2026-09-07 15:07:04
Anonymous:
Owner correction: reject coded-song premise and require convincing survivorlike identity without literal-flood assumption
hold the flood/brief.md ..
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**Owner direction — 2026-09-07: discovery first, extraordinary builds second, a refuge worth caring about.** These are the owner's answers to the design questions, replacing incompatible assumptions in the earlier vision below. A replacement setting and central mystery are still to be proposed; this is not approval of a new fiction or permission to develop.
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### Latest owner correction — survivorlike identity and songs
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**2026-09-07, after The World Below pitch.** The owner says the proposal takes “Flood” literally and misses the point of the survivorlike genre. **The Flood means massed enemies; water is not a requirement derived from the title.** The drowned sanctuary and water-machinery emphasis are not endorsed. This feedback is not a categorical prohibition on all water environments.
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**The information-hiding song premise is rejected.** The owner sees writing convincing songs with encoded information as an execution trap likely to produce slop, not a task they can supply. Do not expand the song/verse clue chain, request lyrics from the owner or substitute equally contrived coded poetry to preserve it. The prior proposal is source history, not current creative approval.
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**PM direction for the revision:** establish compelling survivorlike play through horde pressure, consequential upgrades/build choices and earned powerful combinations, with exploration and experimentation changing what the player can do. A one-off authored room wipe does not by itself demonstrate build expression. Then connect that play to the refuge and discoveries. The owner's discovery-first hierarchy, notebook-depth ambition, salvage/equipment enthusiasm and design/asset gates remain unchanged. This is a request to revise the game's foundation, not simply rename watery objects or write a different lore hook.
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### Intended experience
The first desired reaction is **“I discovered something incredible.”** The second is **“I made a ridiculous build work.”** Hold the Flood remains a survivorlike, but understanding enemy routing is not intended to be its central science.
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### Visionary replacement proposal — The World Below
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**Fiction and mechanics proposal for owner review; not approved.**
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**Prior proposal — revision required by the owner.** Its song-led clue framework is rejected and its literal-water emphasis has not earned endorsement. The text below preserves the proposal for revision; it is not the current approved identity. Follow the latest owner correction above before reusing or expanding it.
**The game in one sentence:** *Hold the Flood* is a discovery-driven survivorlike about a refuge-raised scavenger-inventor who enters drowned ruins under horde pressure, brings home power and lost knowledge, and wires those discoveries into outrageous machines for people they know.
