2026-09-06 17:51:43
Anonymous:
DES102 draft r2: integrate WLD102 r8 (map with gate and ledges, ladder exit, gravity culvert, crowd holding/proximity/thinning, five-part price, shut/fix/hold ending); answer External Critique on design points (differentiator, rack scope, optional arc module, renewable, length vs refund window); three new owner decisions; routing baseline unchanged pending PM ruling
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**DES102 | draft r1 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review**
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**DES102 | draft r2 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review**
This is a proposal for a game, written before anything has been built. It follows the direction PM selected for drafting (A, "The Borrowed Route") and PM's six required corrections. Nothing in it is owner-approved, nothing has been played, and every number is a starting guess to be tested later. The enemies, the setting, the small colony and the modest equipment growth are all proposals for the owner to judge. Bookkeeping, revision codes and the answer-by-answer map to reviewers' findings are in Appendix B; the body is written to be read on its own. Terms are explained at first use and collected in Appendix A.
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**Why this game exists.** Survival games with automatic weapons and rising crowds are good at pressure and bad at curiosity: there is never a reason to stop and look. This design makes the pressure legible, so you can compute when you are safe, and makes every safe minute worth spending on understanding, because understanding is what changes where the pressure lands. The Flood is not something you beat. It is something you learn to route.
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**What the rule does that its inspirations do not.** Water carrying current is not a new idea; the owner's own reference games use it, and one of them sits on a simulation of every pixel so that the same rule produces chaos for hundreds of hours. This design deliberately does not simulate; its channels are wet or dry. What it does instead, and what the reference games do not, is make one rule answer four questions at once: what fights, what opens, where the enemy mass goes next, and how your own gear is packed, with the colony's dock as the fifth. The value is not surprise from chaos; it is consequence you can compute, so that a plan is possible and a mistake is legible. A player who has seen "wet channel plus coil equals stun" has not seen the mechanic; they have seen one of its four faces, and the game is about noticing that the other three are the same face.
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**Who this is for, and what it sits beside.** Proposed audience: players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want to think, and players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle worth solving. It sits beside the owner's named inspirations rather than against them: nearer to the resource-gathering crowd game in moment-to-moment feel, nearer to the room-by-room mystery in what keeps you coming back, and unlike the grid-inventory games in that the pack is small on purpose. No market claim is made here; audience, price and comparables are not yet among the document criteria, and section 17 asks the owner to treat them as decisions.
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### A two-minute example
You are in the yard, a salvage-strewn courtyard beside a shallow channel, and you have found a sealed hatch into the pump hall. A cable runs from the hatch along the channel to a dark lamp on a post: the yard's beacon. Your forecast display says the next surge arrives in ninety seconds, through the causeway on the far side of the district, because the causeway's beacon is the one that is lit. The hatch is sealed because the yard has no power.
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## 2. The district
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One fixed district, revisited every expedition. Its layout never changes; what varies is which modules and salvage are where, and how big and when the surges are. This is a sketch, not a floor plan; the diagram is a design aid and would be replaced by a proper map.
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One fixed district, revisited every expedition. Its layout never changes; what varies is which modules and salvage are where, and how big and when the surges are. The map below is the World and Mystery Designer's, adopted as drawn; it is a design aid, not a floor plan. North is the interior, the docks are south; `=` is raised and dry, `~` is shallow water, `-` is the culvert.
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INTERIOR (later tiers)
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|
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[causeway beacon] [yard beacon = channel mouth, at the pump hall door]
||------------------- culvert ------------------- culvert exit, yard bank
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culvert exit, dock end
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||
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PANEL at the causeway head
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||
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CAUSEWAY DOCK (held dry by default) YARD DOCK (flooded by default; wet ground, conducts)
```
- **Docks.** Two, on the rim. The **causeway dock** is dry by default and is where you start and leave. The **yard dock** is flooded by default: wet ground, unusable, until the colony's pump holds it dry instead of the causeway dock (the colony's one standing choice, section 10). A dry dock is a **shelter**: enemies neither enter nor spawn there.
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- **Causeway.** A raised dry road from the causeway dock into the district, signed as the evacuation route. Its beacon is at its far end, lit by default. The **panel** stands at its near end, the causeway head, in the open, about eight seconds from the dock.
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- **Culvert.** A drain tunnel under the causeway joining the two dock ends. Walkable and dry: the pump hall's one running pump keeps it that way, and the player never pays anything for it. It has cart wear on the floor and a refuge sign turned to face the yard.
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- **Yard and pump hall.** A salvage courtyard beside a shallow channel. The channel enters the yard at the pump hall's door, and the yard's beacon stands there, dark by default. So a surge that enters by the yard arrives standing in water. The pump hall's hatch is on the same circuit as the beacon: powered, it is open; unpowered, it is shut. Three salvage deposits are in the yard.
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- **Sluice.** At the district's low end, where the causeway and the yard branches meet, a water gate with no beacon: the Flood's own way in when neither branch is lit. It opens onto the interior route.
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- **Interior.** Beyond the junction; the later mystery tiers (section 11). Not part of the first expeditions.
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- **Shelters.** The two docks (when dry) and one raised platform at the junction. Repacking happens only in shelters.
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- **Causeway.** A raised dry road from the causeway dock into the district, signed as the evacuation route. Its beacon is at its far end, lit by default, and beside the beacon stands the **gate** into the interior, the causeway branch's one powered device: open while the causeway is lit, shut otherwise. A dry ledge halfway along is a shelter. The **panel** stands at the near end, the causeway head, in the open, about eight seconds from the dock.
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- **Culvert.** A drain tunnel under the causeway joining the two dock ends: a gravity drain, dry on its own, never pumped, never paid for. Walkable, with cart wear on the floor and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. One exit at the dock end, one on the yard bank.
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- **Yard and pump hall.** A salvage courtyard on both banks of a shallow channel. The channel enters the yard in front of the pump hall's door, and the yard's beacon stands there, dark by default, so a surge that enters by the yard arrives standing in water. The pump hall's **hatch** is the yard branch's one powered device, on the same circuit as its beacon: powered, open; unpowered, shut. Inside the hall are the crew's tally board, a dead pump, and an unpowered ladder up to the **yard ledge**, a dry shelter beside the channel. Three salvage deposits are on the banks.
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- **Sluice.** At the district's low end, where the two branches meet, a water gate with no beacon: the Flood's own way in when neither branch is lit. It opens onto the interior route.
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- **Interior.** Beyond the gate: the valve gallery (tier two) and the relay room at the sluice's head (tier three), section 11. Not part of the first expeditions.
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- **Shelters.** The two docks when dry, the causeway ledge and the yard ledge. Repacking happens only in shelters.
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## 3. Core play
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**Controls (proposal).** Top-down 2D. Keyboard and mouse or gamepad. Move with the stick or keys. The cutter fires by itself. One button triggers the coil. One button interacts (panel, valve, hatch crank, deposit, inspectable prop). One button opens the notebook. One button plants or retrieves a beacon. The rack is rearranged by dragging, only in a shelter.
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**Controls (proposal).** Top-down 2D. Keyboard and mouse or gamepad. Move with the stick or keys. The cutter fires by itself. One button triggers the coil. One button interacts (panel, valve, ladder, deposit, inspectable prop). One button opens the notebook. One button plants or retrieves a beacon. The rack is rearranged by dragging, only in a shelter.
**Combat.** The **cutter** is a handheld tool that fires by itself at the nearest organism in reach while you move; you aim by where you stand. About three hits kill one organism, at roughly two hits a second. A surge is forty to a hundred and forty organisms arriving over half a minute, so you cannot kill your way through one; you can thin its edge, hold a doorway where they come one at a time, or stun a mass standing in water with the coil.
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**Room to think: three rules.**
- **Notebook.** Opening it pauses everything. It shows only what you have already seen: your map, your notes, the rules you have observed. It never adds evidence.
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- **Shelter.** A dry dock or the junction platform is a hard stop: enemies neither enter nor spawn. You can repack and watch the district from it. The surge clock keeps running, so retreating to think costs time and position, never health.
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- **Shelter.** A dry dock or either ledge is a hard stop: enemies neither enter nor spawn. You can repack and watch the district from it. The surge clock keeps running, so retreating to think costs time and position, never health.
- **Live evidence.** New clues, switches and experiments happen in the running world.
**Failure and ending.** After the third dispatch the evacuation window opens: reach a dry dock within three minutes. Missing it, or losing all health, means rescue: you get out, without your cargo. Death costs cargo and whatever modules you found this expedition; it never costs notes, banked salvage or colony state, and the starting kit is reissued, so there is no loss spiral. Retry is immediate.
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- A valve that joins two channels extends where current reaches. A field pump, fuelled by a bundle of salvage, drains a channel and cuts it. The coil injects current. The panel routes it.
- **The lit branch is the branch the Flood comes to.** Powering the yard to open its hatch means the next surge enters the yard. That is the price of every door.
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- **Switching the panel mid-surge moves the Flood.** Throwing the panel from causeway to yard darkens the causeway beacon and lights the yard's. Every organism already inside heads for the new light by the shortest path, which runs through the low junction, so the interior route and the junction platform's surroundings become the Flood's road for the next minute or two. The darkened branch's hatch shuts. The next dispatch goes to the branch you just lit. And the panel stands in the open at the causeway head. So a panic switch can pull a surge off you, and it is meant to; what it costs is the district for the next two minutes, the door you came for, and where the next surge lands.
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- **Surge behaviour after arrival.** A surge gathers at its beacon and presses outward slowly, a crowd whose edge creeps along its branch during the quiet interval. Organisms within a short pursuit range of the player break off to chase, and drift back toward the beacon when the player is out of range. That is what makes a held surge a decision rather than scenery: its edge is a moving line you can read, and everything near it is a chokepoint or a trap depending on where you stand. Stragglers roam between surges. At the end of the expedition everything resets.
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- **Dock consequence.** With the causeway dock held dry, lighting the causeway puts the surge on the road between you and home; the culvert bypasses it. Lighting the yard puts the surge on the salvage and leaves the road clear. With the yard dock held dry instead, lighting the yard puts the surge on your own dock's branch, and the yard has no bypass: the last stretch home is exposed. So the colony's dock choice inverts which panel setting is comfortable. A surge never blocks a dock, because a dry dock is a hard stop; it makes the route to it cost something.
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- **Switching the panel mid-surge moves the Flood, and that is its price.** Throwing the panel from causeway to yard darkens the causeway beacon and lights the yard's. Every crowd already inside walks to the new light: from the causeway's far end, down across the junction below the sluice, and along the channel to the yard beacon, so the interior route is occupied while it crosses. The gate at the causeway's far end shuts behind it, so anyone inside the interior comes back by the yard. Yard to causeway is the mirror, with the hatch shutting. Off darkens both: every crowd spreads along its own branch, toward the docks as much as the interior, and both devices shut. The forecast shows each entered surge's new target the moment you switch, so the price is readable before the crowd moves. And the panel stands in the open at the causeway head. So a panic switch does buy something this surge, and it is meant to; what it costs is the route the crowd crosses, the door that shuts, and where the next surge lands.
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- **Surge behaviour after arrival.** A surge gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer. Each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows; by the third the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things pull organisms out of a crowd: **proximity**, any organism within a short radius of the surveyor pursues regardless of beacons, which is what the cutter fires at; and **thinning**, over a quiet interval the crowd drifts outward along its branch and into the water as stragglers, so "quiet" means spread thin, not gone, and the next surge re-concentrates it. A surge whose beacon goes dark spreads along its branch at once, both ways. What makes a held crowd a decision: the gate, the hatch, the richest deposits and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is, so harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its proximity radius, or waiting for thinning and losing surge time. At the end of the expedition everything resets.
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- **Dock consequence.** Extraction is threatened by two things only: a planted beacon lit near a dock, or a dark branch with a crowd in it spreading toward the dock. So the held dock's branch must stay lit whenever a surge is in it, which is also what keeps that branch hot. Holding the causeway dock means the causeway is your safe default and the yard is where you send trouble, with the culvert as the road home under the crowd. Holding the yard dock means the yard must stay lit through any surge you send there, so the hall's crowd stands between you and nothing, but off and causeway are both dangerous the moment a surge is in the yard, and the yard has no culvert of its own. The colony's choice decides which branch you can never afford to darken. A surge never blocks a dock, because a dry dock is a hard stop; it makes the route to it cost something.
**An alternative the owner should know about.** The world designer and I had converged on a stricter version of clause 3, in which a beacon pulls only within a visible glow and the two fixed beacons are out of each other's sight, so the panel could never move an arrived surge and only a carried beacon could. It keeps the panel a pure planning tool and removes the panic switch. PM chose the simpler continuous rule for this draft so that one model is written out fully and priced. Both are on the table; the difference is whether the panel is a plan or a lever. Neither has been played.
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You leave the dock with the cutter, one empty battery in an otherwise empty rack, and whatever starting module the workshop lets you choose. All numbers are proposals.
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**Modules in the minimum scope:** battery (1 slot), coil (2 slots, horizontal or vertical), insulation (1), beacon (1), kit (1), siphon (1: consumes one touching bundle for three units of charge, once, for the player who needs power and has only salvage). About six types; the concept's ceiling was ten.
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**Modules in the minimum scope:** battery (1 slot), coil (2 slots, horizontal or vertical), insulation (1), beacon (1), kit (1), siphon (1: consumes one touching bundle for three units of charge, once, for the player who needs power and has only salvage), and, if the owner wants the genre's payoff moment, the arc (section 6). Six or seven types; the concept's ceiling was ten.
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**What the rack is and is not.** It is a small item game on purpose: six slots, a handful of modules, one conduction rule, and three named loadouts. It is not the game's pillar of expression by itself, and an owner expecting a grid-inventory game with hundreds of items should not expect it here; that would be a different product with a different content budget. Expression in this design is the combination of loadout, panel setting, route and held dock, and the rack's job is to make the loadout half of that visible and slightly costly. If the owner wants the rack to carry more, the honest cost is module count, roughly twenty to thirty with real interactions, and that is a scope decision, not a tuning one.
**Three loadouts.** Rows are top and bottom; letters are C coil, B battery, I insulation, P beacon, S salvage bundle, K kit, and a dash is empty. Links are stated.
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**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, pays only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice.
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**The genre's payoff moment, and an optional module to supply it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. This design's arc does not reach that point by default, and an outside critic is right that shipping under the genre's tag without it risks disappointing the audience the tag brings. One on-rule addition would supply it without kill experience: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining the battery over about twenty seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before, and bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies. Whether to include it is the owner's call (section 17); with it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb.
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---
## 7. Exploration
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The district is small, fixed and dense, and it is meant to be re-read. Landmarks are the two beacons, the panel, the culvert's turned sign, the pump hall, the sluice and the junction platform. Routes are few and named: the causeway, the culvert, the channel edge, the interior route. Revisiting is the whole structure: the same place means something different once you know what its light means.
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The district is small, fixed and dense, and it is meant to be re-read. Landmarks are the two beacons, the panel, the culvert's turned sign, the pump hall, the sluice, the gate and the two ledges. Routes are few and named: the causeway, the culvert, the channel edge, the interior route. Revisiting is the whole structure: the same place means something different once you know what its light means.
What you can discover, and what each discovery changes:
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| --- | --- |
| Geography: the culvert, the deposits, the shelters, the sluice | Which route, and which surge you accept |
| The rule: what current reaches, and what it draws | Which experiment is worth its exposure |
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| Surge behaviour: intakes, the dispatch cycle, the press, pursuit range | When and where to be |
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| Surge behaviour: intakes, the dispatch cycle, holding, thinning, the proximity radius | When and where to be |
| Rack conduction, mirrored from the district | What you can pack |
| The mystery: who left the panel on causeway, and why | Which place is worth the risk, and where the interior route leads |
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The player experiments in two places under one rule: in the district (valves, the panel, the coil, a planted beacon, a field pump) and in the rack (what touches what, what is linked). Every experiment has a visible cause and a visible cost.
- **Limits.** The panel powers one branch or none. A discharge needs a full battery and spends it. A field pump costs a bundle and lasts one expedition. A planted beacon runs its battery down. A stun yields once per crowd.
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- **Combinations that matter.** Panel to yard plus a coil in the channel: stun and harvest an invited surge. A valve joining the yard channel to the junction pool plus a coil: energise the junction from the yard, open the junction platform's hatch to the interior. A planted beacon on the causeway's dock end plus the panel on yard: pull an entered causeway surge off the road while the next one goes to the yard, clearing both routes home for one interval.
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- **Combinations that matter.** Panel to yard plus a coil in the channel: stun and harvest an invited surge. In the interior's valve gallery (tier two), a valve joining the two branches' water plus a coil discharged in the yard channel: light the causeway beacon and open the gate from the yard side, without touching the panel and without changing the next intake. A planted beacon on the causeway's dock end plus the panel on yard: pull an entered causeway crowd off the road while the next surge goes to the yard, clearing both routes home for one interval, at the cost of a crowd gathering near the dock you will leave by.
**A plausible experiment that fails, readably.** The player has learned that current opens the pump-hall hatch and that the yard is dark. Surge one is gathered at the causeway beacon. The player wades into the yard channel and discharges the coil to open the hatch without touching the panel, reasoning that the yard stays dark to the relay and the surge will stay on the causeway. The hatch opens. So does the yard beacon: it lights steady, because it is on the same wet circuit. Surge one, which follows the nearest lit beacon it can reach, turns off the causeway and comes to the yard, through the junction, while the player is inside the hall. The lesson is legible in the light convention: steady means powered, powered means lure, and the coil powers everything the water touches. The recovery is in section 13.
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| --- | --- |
| Notice | From the dock, the causeway beacon is lit steady. At the first dispatch it flashes and the surge visibly turns onto the causeway. This repeats every expedition. |
| Compare | The yard beacon is dark and the pump-hall hatch is shut. In the culvert: cart wear toward the yard, and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. Each inspectable in three or four lines of text. |
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| Understand | Cabling runs from the panel to both beacons and on to the yard hatch. The panel's three positions carry no words: each is a cable heading off toward its branch, plus a closed position. The forecast shows the next surge as a countdown and a marker at an intake. Switching moves the marker at once. So the rule can be learned two ways: watch a flash and the surge's turn, or switch and watch the marker jump. After the first observed flash-and-turn, the notebook records it in the player's own terms. |
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| Understand | Cabling runs from the panel to the causeway beacon and on to the gate, and from the panel to the yard beacon and on to the hatch. The panel's three positions carry no words: two cable headings and a closed position. The forecast shows a countdown, an intake marker, and each entered crowd's current target. Switching moves the marker at once, and moves the crowd. So the rule can be learned two ways: watch a flash and the surge's turn, or switch and watch both the marker and the crowd respond. After the first observed flash-and-turn, the notebook records it in the player's own terms. |
| Infer | Power is both key and lure: the lit branch is where doors open and where the Flood is sent. The "refuge" sign marks where surges go, not where it is safe. Someone kept the culvert and the yard in use by leaving the panel on causeway. |
| Experiment | Set the panel to yard. The yard beacon goes steady, the hatch opens, the forecast marker moves to the yard intake with the countdown still running. Retreat to a shelter or stay; watch the dispatch. |
| Discover | The next surge enters through the yard, into the channel at the pump hall's door. The surge already on the causeway heads for the yard's light too, by way of the junction. The pump hall is open, and the Flood is coming to it. Reaching the answer costs exactly that exposure. |
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| The answer (spoiler) | Inside the pump hall, beside the one pump still running (the one that keeps the culvert dry): a crew tally board, rows of marks per surge sent to the causeway, a last row with one mark to the yard and a line drawn under it; and a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert into the interior. The last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way out, and left the panel on causeway for whoever came after. What they went in for is the next tier. |
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| Change later play | Every dispatch reopens the choice: leave the panel on causeway and haul through the culvert to a quiet, closed yard; set yard to open the hall and walk the causeway clear; or invite the surge into the channel on purpose with the coil waiting. The inked route and the turned signs now point into the interior. |
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| The answer (spoiler) | Inside the pump hall, beside the hall's dead pump: a crew tally board, rows of marks per surge sent to the causeway, a last row with one mark to the yard and a line drawn under it; and a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert into the interior. The last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way out, and left the panel on causeway for whoever came after. What they went in for is the next tier. |
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| Change later play | Every dispatch reopens the choice: leave the panel on causeway and haul through the culvert to a dark, closed yard; set yard early, before any crowd exists, to walk the causeway into the interior through the gate while the yard is hot; set yard with a crowd already at the causeway beacon to clear the road at the cost of the interior route and the hall; or invite the surge into the channel on purpose with the coil waiting. The inked route and the turned signs now point into the interior. |
**Knowledge, not equipment.** The panel is usable on expedition one; nothing about the deduction needs a module, a resource or a flag. Equipment changes how well the choice can be exploited, never whether it can be made. **If a clue is missed:** the causeway beacon is steady on every arrival and flashes every dispatch; the culvert is visible from the yard side too; the marker jump is a second, independent way in; optional hints escalate from "the two beacons differ" to "switch, then watch the forecast marker". **After death:** notes, map and observed facts persist; no deduction is granted unearned. **After the answer:** the question closes; the decision does not. The same dispatches, the same panel, a different loadout, cargo target and held dock make the routing choice fresh each expedition. Diverting never creates extra enemies or rewards.
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One district and an ending. The mystery has three tiers, each a recombination of the same rule in the same district, not a new machine family.
- **Tier one, the false refuge (expeditions one to about three).** Why the causeway is overrun. Answered in the pump hall. Changes routing for good.
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- **Tier two, the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The inked route leads through the junction into the interior, which is reached only by the interior route, the Flood's own road when nothing is lit. The tier's puzzle is the junction: a valve that joins the yard channel to the junction pool lets the coil energise the junction platform's hatch from the yard, and a planted beacon can hold the interior route's surge at the sluice while you cross. The answer is a second tally board and the crew's key to the relay room.
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- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a control room at the top of the interior, is what calls the Flood. The final choice: lock the relay to one branch forever, so the Flood always comes where the colony can live around it; shut it down, which stops the surges and every powered door with them, and leaves the sluice as the Flood's only, unpredictable way in; or leave it running. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game. Free expeditions continue after.
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- **Tier two, the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The inked route leads through the gate at the causeway's far end, which is open only while the causeway is lit, so the door to the interior and the Flood's road are the same branch. Beyond it, the valve gallery: the crew's second repurposing. Valves that join the two branches' water, so that a beacon can be lit from the other branch's current without the panel. Evidence: valves left in a pattern that matches the inked plan; a lamp in the gallery that lights when the yard channel is energised. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district. Experiment: join the channels and discharge in the yard, and watch which lamps and which crowds respond. Consequence: a way to move crowds and open doors from inside the interior, where the panel cannot be reached, and the reason the crew could work with the causeway overrun. The answer is a second tally board and the crew's key to the relay room.
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- **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 final choice, each an expedition-ending act that leaves a different district: **shut it**, so there are no more dispatches and the Flood enters only by the sluice, unannounced, honest and harder; **fix it**, welding the panel to one branch for good, one dock safe forever and one branch lost; or **hold it**, leaving it running and keeping the steering, the status quo chosen. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game. Free expeditions continue after any ending.
**Early, middle, late.** Early, you learn to read light and to use the culvert. Middle, you carry power to places the panel cannot reach and learn to hold a surge where you want it. Late, the district is a machine you play, and the ending asks what you want it to do.
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**How many expeditions.** Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier, with deaths adding to that. That is an estimate from content, not a validated length, and the earlier figure of twelve to twenty was a guess.
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**What is different on expedition nine that was not on expedition six.** An outside critic put the hardest question well: once the map is memorised and the notes persist, what renews? The honest answer has three parts. First, the decision renews even when the knowledge does not: every dispatch is a fresh choice of where the Flood lands, and its right answer depends on this expedition's loadout, cargo target, held dock and which crowd is already where; the same three dispatches never pose the same problem twice. Second, the district is not fully known by expedition five, because tiers two and three open the gate, the gallery and the relay room, each of which changes what the rule can do rather than adding rooms to memorise. Third, the surges vary in size and timing within the schedule, and placements vary, so a route is a plan, not a script. What does not renew is discovery itself: once the three tiers are solved, the game is finished, and the design says so rather than pretending to be endless. If the owner wants more life after the ending, the extension with the best return is a second district under the same rule, and it is a scope decision.
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**How long the game is, in hours.** Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier, with deaths adding to that; at about fifteen minutes each, that is roughly three to four hours for the whole designed experience, ending included, before free play. This is an estimate from content, not a validated length; the earlier figure of twelve to twenty expeditions was a guess. The owner should know one commercial fact that follows: a storefront refund window of two hours would cover about the first eight expeditions, which is most of the designed game. That is a pricing and scope constraint, not a design flaw, and section 17 puts it in front of the owner as a decision about length and extensions.
**The title.** Hold the Flood is the owner's title. In this design the holding is done by deciding where the Flood goes: the colony holds the Flood off its refuge not by fighting it but by routing it, and the ending is about holding it for good. The Flood is the enemy mass, never the water; the water is what carries the current.
@@ 249,7 263,7 @@
**3:00.** The dispatch. From the yard the player sees the causeway beacon flash across the district and, a moment later, the surge pour in at its far end and gather there. Forty organisms. The forecast now reads: second surge in five minutes, intake causeway. The notebook records: the surge came in where the lamp flashed.
-
**3:30 to 7:30.** Quiet. The player crosses to the junction platform, a shelter, and watches the causeway crowd press slowly down the road toward the dock end. Two stragglers wander into the yard; the cutter kills them; two motes; the player walks over them and the battery shows two units. Back in the yard, the player links the battery to the coil in the junction shelter and finds a third deposit. Rack now: coil, battery, three bundles, one slot empty, and one drip, because a bundle touches the battery. The player does not yet know what a drip means.
+
**3:30 to 7:30.** Quiet. The player climbs to the yard ledge, a shelter beside the channel, and watches the causeway crowd thin slowly down the road toward the dock end. Two stragglers wander into the yard; the cutter kills them; two motes; the player walks over them and the battery shows two units. On the ledge the player links the battery to the coil, then finds a third deposit on the far bank. Rack now: coil, battery, three bundles, one slot empty, and one drip, because a bundle touches the battery. The player does not yet know what a drip means.
**8:00.** The second dispatch. Causeway again, eighty organisms, joining the first crowd. The press on the causeway now reaches halfway to the dock. The forecast reads: third surge in four minutes, intake causeway. The player decides to leave.
@@ 273,17 287,17 @@
**6:00.** The yard. The hatch is open. The player enters the pump hall and reads the tally board again, this time looking for the inked route, and copies it. Outside, surge one arrives at the yard beacon, in the channel at the hall's door, and gathers. The player is inside with the Flood at the door. This is the moment the design is built around.
-
Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms in pursuit range come in one at a time, and the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; or the player steps to the channel's edge inside the doorway, in insulation, and discharges the coil into the water the crowd is standing in. The battery has two units; a discharge needs ten. So the player holds the door with the cutter, kills eleven, picks up eleven motes between the bodies, and now has enough.
+
Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms inside the proximity radius come in one at a time, and the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; or the player steps to the channel's edge inside the doorway, in insulation, and discharges the coil into the water the crowd is standing in. The battery has two units; a discharge needs ten. So the player holds the door with the cutter, kills eleven, picks up eleven motes between the bodies, and now has enough.
**7:50.** Discharge. The crowd in the channel stops, stunned for eight seconds, and sheds four large motes. The player walks the channel's edge collecting them, battery full again, and is clear of the crowd before it moves.
**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is already on the culvert side.
-
**8:30 to 11:30.** The player takes the causeway, now empty, to its far end, and along the inked route to the junction. The junction hatch to the interior is shut: it is on the junction's circuit, which nothing has powered. The player notes the valve beside it that would join the yard channel to the junction pool. Not this time; the battery is the way home.
+
**8:30 to 11:30.** The player takes the causeway, now empty, to its far end, following the inked route. The gate into the interior is shut: it is on the causeway circuit, and the causeway is dark because the player lit the yard. To go in, the causeway must be lit, which means the next surge comes to the causeway, the road home. The player writes it down: the door to the interior and the way out are the same branch. Not this time; the full battery is the way home.
**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 three bundles, a full battery's worth of charge unspent and lost at the dock, and the interior route copied.
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**What the hatch does when power ends.** If the panel is thrown back to causeway while the player is inside the hall, the hatch loses power. It 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 manual crank that opens the hatch in ten seconds without power. So the trap is recoverable, and the recovery takes exactly long enough to matter.
+
**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, and anyone inside is shut in. Every hall has an unpowered exit: here, the ladder up to the yard ledge, a dry shelter beside the channel. Climb, wait, and come down to the bank or take the culvert. The trap is recoverable without solving anything, and the recovery costs 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.
---
@@ 299,6 313,8 @@
| Wet or dry channel | Floor tint; ripple | Tileset | Not yet selected | Flat colour tint, no asset |
| Energised water | Arc particles on the tint | Engine particles | None needed | Colour flash if particles are costly |
| Next surge: intake and countdown | Screen overlay with map marker; locked marker after dispatch | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text overlay |
+
| Each entered crowd's current target | Small marker on the overlay per crowd | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text list |
+
| A beacon's reach (alternative model only) | Glow radius on the ground | Engine-drawn | None needed | Not needed under the baseline |
| A surge's press and pursuit | Crowd density; organisms turning to face you | Enemy sprite, one type, tint variants | **Gap: the bioelectric enemy is the one thing free packs are unlikely to supply**; likely needs owner-approved custom art or a heavily reworked free sprite | Reworked generic creature sprite; this is the first approval request to expect |
| Spent organism | Dimmer sprite | Same sprite, tint | As above | Tint only |
| Battery charge, drips, links | Rack UI | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text readout |
@@ 316,23 332,25 @@
## 15. Scope
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**Minimum complete experience.** One district (two docks, causeway, culvert, yard and pump hall, sluice, junction, interior with one control room), three mystery tiers, six module types, one enemy type with size and tint variants, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, an ending. About ten to twelve expeditions.
+
**Minimum complete experience.** One district (two docks, causeway with gate and ledge, culvert, yard with pump hall and ledge, sluice, the valve gallery, the relay room), three mystery tiers, six or seven module types, one enemy type with size and tint variants, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, an ending. About ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours.
**Optional extensions, in order of value.** A second district using the same rule with different geography. A second enemy variant that conducts differently. More module types. A larger colony.
**Explicit cuts.** No fluid simulation: channels are wet or dry. No destructible terrain. No free chemistry. No procedural layout: the district is fixed and the mystery depends on that. No base-building grid, citizens, hunger or production. No multiplayer. No kill experience.
-
**Complexity drivers.** Crowd behaviour with pursuit and press (the one real engineering risk). Readable energised water. The rack UI. The forecast overlay.
+
**Complexity drivers.** Crowd behaviour with holding, thinning and proximity pursuit (the one real engineering risk). Readable energised water. The rack UI. The forecast overlay.
-
**Cheap alternatives if needed.** Press as a fixed radius that grows on a timer rather than simulated crowding. A single fixed pursuit range. Text inspection for every clue prop. Flat tints for water states.
+
**Cheap alternatives if needed.** Thinning as a fixed radius that grows on a timer rather than simulated crowding. A single fixed proximity radius. Text inspection for every clue prop. Flat tints for water states.
---
## 16. Honesty: what is resolved, what is open, what is unknown
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**Resolved in this draft.** One routing model, written out and priced (section 4). The yard intake is in the water. Modules do not conduct; wet salvage does, and passes it on. Charge is finite by rule. No colony upkeep. The culvert is kept dry by the pump hall's pump and costs the player nothing. The hatch has a stated closing rule and a recoverable exit.
+
**Resolved in this draft.** One routing model, written out and priced (section 4), on the world designer's map. The yard intake is in the water. Modules do not conduct; wet salvage does, and passes it on. Charge is finite by rule. No colony upkeep. The culvert is a gravity drain and costs the player nothing. The hatch has a stated closing rule and an unpowered exit.
+
+
**Presented for decision, not resolved.** The routing alternative (sight-limited beacons). The ending's shape and the game's length. The colony's size. The rack's size. The genre's payoff module. The enemy's identity, its name and the drowned-city setting. The presentation assumption.
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**Presented for decision, not resolved.** The routing alternative (sight-limited beacons). The ending's shape. The colony's size. The enemy's identity and the drowned-city setting. The presentation assumption.
+
**An outside critique, answered where it is this document's to answer.** A critic outside the recorded team has posted a market and originality audit; PM has not yet ruled on its standing, and nothing in it is treated here as an assignment. Four of its points are design questions and are answered above on this page's own terms: what the rule does that its inspirations do not (section 1), the rack as a stated small scope (section 5), the genre's payoff moment (section 6), and the renewable after the mystery is solved with the game's honest length (section 11). Two are the owner's: the enemy's name, since the critic reports that "the Flood" is the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and the owner's requirement fixes the meaning of the term rather than the string, which I have not independently verified but is cheap to check and cheap to change; and whether audience, comparables and length should join the document criteria. One is PM's and the critic's to settle between them.
**Unknown until played.** Whether the deadline produces planning or anxiety. Whether fifteen minutes and three surges leave enough observation time. Whether the panic switch dominates. Whether a crowd's press and pursuit read on a busy screen. Whether "no kill experience" leaves fighting satisfying. Whether the leak rate makes the rack a decision or a nuisance. Whether ten to twelve expeditions is enough content. Nothing here is a claim of tested enjoyment.
@@ 343,11 361,13 @@
1. **Confirm or redirect the premise.** Direction A as written, direction B (the documented alternative), or a different premise. A is PM's provisional choice, not yet yours.
2. **Enemy and setting.** Bioelectric organisms in a drowned pumping district are proposals. If you want zombies, aliens or another Flood, the rule survives; the fiction changes.
3. **The routing model.** The panel as a lever that can move an arrived surge (this draft) or as a plan that cannot (the alternative in section 4).
-
4. **The ending.** One district with an ending at the relay, as proposed, or an open-ended game.
+
4. **The ending and the length.** One district with an ending at the relay, about three to four hours, as proposed; or an open-ended game; or the proposed game plus a second district as the extension that adds the most. Know that a two-hour refund window covers most of the minimum as designed.
5. **The colony's size.** Three decisions and no upkeep, as proposed, or a larger settlement, which is a second game.
-
6. **No kill experience.** Charge as the only combat yield, as proposed, or a conventional experience curve.
-
7. **Presentation.** Top-down 2D, as assumed.
-
8. **Assets.** Expect one custom-art request, the enemy. Nothing is requested yet.
+
6. **No kill experience, and the payoff moment.** Charge as the only combat yield, as proposed; and whether to add the arc module so the genre's mowing moment exists as a spend. Without it, the honest label is a routing game with automatic weapons rather than the genre as its audience knows it.
+
7. **The rack's size.** Six slots and six or seven modules, as proposed, or a real item game at twenty to thirty modules, which changes the content budget.
+
8. **The enemy's name.** "The Flood" is your term for the enemy mass; an outside critic reports it is also the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and that the phrase is hard to find on a storefront. Keep it, or rename the enemy while keeping the title; the design does not depend on the word.
+
9. **Presentation.** Top-down 2D, as assumed.
+
10. **Assets.** Expect one custom-art request, the enemy. Nothing is requested yet.
Development remains unauthorized until you have read this and said so explicitly.
@@ 366,9 386,12 @@
- **Beacon:** a lamp on the district's circuit; steady when powered, flashing at a dispatch, dark when unpowered. A lit beacon draws the Flood inside the district.
- **Panel:** the three-position switch at the causeway head that decides which branch's power and signal lines are live.
- **Power line / signal line:** the two lines the panel switches; power lights and opens things, signal carries the dispatch pulse.
-
- **Press:** the slow outward creep of a gathered surge's edge.
-
- **Pursuit range:** the distance at which organisms break off a crowd to chase you.
-
- **Shelter:** a dry dock or the junction platform; enemies neither enter nor spawn there.
+
- **Thinning:** the slow drift of a gathered crowd outward along its branch during a quiet interval.
+
- **Proximity radius:** the distance within which organisms leave a crowd to chase you.
+
- **Gate / hatch:** each branch's one powered door: the gate into the interior at the causeway's far end, the hatch into the pump hall. Open while their branch is lit.
+
- **Ledge:** a raised dry shelter, one mid-causeway and one on the yard bank beside the channel.
+
- **Shelter:** a dry dock or either ledge; enemies neither enter nor spawn there.
+
- **Arc:** an optional module that makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism while it drains a battery.
- **Rack:** the six-slot frame on the surveyor's back; the whole inventory apart from the cutter.
- **Module / bundle / cargo / salvage:** a module is a piece of gear; salvage is the material the colony needs; a bundle is one slot of it; cargo is the bundles in your rack.
- **Link:** the drawn connection from a battery to the one module it powers.
@@ 383,22 406,24 @@
## Appendix B: bookkeeping
-
**Status.** DES102 draft r1, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document. Author: the Lead Game and Systems Designer, the session PM identified as canonical in Brief D014. Written under Brief D013 (direction A, provisional, reversible) and Tasks PMR001. The design-only gate (Brief D007) is unchanged: nothing has been built, prototyped, simulated, tested or drawn.
+
**Status.** DES102 draft r2, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r1 (d828a4) is page history. Author: the Lead Game and Systems Designer, the session PM identified as canonical in Brief D014. Written under Brief D013 (direction A, provisional, reversible) and Tasks PMR001. The design-only gate (Brief D007) is unchanged: nothing has been built, prototyped, simulated, tested or drawn.
+
+
**Sources read.** Hub 89e2dc; Brief 3cf14c; Tasks ee938e (PMR001); Team 3ddc81; Design r6 211106 (the accepted concept packet is r4, 42f653); World and Mystery r8 ba6f8b (WLD102, the exact revision the world designer handed over; r9 41681d changes only their PM report); Design Review r7 bb6871; Clarity Questions 45c6a9; Glossary 86c1c4; PM Reviews (PMR001 checkpoint); External Critique r1 (EXT101, standing not yet ruled on by PM).
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**Sources read.** Hub 89e2dc; Brief 3cf14c; Tasks ee938e (PMR001); Team 3ddc81; Design r5 b030c9 (the accepted concept packet is r4, 42f653); World and Mystery r7 fa3eb1; Design Review r6 a89227; Clarity Questions c74728; Glossary f1bf1f. WLD102 had not been posted at the time of writing; section 9 will take the world designer's corrected revision.
+
**What r2 changes.** Integrates WLD102 r8 as delivered: the world designer's map (interior gate on the causeway circuit, two ledges, culvert exits, the ladder from the hall to the yard ledge as the unpowered exit), the gravity-drain culvert, the crowd vocabulary (holding, proximity, thinning), the re-derived dock consequence, the mid-surge price by route and door, the mystery's revised rows, and the shut / fix / hold ending with the valve gallery as tier two. Answers the outside critique where it is design: the differentiator (section 1), the rack as a small scope (section 5), the optional arc module for the genre's payoff (section 6), the renewable and the length in hours with the refund-window fact (section 11), and three new owner decisions (section 17). The routing baseline is unchanged from r1 and from D013; the world designer's r9 asks PM to confirm or reverse it, and this document is written so that either answer changes section 4 and the scenes, not the rest.
**PMR001 corrections, where each is answered.**
1. One routing model: section 4, clause 3 and the plain-terms list; PM's baseline adopted; sight-limited alternative presented for decision; the coil cannot select intake because signal and power are separate lines; every scene (sections 1, 8, 12, 13) rewritten under this model; W2 reduced to intake commitment.
-
2. Extraction and dock consequence: section 2 diagram; section 4 surge behaviour (press, pursuit, dispersal by reset), dock consequence, no blocked dock; section 12 untouched-panel retreat; section 13 pump-hall moment with hatch closing rule and crank; the yard intake in water carried into the topology.
+
2. Extraction and dock consequence: section 2 diagram; section 4 surge behaviour (press, pursuit, dispersal by reset), dock consequence, no blocked dock; section 12 untouched-panel retreat; section 13 pump-hall moment with hatch closing rule and the ladder exit; the yard intake in water carried into the topology.
3. Rack: section 5, nonconductive modules, onward conduction through bundles, three drawn loadouts with links, starting-kit wording, planting and retrieval, one failed arrangement, numbers labelled proposals.
4. Charge: section 4 clause 4 and section 6, once-per-organism yield, discharge cost, the kill-experience reasoning restated as a bet with its uncertainty; combat rules carried into sections 12 and 13.
5. Ending without a tax: sections 10 and 11, no upkeep, three tiers in the same district, one path, expedition count as an estimate, title related to holding enemies off the refuge.
6. Readability: plain body, Appendix A with the five requested terms, the readable-state table in section 14 with sources checked today, the culvert's pump account reconciled to the world designer's, Quiet 3 shortened.
-
**Changes from the concept packet (DES101 r5).** The glow-range and split-surge rules are withdrawn from the baseline and kept as the labelled alternative. Power and signal lines are new, to give PM's "coil cannot select intake" a physical reason. Press and pursuit range are new, to make a held surge a decision. The siphon module is new. Numbers are proposed throughout.
+
**Changes from the concept packet (DES101 r5).** The glow-range and split-surge rules are withdrawn from the baseline and kept as the labelled alternative. Power and signal lines are new, to give PM's "coil cannot select intake" a physical reason; the world designer reached the same separation independently. Holding, proximity and thinning are the world designer's terms, adopted. The siphon and the optional arc modules are new. Numbers are proposed throughout.
**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: WLD102 correction of routing, topology and the mystery's consequences under this model, plus tiers two and three of section 11 as their contribution; then a contradiction check of this draft. Critic: REV102 when this is posted. PM: whether the routing alternative goes to the owner as a decision or is settled by PM; whether the enemy-art approval request should be raised now. The Design page and the Glossary will be updated to point here for rule details, so that no page states the withdrawn glow-range rule as current.
+
**Open handoffs.** World designer: a contradiction check of this draft against WLD102 r8, and any correction PM's routing ruling requires. Critic: REV102 on this draft. 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 External Critique page, and whether the enemy-art approval request should be raised now. The Design page header (211106) and the Glossary (86c1c4) already point here for rule details, so no page states the withdrawn glow-range rule as current.
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**PM report.** Task DES102; artifact Design Document draft r1; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; risks are listed in section 16; next handoff is REV102 and WLD102; one PM request: confirm that the routing alternative is presented to the owner as decision 3 rather than resolved by PM before review.
+
**PM report.** Task DES102; artifact Design Document draft r2 (r1 d828a4 in history); no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; risks are listed in section 16; next handoff is REV102 and the world designer's contradiction check; one PM request: rule on the routing model the world designer's r9 raised, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
