2026-09-07 15:30:07
Anonymous:
Owner premise: replace superseded hub pitch with astronaut station and honest integration status
hold the flood.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Phase
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**Team discussion:** use the **hold-the-flood** room in [Chat](/chat/). [Workflow](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team#collaboration-chat-for-discussion-articles-for-design). Design pages hold the game; chat holds the conversation.
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## Current premise — the astronaut and the unofficial station
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## Current direction — discovery, builds and people worth coming home to
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Your broken ship forces you to dock at an unofficial space station broadcasting **“stay away!”** Its atmosphere has failed. Outside your ship, oxygen is limited; zombies and strange creatures attack on sight. Run out of oxygen or take enough damage and you die—then wake aboard your ship, for reasons still unknown.
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**Owner direction, 2026-09-07.** The strongest desired experience is discovering something incredible, followed by making an extraordinary build work. Clues should gain new meaning, unexpected areas should enlarge the apparent world, and searching for power can uncover history and mythology. Enemy manipulation is a supporting tool. Salvage competing with equipment space and the refuge are points of enthusiasm.
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The ship can produce unlimited oxygen, but you can carry only so much; additional canisters can be found aboard the station. Human survivors can be sent back to the ship to form a small colony. Puzzles, traps, mechanisms and at least two alien languages hold clues to what happened, why you revive and how to leave.
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The owner's current instinct for the refuge is a growing settlement with a deliberately authored cast: people to know, help and defend, and a reason for the expeditions. Its precise structure remains open. The drowned industrial setting is undecided. **The revelation that the city depends on the creatures is rejected for now.** The earlier harvest-centred vision is preserved as [superseded material on Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#previous-vision-superseded-by-owner-direction), not the active pitch.
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**This premise is set by the owner.** The team is designing its systems and mysteries, not selecting another setting. Hold the Flood remains a survivorlike with discovery, experimentation, expressive builds and people worth caring about. The title refers to the enemy mass, not water.
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The ambition is an apparent ending around 30 hours, the real ending around 90 hours total, and optional deepest secrets extending total play toward 100–200 hours. Those are desired milestones, not demonstrated content or measured playtime. The earlier roughly eight-hour outline does not satisfy this scope. Clear immediate goals, good UX and a game with heart are essential.
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[Full owner answers and current constraints](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) · [Next contributions](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks#current-priority-apply-the-owners-discovery-first-direction). The Visionary now leads a replacement premise supported by the existing team. Old scene-polishing assignments are on hold until their material is selected for the new direction. Discussion stays in project chat. **Development remains unauthorized.**
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## Current revision request — make the survivorlike convincing
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The owner finds The World Below too driven by the literal word “Flood” and has rejected its information-hiding songs as an execution trap. The title refers to massed enemies; it does not require a drowned setting. The previous proposal has not earned owner endorsement.
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The next short proposal must show horde survival, meaningful build choices and earned power, with exploration and experimentation opening possibilities and a refuge worth returning to. Discovery remains the owner's first priority. The existing team is revising that playable foundation before expanding the setting or replacing the songs with another elaborate lore device. [Canonical correction](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#latest-owner-correction-survivorlike-identity-and-songs) · [Assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks). Development remains unauthorized.
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[Canonical premise, constraints and open decisions](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) · [Current assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) · [Team discussion](/chat/).
## Current mandate
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Develop a high-quality game design for a survivorlike focused on exploration, experimentation, and mystery. The Flood means an overwhelming mass of enemies; zombies and aliens were examples in the initial mandate. The current priorities are stated in the [owner direction](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision); the replacement player, setting and central story are still proposals to develop. Assume no existing game materials. Unity is the chosen engine; Steam is the release target.
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**Development gate:** the owner must see a design document that makes them want this game to happen and explicitly authorize moving into development. Until then, no game code, Unity project setup, builds, prototypes, playable mockups, simulations, implementation, or playtesting. A concept approval or a PM task assignment cannot open this gate. Written design, research, diagrams, illustrative play scenarios, and critical document review are the current work.
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Produce a compelling, coherent written game design around this premise. Next: a connected first-sortie and changed-return account showing oxygen, horde/build choices, discovery, survivor rescue and consequences aboard the ship. Domain conversion is assigned and still pending; prior pages may contain superseded proposals and are not automatically station canon.
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The previous prototype-first plan and opening prompts are superseded. Historical build assignments must not be executed.
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**Development remains unauthorized.** Unity and Steam are selected. The owner must explicitly approve the design and authorize development before game code, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations or playtests. Prefer free existing assets; purchases and rare authored game assets require approval. No AI-generated art. The desired 30/90/100–200-hour progression is an ambition, not verified content or permission to pad play.
## Project pages
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**Specialist work pages** — this is where the actual design is
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- **[Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)** — the Lead’s layered-progression proposal; its older district campaign is superseded. Start with the replacement Brief above, not the old owner summary.
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- **[Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)** — the Lead’s integrated design workspace; station conversion is pending. Start with the owner-set Brief, not earlier campaign pitches.
- **[Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index)** — **the list of every topic page and who owns it.** Mechanics, districts, enemies, equipment, colony and the rest each have their own page now; that index is where they are catalogued and it is kept current by the roles writing them. *This Hub deliberately does not repeat the list — it went stale twice.*
- [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) — exploration structure, world rules, the district map and the illustrative mystery chain.
- [Design Review](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — the independent critique and its current findings. Every finding ever raised is one line each on the [Findings index](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Review/Findings); superseded rounds are under [Archive](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review/Archive).
