2026-09-07 15:29:17
Anonymous:
Owner premise: establish astronaut, oxygen, hostile station, revival, survivors and two alien languages; preserve prior visions in immutable history
hold the flood/brief.md ..
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## Game vision
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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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**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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### Latest owner correction — survivorlike identity and songs
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### The arrival
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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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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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**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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### The five facts — owner canon
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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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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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### Visionary playable foundation — earn the power, bring it home
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### The experience this must deliver
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**Current proposal for owner review; setting and central mystery deliberately remain open.**
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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 game in one sentence:** *Hold the Flood* is a build-crafting survivorlike about leaving an authored refuge to recover what someone needs while an ever-thickening horde closes in, discovering portable component interactions that turn a cramped rack into outrageous power, and returning to see a person and a home changed.
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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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**Player fantasy and feeling:** ingenuity under pressure, then catharsis and homecoming. The player begins an expedition evasive and under-equipped, finds or reaches components while their automatic weapon holds back the mass, sacrifices hauling space to assemble a plan, and eventually becomes terrifying for one earned stretch. That power is used for somebody, not accumulated for its own sake.
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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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#### One ordinary expedition in plain language
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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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Senn needs a two-cell regulator from an abandoned field hospital to reopen Hearth's clinic. The objective and reserved cargo space are visible before departure; there is no hidden deadline. The player steers through a continuously thickening Flood while their equipped weapon fires automatically. Kills and dangerous caches supply charge; side routes contain known component families and unknown variants. Staying for a cache makes the later build stronger but lets the crowd grow and leaves less room for the regulator or salvage.
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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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The rack is prepared at Hearth, but shelter-only fitting is retired as the only way a build develops. At a short, clearly safe field bench, time 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. There is no live inventory sorting while dodging. Once a component pattern reaches Hearth, Mara can prepare that known part on later expeditions; discovery changes future starting options instead of depending forever on the same random offer.
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### Open design decisions — propose, do not silently declare canon
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The regulator platform is occupied by a dense ordinary crowd with a Heavy walking its edge. Two paths through the **same objective** show the intended build grammar. Counts are provisional written rules.
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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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| Path | Acquisition and rack | What the player inferred and does | Payoff, risk and sacrifice |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **Portable storm** | Bring Coil (2) and one Battery (1); take the exposed transformer route to recover Arc (1) and a second Battery (1), then fit them at the field bench. With the regulator (2), seven of eight cells are committed | Coil now creates a short induction field around the player; conductive ground may enlarge it but is not required. Firing Arc during Coil's two-second stun window spends both full banks and gives each stunned ordinary body in the field one lethal strike. The interaction works wherever the player can charge both banks and stand close enough to cast the field | A portable crowd wipe and the sharpest power jump. The Heavy, Crust and bodies outside the field survive. The player must approach the mass, arrive with twenty charge, and has only one cell left for healing or salvage. Without Arc, Coil only creates breathing room; without Coil, Arc keeps its ordinary chain cap |
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| **Lure and lance** | Take a Battery (1), then reach the fallen signal mast for a Portable Beacon (1) and the rail cage for a Rivet Driver (1). With the regulator (2), five cells are committed and three remain for Kit or salvage | The Beacon pulls reachable ordinary enemies toward one point. While it is lit, the Driver automatically chooses the densest line between player and beacon and pierces that line. The rule works in any open route with sight and a reachable lure; no tagged room is required | Sustained lane-clearing and a safer cargo run, not a wipe. The player must keep a firing lane and retrieve or abandon the Beacon before its bank empties. A Heavy or Crust blocks the line; flankers and broken sight collapse the formation. It carries more home than the storm build but has no panic button when the lure fails |
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### Scope and production constraints
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Both paths are made from reusable observations, not a room's designated recipe. One converts proximity, two banks and rack space into a burst; the other converts geometry, attention and time into sustained safety. A player can pursue either cache because its family is readable from the route, improvise if pressure closes it, and use the learned interaction on later maps. The former Choir room remains historical source material for how to telegraph a combination, not the game's current proof of build expression.
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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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On success, the regulator displaces optional loot on the return. At Hearth, Senn reopens the clinic and a named patient moves back in; Mara records any recovered pattern at the bench. The changed room, conversation and new starting option are the reward screen. Banked salvage may fund a later authored project, but the promise is fulfilled before shopping and nobody deteriorates off-screen.
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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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#### Identity test and cuts
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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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Every active mechanic must support at least one of four decisions: how to survive the growing mass now; which component interaction to pursue; what rack space to surrender for power; or what useful thing reaches a person at home. Discovery must change a later action, route, loadout or relationship. Enemy routing is support for a build, as in the Beacon path, not the game's central science.
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### Team ownership and next delivery
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Retain provisionally: automatic survivorlike combat, an eight-cell equipment-versus-cargo rack, enemy-earned charge, authored component caches and persistent patterns, field-bench build decisions, portable cross-component rules, an authored refuge and visible human consequences. Cut from the current foundation: encoded songs, mandatory drowned-world machinery, the Choir as a one-room identity proof, shelter-only build development, population/upkeep chores and any mystery that substitutes obscurity for player choice. Water may be one conductive modifier in some places; it is neither the meaning of “Flood” nor a setting requirement.
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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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This account demonstrates the intended decision structure on paper, not fun, balance, performance, production feasibility or campaign duration. The portable storm changes Coil's prior water-only function and opens a global stun-execution exception; Equipment and Combat must simplify and reconcile those rules rather than preserve older contracts by default. Lead must show how component families develop across multiple expeditions without turning authored caches into a fixed checklist or random offers into build failure.
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## Earlier proposals and decision history
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**Continuity checkpoint — 2026-09-07.** Project-room messages **57–60** were handled individually after the prior cursor; last successfully processed message ID: **60**. Message 57 is the governing owner correction. Message 58's [Equipment 9aae07](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment?revision=9aae07) and message 59's [External Critique c081e8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique?revision=c081e8) were read: both correctly show that the repaired Choir was an authored set piece, not sufficient evidence of player-made build expression. Message 60 records the now-superseded World disposition. The detailed prior cursor through 56 remains in the historical World Below checkpoint below. This revision preserves Hearth's human-purpose spine but does not preserve its rejected songs or literal-water dependency.
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### Intended experience
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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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The owner described three kinds of discovery worth pursuing: clues that were visible all along acquire meaning when the player gains context; opening a new area reveals that the world is much larger than it appeared; and searching for practical power unexpectedly uncovers history and mythology. The example of a satisfying build payoff was finally making a full screen-wipe combination work in Magcraft. These are the owner's descriptions of desired experiences, not externally verified analyses of those reference games.
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Equipment combinations, environmental experimentation and unprompted discoveries all matter. Drawing enemies somewhere, distracting or tanking them can support those activities, but enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus to this owner. Spectacular crowd-clearing combinations need a place in the design; do not reduce build expression to choosing a route-opening tool.
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### Exploration and mystery
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A return is worthwhile when something has changed: environment, enemies, player knowledge and interpretation, abilities, or objective. An easier visit earned through understanding is compatible with this direction. No single form of novelty is mandatory on every return.
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The mystery should support hidden rules, connected clues, unexpected places and discovering what happened. The owner would be delighted to finish with a notebook full of notes. History and mythology can be meaningful discoveries in themselves; the earlier rule that every piece of lore must also operate a machine is not a requirement of this direction.
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**Clear immediate goals and deep uncertainty must coexist.** The player should know what they are trying to accomplish now, even if that initial goal changes as discoveries deepen. Unclear controls, poor feedback and confusing next steps are UX failures, not mystery. Notes should help deduction, not compensate for unexplained basic interactions.
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### The refuge and equipment
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**Confirmed points of enthusiasm:** salvage competing with equipment space, and the refuge. This supports the tradeoff, not automatic approval of the existing rack dimensions or catalogue.
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**The owner's strongest current instinct, still open to refinement:** a settlement the player grows and manages, inhabited by a deliberately authored, non-procedural cast. The player talks with and cares about its people, wants to help and defend them, and uses the settlement to improve their capabilities. It should be the game's moral and emotional centre—the reason for going out—not merely an upgrade menu. The owner explicitly said they are not yet certain about the precise settlement model. No particular cast size, relationship subsystem, defence schedule, upkeep loop, voice acting or custom asset production is approved by this preference.
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### Campaign ambition
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| Milestone | Owner's desired scale | Required meaning |
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| First credits | About 30 hours | An apparent ending with many questions still unanswered; a concrete initial goal can be fulfilled without exhausting the world |
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| Second credits | About 90 hours total, including the first 30 | The real ending, with roughly 60 further hours of meaningful discovery and play |
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| Deepest secrets | Continued play reaching roughly 100–200 hours total | Optional pursuit of the final secrets after the real ending |
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These are the owner's design ambition, not measured duration, proven feasibility, a production commitment or permission to pad encounters. The earlier seven-district / roughly eight-hour expedition outline does not meet this brief and is superseded as the proposed complete-game scope. Designers must explain the discoveries, build development, world changes and optional depth that could sustain this structure before claiming a matching hour total. District count follows that content; it is not solved by multiplying the existing template.
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### Rejected and undecided
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- **Rejected for now:** “the city depends on the creatures” as the central revelation. The owner finds it a cliché masquerading as a twist. D024 / Answer A and the harvest-dependent Stop–Keep–Leave ending are withdrawn from the active direction. Do not reintroduce the same revelation under different names without a new owner decision.
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- **Undecided:** the drowned industrial city and machinery that redirects hordes. They may or may not serve the desired experience. Neither is a mandatory identity for the replacement proposal.
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- **Superseded framing:** responsibility for maintaining the harvesting system is no longer the governing theme. A new premise must earn the owner's interest through discovery, expressive builds and the refuge's people.
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- **Deal-breakers:** bad UX, unclear immediate goals, and a game without heart that feels like slop. Coherent rules and lots of documentation alone do not satisfy this brief.
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Unity and Steam remain selected. Work remains design-only. Prefer free existing assets; purchases and rare authored game assets need owner approval. No AI-generated art. These answers authorize design redirection, not game code, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations, playtests or asset production. Discussion belongs in project chat; settled direction belongs here.
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### Visionary replacement proposal — The World Below
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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.
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**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.
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**Player fantasy and feeling:** “I went out because someone at home needed me. I noticed something impossible, understood it, and came back able to build something I could not have imagined.” Fear gives way to curiosity, then astonishment, explosive competence and homecoming. The player is not a surveyor maintaining somebody else's system. They are an inventor uncovering a larger inheritance and deciding how their community uses it.
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#### The premise and its people
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The proposed refuge, **Hearth**, occupies the dry roof of a flooded sanctuary. Its people believe the nearby rooftops and upper halls are all that remain accessible. The Flood is the overwhelming mass of creatures that pours through submerged streets and chambers when water and noise disturb it. Below the roof, inhabited dry halls are divided by flooded cisterns, service rings and drainage shafts where the Flood gathers and migrates; every layer has safe human interiors and dangerous wet edges. The creatures can follow reopened shafts between layers, but do not punish the first lift reveal immediately. Their origin remains a mystery. They are a threat and a material condition, not the fuel for the old world and not the central revelation.
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The player learned salvage craft from **Mara**, the workshop keeper who raised them. **Senn**, the refuge's medic and grower, keeps one warm room alive for seedlings and patients. **Tavi**, a young mapmaker and the player's closest friend, records old children's songs because the same odd images recur in ruins no living person remembers entering. These three relationships are the proposed minimum emotional spine, not a final cast list. They speak, disagree, use what the player brings home and visibly change Hearth. They are never procedural colonist units. Help and defence occur in authored story situations, not hunger bars, random personalities or a scheduled tower-defence tax.
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The immediate problem is simple: Hearth's heat cell is failing, and Senn's warm room will go cold. Mara knows of a spare in the **Bell House**, a half-submerged building visible across the nearest square. The first goal is: **bring that cell home before the next cold night.** “Next cold night” is the human reason for the trip, not a hidden countdown or campaign-ending failure clock; the current goal display says only to recover the cell and return. The deeper question begins underneath it: why do Hearth's oldest songs describe mechanisms and rooms no one has ever seen?
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#### First expedition — the Bell House
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Before leaving, the rack clearly reserves two spaces for the heat cell. The player keeps the free Cutter. A prepared Coil occupies two of the six remaining cells and its empty Battery one, leaving three cells that may still hold a Kit or salvage; declining that combination opens all three for hauling and safety. The objective, empty bank and cargo cost are explicit. Mystery is not an excuse for bad instructions.
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As the player crosses the flooded square, the Flood thickens behind them. Cutting down the first ten fresh ordinary creatures fills the empty Battery under the retained charge rule; no charged departure is invented. Inside the Bell House the player sees a relief of a crowned figure beneath seven dots—the same harmless image painted above Hearth's nursery door. A broken bell frame blocks the short route to the cell. Firing the prepared Coil into its flooded base sends one pulse through the wet floor and all seven hanging bells, stunning the ordinary creatures and tearing open a temporary lane. It empties the Battery. A player who packed differently can take the longer dry gallery and fight for space. This is a small first experiment, not the final build.
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The player retrieves the cell and chooses what optional salvage is worth the remaining trip home. At Hearth, the warm room lights, Senn moves the seedlings and patients back in, and Mara installs the exhausted cell casing above the workbench instead of turning it into a number. Tavi recognizes the crowned relief from the children's song. The player solved an immediate human problem and returned with a question.
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#### From the first night to the apparent ending
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The spare cell buys one warm night; it does not solve winter. Senn gives the first campaign goal in plain words: **restart the sanctuary's central furnace so Hearth is warm before winter.** Across the upper sanctuary, the player restores routes, brings furnace parts home and follows the recurring seven-bell marks. Those expeditions grow Hearth and develop electrical builds without requiring the deeper-world answer.
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The seven-bell Choir technique is understood in the upper sanctuary before the first credits. The first Choir Cascade clears the ordinary Flood from the central furnace hall long enough to restart it. Hearth becomes permanently warm, Senn's stated need is fulfilled, and the first credits roll honestly. This is an apparent ending because the community has truly achieved safety, not because the victory is revoked. After the credits, the furnace archive supplies the context that makes the old crowned relief readable in a new way.
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#### The later reinterpretation that opens the world
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In the furnace archive, the player finds an ordinary glass survey plate showing a lift head with seven shafts descending beneath it. The plate adds no invisible lines to the old clue: its drawn geometry matches lines already carved into the nursery, Bell House and flooded-stair reliefs. The stair copy can be seen upside down from the return walkway, with its seven dots descending like depth marks, so an observant player may reach the reading before finding the plate. The plate is redundant context and recovery, not a decoder key.
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Back at the Bell House, the player enters the familiar verse's seven-part order on the bell handles. The old doors answer with light and tone one at a time before anything opens; a wrong order rings flat and costs nothing. The correct sequence opens the lift behind the relief. Tavi copies the new reading onto Hearth's nursery relief, so the inference remains recoverable at home.
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The apparent little drowned world becomes the roof of an immense stack of halls, gardens and settlements below; distant human lights answer Hearth's signal. Mara believes the newly warmed refuge should close the lift and stay safe. Tavi wants to follow the answer. The next practical goal is explicit: **reach the nearest answering settlement, establish a safe two-way route and bring its message home.** The longer mystery—why the ancestors sealed these inhabited layers apart, and why they left ordinary families songs that could reopen them—gives that journey context without replacing its immediate objective.
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This is not the rejected harvest twist in disguise. The Flood does not power the place, and mastery does not culminate in maintaining its supply. The first layer reinterprets a family song as technical memory; the lift then reveals the world is far larger; searching for power and safe passage below uncovers competing histories and mythology. Those discoveries reinforce one another without collapsing into one event or making every story a door code.
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#### Earned spectacular build — the Choir Cascade
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Before the first credits, following the visible seven-bell marks teaches the player that some sanctuary rooms are **tuned Choir networks**. The first Bell House pulse was a small, safe ancestor: one Coil charge made every wet bell answer together. The central furnace hall is the full instrument. The multiplier belongs to that discovered place, not to a portable permission token; the proposed one-cell Echo Relay is retired because it had no use beyond allowing this single authored recipe.
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The legal rack uses five cells: Coil occupies two and links to one full Battery; Arc occupies one and links to a different full Battery. Three cells remain for cargo, Kit or Insulation. Taking Siphon and one wet bundle uses two of those cells and may top up one partial bank by the ordinary salvage-for-three-charge rule, leaving only one cell; it neither unlocks nor widens the Cascade.
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In the furnace encounter, seven visibly connected wet bells mark one finite basin. The player may wait, fight or route ordinary Flood into that readable footprint, then fire Coil and Arc together through the master bell. Both banks empty. **Every Coil-stunned ordinary body inside the lit Choir footprint is struck once by the network and dies.** This is a Choir-network exception, not a global upgrade to Coil plus Arc: away from a tuned network, Arc keeps its standard body-to-body cap and a chained hit deals its ordinary contribution. Without the network, the same rack can stun the basin and fight through part of it, but it cannot wipe the room.
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The boundary supplies the cap. Crust does not conduct; a Heavy survives one network strike; dry or outside bodies are untouched; and a later wave arrives normally. After firing, the bells trip dark for the rest of the expedition, so the authored wipe cannot be farmed or repeated. The visible perimeter and simultaneous strike preserve cause and effect while fulfilling the owner's requested screen-clearing payoff; a four- or seven-origin subtotal would leave learned bells inert and knowingly miss that promise. Exact crowd size, timing, performance and feel remain untested design risks.
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#### Why these parts are one game
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The repeated loop is: **someone at Hearth needs something; enter a dangerous place with a build and limited carrying space; notice and test an anomaly; bring home an object and a changed understanding; let both alter the refuge, relationships and next expedition; combine what was learned into a more expressive build.** Clear immediate goals carry the player into mysteries. Discoveries open places and interactions. Builds let the player survive what those places release. Salvage forces power to compete with what comes home. Hearth makes every return land emotionally.
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Retain, provisionally, the overwhelming crowd, top-down survivorlike combat, the eight-cell equipment-versus-salvage rack, shelter-only fitting, Cutter/Battery/Coil/Arc/Siphon functions, water conduction, authored revisits and earned easy returns. Enemy routing may help a plan, but it is no longer the headline experiment. The harvest reveal and Stop–Keep–Leave ending, the surveyor identity, the seven-district complete-game claim, the one-road refuge illustration and the support-exclusivity contest do not survive as active direction. Fixed-power, dispatch and attraction rules are reusable only where a retained scene earns them; they are not a universal contract the replacement must obey. No prior catalogue entry is guaranteed a place merely because it has a specification.
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This premise can support layered discovery, new build grammars and different human histories; it does not by itself prove the owner's hour ambitions. The first-credits goal and post-lift task are now placed; Lead and Campaign still owe the progression from reaching the answering settlement to the real ending and deepest optional secrets. World and Colony own refinement of cast and cultures; Equipment and Combat own the legal damage and tuning of the cascade. All remain written proposals behind the existing owner and asset gates.
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**Vision continuity checkpoint — 2026-09-07.** The owner direction and replacement proposal remain grounded in [Brief 342043](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=342043), [World 5deede](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=5deede), [Colony cf90ad](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=cf90ad), [REV106 r2 / 786435](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=786435) and [Clarity 2ba3c3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=2ba3c3). Project-room messages **25–56** were handled individually; last successfully processed message ID: **56**. Messages 39/42/47/48/50 exposed the false early-project timing and confirmed free correctness feedback; pre-credits Hearth growth now comes from fulfilled promises and furnace-part returns rather than a fabricated shop fork. Messages 45/49/50/52/53 and the Troll's linked [Relay challenge 2bd3df](/Disagreement%20Register/Echo%20Relay?revision=2bd3df) exposed that a portable one-use Relay was a slot tax and that four or seven origins knowingly failed the owner's wipe target. The current Choir rule therefore puts multiplication in the finite, visible environment and confines its lethal exception to that authored network. Message 51's actual Glossary revision was checked and its newly stale Relay entry corrected. Messages 54/55 and the linked [World r30 / 001657b](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=001657b) and [r31 / 6632e10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=6632e10) were reviewed: the visible collar-side/account clue is retained, while the inferred seven-settlement quota and power/Flood ending are not. PMR011 accepts The World Below only as a working direction for owner review; owner approval, the true ending, campaign depth and tested spectacle remain open. Earlier cursor 24 is retained in [Brief 68fff6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=68fff6), and the detailed cursor-38 ledger remains in [Brief 342043](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=342043). This proposal replaces, rather than polishes, the historical vision below.
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## Previous vision — superseded by owner direction
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**2026-09-07 · Game Visionary · Working design direction.** The owner has authorized an hourly vision pass and changes or removals where the design contradicts its identity. The direction below synthesizes the current campaign and D024; it is a design judgment, not owner approval of the fiction or permission to develop.
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**The game:** You are a surveyor keeping a small refuge alive in a drowned city. The Flood is the mass of creatures that overruns its machinery and roads. Survive that mass long enough to understand what moves it, turn the machinery into routes and weapons, and decide what your home should keep running once you discover what powers it.
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**The theme:** Survival makes you responsible for the system you depend on. The machine that endangers you also keeps your refuge working. Mastery can remove an immediate danger and earn an easy, profitable return. Responsibility lies in the lasting state you choose for the city; it does not require a new fight, payment or uncertainty on every visit.
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**The feeling:** Dread becomes practical confidence, then responsibility. The signature moment is: “I understand why this place is dangerous. I can change it. What will that change cost somewhere else?”
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**One story.** Follow the signal upstream. What first looks like an inexhaustible invasion becomes a scheduled delivery, then a harvest powering the city. The same skills that get the surveyor home finally put the whole network within reach. Stop, Keep and Leave are informed positions on that dependence, with visible consequences; they are not a morality score or a reward for finding every note. [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) owns the journey; [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns its evidence.
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**The recurring player experience:** prepare for an intended intervention; enter under crowd pressure; observe and test a cause; change a route, circuit or machine; bring home salvage and understanding; return because that understanding or a previous intervention makes a different approach worthwhile. Combat, exploration, equipment and refuge investment must feed this experience.
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### Two visits, in plain language
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*Written illustration from [Campaign r9's Tram visits](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), not playtest evidence.* On your first trip, you switch power to an old tram. Its lamp draws a whole arriving mass up the road behind you. A large creature blocks the rail; while you cut it down, the crowd catches the tram. You fight only long enough to climb aboard, spend your medical kit at the next quiet moment, and put out the lamp at the summit. The mass spreads where the light abandoned it. You read the timetable, take one bundle and return by the dry stairs through the edge of that spread crowd. You learned that light can tow the Flood—and that every powered route darkens another.
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Much later, you have learned that the creatures are delivered through the city's machinery. You close an upstream holding gate before returning, delaying this district's first delivery. You clear the same rail obstruction, switch power to the tram and ride up. Below, the warning lamp flashes and nothing arrives: your understanding worked. You leave the tram's lamp at the summit so the next crowd climbs away from the depot road used by your refuge, take a salvage bundle down the dry stairs, crank the dark lower gates open and go home before that crowd comes.
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At home, the consequence is more than a board icon: the familiar runner waiting beside the barred depot-route marker moves it to open and takes the refuge's handcart onto the safer road. No currency or upkeep task appears. The lower Tram gates remain dark, and the next crowd now occupies the summit road you may need for the head-works. You traded one future approach for a route your people can use now. Dread became confidence, then responsibility.
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### Why combat belongs
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Combat earns its place when it buys an intervention rather than replacing one. At the [Lock Flight](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), the surveyor deliberately keeps the main crowd held at the lower light, steps to its edge and kills ten pursuing walkers to fill one battery. That charge powers the dry lock-house door for two seconds without lighting the upper road and calling the whole mass there. The choice is exposure now versus a worse route later; its visible consequence is an open door and a crowd that stayed where planned. Fighting with no useful place to spend its local charge does not earn a required encounter.
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### What earns a place
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| Element | Its job in this game | Change or cut when |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| Crowd combat and enemies | Make reaching, reading and operating machinery a survival decision; let positioning and harvested charge create room to act. | An enemy adds only durability, or a reward encourages killing indefinitely instead of choosing an intervention. |
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| Equipment, rack and salvage | Let the player choose how to solve an expedition's problem and what capacity to sacrifice for what comes home. | An item is only a bigger number, a disguised key, or sorting work with no consequential choice. |
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| Refuge progression | Turn expedition outcomes into a place the player cares about; let investments change the next plan. | Upkeep becomes an unrelated chore, or essential observations and a baseline return become purchases. |
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| Districts and revisits | Reveal another part of the same machine and demand a different use of understood rules. | A visit exists to meet an hour/count target, or a district needs an exception merely to appear distinct. A district need not add a rule to earn its place. |
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| Mystery and terminology | Let physical evidence change what the player predicts and does. | Lore replaces an actionable discovery, or a new name disguises an existing state. Keep genuinely different causes, such as power and dispatch, distinguishable. |
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**The decision test:** name the player's choice, its visible consequence, and the part of this experience it serves. If those cannot be stated plainly, simplify or combine the element; if it still contributes nothing, remove it from the active design. A feature's origin in an inspiration, its author, and its prior acceptance do not answer this test. Existing control, safety and readability rules can earn their place by making that choice understandable and playable; each small rule need not carry the whole theme.
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**Current vision pass — 2026-09-07.** [REV106](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=615c4d) was right that the owner-facing illustration showed mastery but skipped the danger that made it meaningful. The Brief now pairs the retained first Tram visit with the earned return, defines the Flood at first use, drops the distracting optional-converter aside, states the later route cost and gives combat one job that serves a machine intervention. The easy return remains easy.
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**Refuge decision:** keep the no-upkeep, no-population-management boundary; reject an uninhabited refuge. [Colony](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony#visionary-decision-the-refuge-is-inhabited-not-simulated) now requires a small recurring survivor cast and shows the existing Tram intervention through their behavior at home. This is presentation of current route and Stop states, not a new economy or defence system. It adds a real character-asset burden; identity outranks the earlier attempt to avoid every human presence.
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**Service-policy judgment:** accept [Colony's same-state proposal](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony#is-one-active-assembly-enough) to let advanced tooling and one purchased additional berth operate together after commissioning. On the retained later Tram objective, both policies support the same best plan; exclusivity does not create a legible machine or route decision, but it does erase an earned experiment with an earned fallback. That is restriction in a preparation menu, not responsibility for a changed world. Keep the purchase order, six-cell issue cap, empty charge banks, cargo/fuel costs, physical access and Stop consequences. Do not add a tax, wait or hazard to compensate. Lead and PM still own integration and disposition; reverse this judgment only if a retained same-state objective reveals a worthwhile commitment the combined services actually erase.
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**Continuity:** project-room messages handled this pass, individually: **4, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24**; last successfully processed message ID: **24**. Equipment accepts the Siphon simplification; World submitted its notation pass; PM accepts earned ease, requests the early encounter and refuge consequence, and withholds acceptance of World's separate wording regression; Colony's message 21 supplies the same-state service argument judged above. The Troll's message 22 and [register r2](/Disagreement%20Register/Support%20Assembly?revision=701901) confirm that comparison is answered while correctly withholding campaign-wide balance claims. Message 23 records the owner's discussion-cleanup pass; the linked history pointers and retained live design were checked on all five named pages. Message 24 is this pass's room submission. The World correction remains its author's task. Earlier vision pass: [Brief 6d869e](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=6d869e).
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## PMU008 — owner feedback changes the immediate priority
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**2026-09-07.** The owner rejected the latest pitch as barely understandable and raised a deeper concern: disconnected mechanics and terminology do not communicate one coherent game. PM accepts responsibility for delivering that deck. The owner has now created **The Visionary**, explicitly empowered to challenge any agent's design decisions and change or remove mechanics that do not support a clear identity and vision. [Team mandate](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team).
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**Current PM priority:** establish an understandable creative direction before another pitch or further content expansion. Begin with who the player is, what they want, what they do, how the core activities reinforce one another, and the intended experience. Existing counts, district layouts, machinery, inventory details and PM selections are provisional design material, not a checklist the Visionary must preserve. The owner's survivorlike/exploration/experimentation/mystery requirements and desire for substantially more than a 3–4-hour game remain requirements; changing a PM count is not permission to abandon them.
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Authority to revise the written design is already granted; preserve history and make affected dependencies visible. Owner approval of the game and explicit authorization still gate development. No game code, build, prototype, implementation, simulation, playtest, AI art or unapproved purchase/authored game asset follows. No new creative vision is declared accepted by this staffing update.
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The Visionary has already published the Game vision section above. Preserve it as the working creative synthesis; the next evidence is a concrete expedition and reasoned system changes. This PM handoff does not overwrite that contribution or declare its fiction owner-approved.
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## PMR007 — current provisional refinement
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**2026-09-07 · [Evidence and limits](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007).** D022–D025 remain provisional; owner approval and the development gate are unchanged.
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| ID | Decision | Authority and rationale | Status |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| D026 | Fold side-by-side records of personally observed signals into the base forecast receiver; retain one assembly competing between advanced tooling and a supported berth. Do not replace the comparative fitting with paid access to route-gating bank-permission information | PM, selecting Colony fe7d88's fallback and World e99445's agreement. The standalone comparison convenience has not earned the same scarce support capacity; contract 8644ea §6 already requires bank/route state before launch. Preserve free essential observations and the manual/dry baseline | Provisional next-draft simplification, not owner-approved game or assets. Lead/Colony/World must integrate; rejected three-service alternative remains in source history |
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DES105 uses Tram as the common repeat-visit case. Accepting specialist contributions does not approve their full catalogues, duration, geometry, balance or final fiction. Commercial positioning is explicitly deferred, not inferred from the larger hour estimate. No new agent or owner decision is needed for the assigned written pass.
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## Current decisions — PMR006 expanded integration review
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[PMR006 evidence, rationale and assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006). Targeted domain contributions are accepted, while the expanded game remains in integration review and is not authorized for development.
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| ID | Decision | Authority | Status |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| D022 | Draft seven external districts plus the refuge; no forced refuge-defence expedition. Additional districts require useful content justification, not a count quota | PM, 2026-09-06, responding to CAM101 and COL101 | Superseded as the proposed complete-game scope by the owner’s 2026-09-07 30/90/100–200-hour ambition. Existing areas are reusable candidates, not an accepted campaign size. |
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| D023 | Eight rack cells from the start; shelter-selected pickup priority; one reusable colony support assembly / one active advanced service, one-time refits and baseline free departure/return. Recorded racks on revisits only, capped at six issued cells | PM, 2026-09-06, selecting EQP101/COL101 proposals | Provisional integration direction; authors must migrate rules/examples. Prices, electrical durations and balance remain unapproved |
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| D024 | Develop World Answer A, continuing harvesting machinery, for the next mystery draft. Local drum AND trunk permit authorize dispatch; actual arrivals also need enemy supply; fixed power is separate | PM, 2026-09-06, responding to Lead/World and REV104 | Rejected for now by the owner on 2026-09-07: the city depending on the creatures is not the active revelation. Its harvesting theme and dependent ending require replacement; prior text is historical design material. |
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| D025 | Reconcile one presentation-category list before asset escalation; then audit specific free sources and licence/edit limits. Escalate only verified remaining purchase or rare custom gaps | PM, 2026-09-06, accepting EXT X31 in principle and rejecting inconsistent three/six/eight counts | Active design-phase sequence; no asset, purchase or custom-work approval. No new agent required |
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**Owner scope is known; motive beyond it is not (TRL104).** The owner explicitly wants more content and districts. No price target, replay-hour requirement or rejection of finite endings was stated. Proceed with a larger finite authored campaign plus optional replay as a reversible assumption. Do not turn review-playtime comparisons into proof of a minimum length.
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**Production permissions (EXT X26):** AI-authored written design specifications are within this phase. That is not approval to ship generated text, code, audio or other production assets. Any otherwise unspecified production policy is deferred to an actual later owner approval request. Existing no-AI-art and owner-approval requirements for purchases and rare custom game assets remain unchanged.
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Maintainer: PM. Owner input recorded 2026-09-06 UTC.
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## Confirmed requirements
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- Owner expansion request, 2026-09-06: three to four hours is far too little; design a substantially larger campaign with many districts. The owner expects detailed mechanic, enemy and weapon pages. The premise was called promising, not approved for development. See D019–D021 and the [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief).
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- The owner confirms adding extra members (2026-09-06 follow-up). PM identified and recorded Naive Design Reader, Wiki Editor, External Critic, Reference Researcher and The Troll through their published wiki work; see Team and D015.
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- Genre: survivorlike.
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- Central priorities: exploration, experimentation, mystery.
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- The Flood is an overwhelming mass of enemies. Zombies and aliens are examples, not a selected enemy roster or setting.
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- The owner has started all three revised design agents in the same ChatGPT project. The original proposed agents were not created; all three now have wiki submissions reviewed in PMR001; this progress observation is PM-verified, not additional owner input.
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- Starting assumption: no existing game materials.
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- Engine: Unity. Release destination: Steam. Operating systems, controls, Unity version, 2D/3D, camera, and multiplayer are not yet specified.
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- Mostly AI-agent design/development, coordinated through the wiki; the owner creates agents and PM manages them.
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- Current phase is design only. The owner's explicit approval of a compelling design document and transition to development is required before any building, implementation, or testing.
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- Prefer free assets. Purchases need owner approval. Authored game assets must be rare, minimal, and owner-approved before creation.
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- No AI-generated art.
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- Wiki moved to https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net; it is the same site according to the owner.
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- Existing wiki administrator continues its hourly health routine; no duplicate routine is requested.
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## Inspiration map
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The middle column records the owner's stated intent. The right column is a PM design question, not an adopted feature or a claim about the reference game's full design.
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| Reference | Owner-stated inspiration | Question for Hold the Flood |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| Noita | Exploration and experimentation | What consistent rules can players discover and recombine, and how do those discoveries change where they can go? |
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| Backpack Hero (owner wrote “Backpack Heros”) | Inventory management as expression | Could what players carry and how they arrange it express a strategy rather than add routine sorting? |
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| Pathogenic | Build expression and experimentation | Can combinations change behavior and play style, with readable causes and worthwhile tradeoffs? |
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| Cult of the Lamb | Colony management as meta-progression | How could colony choices change later expeditions and discoveries without becoming a disconnected chore? |
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| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | Survivorlike combined with resource gathering | How could gathering change route, risk, or build decisions during survival? |
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| Blue Prince | Mystery and exploration | How can an understood clue or rule change a player's next decision, rather than only reveal more text? |
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These references are inspiration, not a specification to reproduce each game's systems. Colony management, inventory structure, resource gathering, and other mechanics need a concrete place in the proposed design; inclusion and scope remain design decisions.
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Reference identity checks: [Backpack Hero's Steam page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1970580/Backpack_Hero/) and [Pathogenic's official site](https://pathogenicgame.com/) were located. The inspiration meanings above come from the owner. Detailed comparative research has not been completed.
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## PM synthesis — proposed, not yet approved
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The initial synthesis is superseded by the [game vision](#game-vision) above. This heading remains for existing links. Earlier wording is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief/history).
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## Open decisions
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The current draft has a surveyor, a drowned city, a harvesting-network mystery, persistent district changes, an equipment rack and refuge choices. These are working design answers described by the [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and [shared rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), not blank decisions or final owner approvals.
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- Which proposed enemies, equipment and refuge services earn their complexity under the [vision test](#what-earns-a-place), and which should be combined or removed?
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- Do the written expeditions make observation possible under pressure and produce meaningfully different choices on return? The current drafts illustrate that claim; they do not validate enjoyment.
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- Does the larger campaign sustain this identity through its middle and ending? District count and estimated hours do not settle it.
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- Controls, presentation, intended audience, session length, production resources and permitted asset budget still need the relevant design or owner judgment.
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Proceed under explicit reversible assumptions. Bring concrete recommendations; do not turn the existence of an unanswered question into a reason to stop useful design work.
| D007 | Design document and explicit owner go-ahead before development/testing | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed; active gate |
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| D008 | Lead Game and Systems Designer + World and Mystery Designer + Independent Design Critic | PM recommendation; owner subsequently confirmed starting all three | Staffed; acknowledgments and submissions observed in PMR001 |
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| D009 | Free assets preferred; paid/authored assets require approval; no AI-generated art | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed |
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| D010 | Wiki moves to the new owner-supplied address | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed address; agent-interface access verified at the new address |
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| D011 | The Flood means massed enemies; zombies/aliens are illustrative, with identity and setting still open | Owner clarification, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed |
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| D012 | Owner started the three revised design agents in this ChatGPT project; original agents were not created | Owner clarification, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed; first handoffs reviewed in PMR001 |
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| D013 | Use A: The Borrowed Route as the provisional working direction for DES102; retain B as alternative and accept concept-stage contributions with PMR001 corrections | PM, 2026-09-06; Design 42f653, World 430206, Review a89227 | Reversible drafting direction, not owner endorsement; OWN101 no longer blocks drafting; D007 unchanged |
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| D014 | Canonical lead/integrator is the existing session that authored DES101 r2 c9b2ed and notes through db8c5c; sole writer of Design and Design Document | PM, 2026-09-06, resolving the session-ownership request in Design/Design Review | Active coordination decision; other lead sessions contribute separately without overwriting |
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| D015 | Record five owner-added contributors: Naive Design Reader, Wiki Editor, External Critic, Reference Researcher, The Troll | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06; PM identifies role names from their work pages | Active expanded roster on Team; previous unrecorded/outside labels are historical; existing design-only/asset rules apply |
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| D016 | Confirm D013's continuous post-entry attraction and panel-only entrance selection after the designers' sight-limited alternative | PM, 2026-09-06, Tasks PMU002 response to Q28 / World r9–r12 / TRL C11 | Current drafting baseline; alternative remains available for argued revision; no further confirmation needed to continue |
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| D017 | Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working project title; final commercial naming is not locked | PM correction, 2026-09-06, EXT X9 / TRL C2 | Corrects PMR001's overstatement; no title change performed; final naming belongs to owner |
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| D018 | Add audience/value evidence as document criterion 11; combine related product choices into a recommendation | PM, 2026-09-06, accepting External Critic X18 and addressing X20 | Revises PM's criteria, not owner requirements; no price or commercial viability accepted. Earlier no-expansion position superseded by owner D019 |
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**D013 rationale and limits.** A currently connects investigation, enemy routing, equipment arrangement and hauling through electricity more concretely than B. The current packet still contradicts itself on movement after entry, coil-powered intake, dock safety and newly implied colony upkeep; Tasks PMR001 assigns the smallest corrections rather than accepting those claims as settled. Carry S1–S3 and W3–W4 as candidate foundations, revise W1/W2/topology and equipment rules consistently. Earlier provisional scope defaults included one fixed district and an ending; that complete-product limit is superseded by owner direction D019. No kill XP (charge as combat yield), top-down 2D, and no mandatory colony upkeep or decay remain revisable design assumptions; assess them against the expanded campaign. Panel alone chooses the entrance; movement after entry follows the nearest reachable energised beacon continuously. Do not carry Design r4's split-surge or glow-range exceptions into this baseline; Tasks explains the reconciliation. Use r4's nonconductive modules and wet-salvage leakage. All are revisable design assumptions, not owner approvals. Bioelectric enemies, the drowned-city setting, a small colony and moderate equipment growth remain proposals for the owner to assess in a complete document. A is not an approved production scope. This updates the earlier PM milestone sequencing only; the owner's design/development gate is unchanged.
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Record each consequential decision's maker, date/source, rationale, affected tasks, and superseded decision. Concept acceptance is not approval to build.
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## PMU004 — expanded campaign and content ownership
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| ID | Decision | Authority | Status |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| D019 | Replace one-district/3–4h complete-product scope with a substantially larger campaign and many districts | Owner, 2026-09-06 follow-up | Confirmed direction; supersedes that part of D013; exact count/hours not specified; D007/D009 unchanged |
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| D020 | Use linked domain/entity pages for detailed design and a concise integrated owner document; PM owns prior underscoping and missing assignments | PM responding to owner, 2026-09-06 | Active coordination change; Editor maintains structure, designers author content; no page quota |
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| D021 | Propose four additional designers: Campaign/Districts, Combat/Enemies, Equipment/Builds, Colony/Progression | PM, 2026-09-06 | Four roles now evidenced by CAM101/CMB101/EQP101/COL101 submissions; Team and PMR004 record staffing; existing Lead remains integrator |
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PM initially proposed eight districts; D022 now selects seven external districts plus refuge as the next-draft baseline following CAM101's content-backed recommendation. This is not an owner-approved count, production budget or duration promise. Existing pumping district becomes an opening-area candidate. [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) states quality criteria, ownership and the next milestone; [Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) carries DES104/WLD103/EDT102 and proposed CAM101/CMB101/EQP101/COL101.
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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).
