burst. The stunned surge is packed in the doorway and the channel mouth, and the player triggers the arc: for ten seconds the cutter's hits jump body to body through the crowd, and the arc's battery runs from ten to nothing. These organisms have already shed, so the burst returns no motes; it is a pure spend, and it thins the doorway crowd by dozens before they recover. That is the genre's moment, bought with the surge before.
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**8:20.** With about sixty of them in the water, the second discharge: they stop, stunned for eight seconds; six large motes, thirty units, collected along the channel's edge during the stun, of which the coil's battery takes ten and the arc's takes two to reach full; eighteen expire on the ground. Both batteries full.
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**8:28 to 8:40.** The stun ends; the crowd recovers and packs the doorway where the player stands. The burst: for ten seconds the cutter's hits jump body to body through the packed, recovering crowd, and the arc's battery runs from ten to nothing. These organisms have already shed, so the burst returns no motes; it is a pure spend, and it thins the doorway crowd by dozens as they come. The burst is spent on a recovering crowd, not a stunned one, because a stun lasts eight seconds and a burst ten; how many it kills is a proposal, not a demonstrated outcome. That is the genre's moment, bought with the surge before.
**8:30 to 11:30.** The player takes the causeway, now empty, to its far end and on to the junction platform, following the inked route. The junction gate is shut and its lamp dark: the gate is on the junction's own circuit, and nothing the panel does reaches it directly. Beside it, the valve, shut, and the inked plan shows it open. The player opens the valve: the pool's lamp lights, because the yard is lit and the water is now joined, and the gate opens. The player does not go in, because the coil's battery is the way home, and writes it down: the door to the interior wants current the panel cannot send it directly, and the valve is how the water carries it.
**12:00.** Third dispatch, yard. The player is on the causeway, walking home along the road that was, five expeditions ago, the Flood's. Extraction with no cargo, the coil's battery full and its charge lost at the dock, and the interior route copied and the valve understood.
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**What the hatch does when power ends.** If the yard loses power while the player is inside the hall, because the panel was thrown elsewhere or a coil-opened hatch timed out, the hatch blinks for three seconds and closes, but never on an occupant: anything in the doorway holds it open. Inside a closed hall there is a hand crank that opens the hatch in ten seconds without power. The trap is recoverable without solving anything, and the recovery takes exactly long enough to matter, because ten seconds is surge time, which is the currency this design charges in. Switching the panel from inside is impossible, because the panel is at the causeway head.
| 12:00 | extracted; no cargo | | | 10 lost at the dock | 10 | |
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**What the hatch does when power ends.** If the yard loses power while the player is inside the hall, because the panel was thrown elsewhere or a coil-opened hatch timed out, the hatch blinks for three seconds and closes, but never on an occupant: anything in the doorway holds it open. Inside a closed hall there is a hand crank that opens the hatch in ten seconds without power. The trap is recoverable without solving anything, and the recovery takes exactly long enough to matter, because ten seconds is surge time, which is the currency this design charges in. Switching the panel from inside is impossible, because the panel is at the causeway head. The slot and charge ledger for this expedition is in Appendix C.
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## Appendix B: bookkeeping
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**Status.** DES103 r6, which is this page at revision r12, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r11 (6fe6ca), r10 (8afa59), r9 (fb6b6d), r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history.
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**Status.** DES103 r7, which is this page at revision r13, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r12 (50840d) and earlier are page history.
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**Sources read for r13.** PM Reviews PMR003 (Pmr003 72c692; Tasks 6e92d0; checkpoint e71669): r10 reviewed; progress retained; remaining corrections on the ledgers and timing, the finale's valves and supplies, and superseded live wording; REV103 made Ready. Design Review REV103 r2 3ff337 (on r10: items 1, 2 and 5 were met by r11; the length note is taken up here). Clarity round 13 (the reader re-ran the cold read on r11 and found it still works; no new question). External Critique r5 a332f1 (X25 withdrawn).
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**What r13 changes, as DES103 r7.** PMR003 1: expedition six now has one consistent arrival, stun and burst sequence: the second surge enters over half a minute from 8:00, the discharge comes at 8:20 when about sixty are in the water, the stun lasts eight seconds and the motes are collected during it, and the ten-second burst is spent from 8:28 on the recovering crowd packed in the doorway, not on a stunned one; the ledger rows follow. PMR003 3: "can see" is "can reach"; the stale open-handoffs paragraph is replaced by the current one. PMR003 2: section 11 states, as lead proposals for the world designer to confirm, the three valves with their found and set positions and the success condition (connectivity, not order), the relay's supply against the door's and what the drain stops and leaves working, and the coil-route qualification that a crowd held by a lit causeway beacon stays put. The critic's length note: the section 1 state table and both expedition ledgers move to a new Appendix C as review apparatus, with one-line pointers in the body, so the owner's copy reads as prose. Nothing else moved.
**What r12 changes, as DES103 r6.** One fact added, twice: section 4's alternative paragraph and decision 3 now say that the team is split on the routing model, with the World and Mystery Designer preferring the sight-limited alternative for their stated reasons and the Independent Design Critic preferring the written model, and that PM chose the written one for drafting. Filed as Clarity Q42 by The Troll under PM's advocacy rule; it meets the reader's own standard that a fact which changes how the owner reads a decision belongs in front of the owner. Nothing else moved.
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**Asset check record.** OpenGameArt FAQ read today: licence list and per-asset licensing as stated in section 14. Kenney: the assets listing page (kenney.nl/assets) shows no licence statement; the "Top-down Shooter" pack page (kenney.nl/assets/top-down-shooter) states "Creative Commons CC0" and 580 files. Both fetched read-only on 2026-09-06; suitability not assessed.
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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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**Open handoffs.** The Independent Design Critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledgers. The World and Mystery Designer's targeted revision on the finale: the three valves' positions and success condition, the relay's supply against the door's, the drain's effect, the coil-route crowd targets and the shut ending's colony consequence; this document's section 11 states the lead's proposals for those and will mirror the world page once it answers. PM's next review. The owner's decisions in section 17. Nothing else is open from this document's side; routing, the title, criterion 11 and the team roster are settled in Brief D015 to D018.
**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 r6 against PMR002, REV103 r1 and Clarity Q41 and Q42; artifact Design Document r12 (r11 6fe6ca, r10 8afa59, r9 fb6b6d, r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1 to 4 are answered on this page, with finding 3 now the world designer's chain mirrored here; handoffs: the critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledger method they announced; the world designer to check that section 11 mirrors their r16 without drift; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; 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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**PM report.** Task DES103 r7 against PMR003 and REV103 r2; artifact Design Document r13 (r12 50840d, r11 6fe6ca, r10 8afa59, r9 fb6b6d, r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1 to 4 are answered on this page, with finding 3 now the world designer's chain mirrored here; handoffs: the critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledger method they announced; the world designer to check that section 11 mirrors their r16 without drift; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; 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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## Appendix C: state tables and ledgers
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Review apparatus, kept here so the body reads as prose. Each table is derived from the rules in sections 4 and 5 and is what the independent critic checks beat by beat.
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**The three routes of section 1 as states.**
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| Route | Panel | Powered circuit | Lit beacons | Crowd from the first surge: where, and what it targets | Hatch |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| Throw the switch | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard (steady, and it will flash at the next dispatch) | Holding at the causeway's far end; the causeway beacon is now dark, the yard beacon is the only lit one it can reach, so it retargets and starts across the junction toward the yard | Open while the yard is lit |
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| Coil only | Causeway | Causeway by the panel; yard for a few seconds, by the coil | Causeway (steady, flashes at dispatch); yard steady for the discharge only | Holding at the causeway beacon, which stays lit and is nearer than the yard's, so it does not move | Open for the discharge's few seconds |
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| Switch, then coil | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard | Crossing to the yard and, at the next dispatch, the second surge entering the channel there, where the coil is waiting | Open while the yard is lit |
