Commit fcf9d4

2026-09-06 19:42:23 Anonymous: REF107 r1: new reference page on what comparable games actually ship as content, written for the D019 scope expansion and PM's eight-district planning target. Halls of Torment publishes a full content manifest on its own store page - 6 stages with unique environments against 74 abilities, 60 items with 240 rarity variants, 70+ monsters, 35+ bosses, 500 quests and 1000+ traits - and Vampire Survivors' base game has 5 normal stages per its official wiki. Both carry few environments and very large per-run variety, which is the opposite shape from where this project's numbers currently sit (eight districts proposed against about ten module types and one enemy type). Leads with the caveat that governs everything: these are current manifests after years of updates, not launch content, no launch figure was sourced and none is estimated, so the honest use is 'what these games grew into' rather than 'what you must ship'. Cross-checked the stage count two ways (store text vs achievement-named stages) and explained the difference. Proposes and endorses no district count.

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+	# Reference — Content scale: what comparable games actually ship
+
+	**REF107 · r1 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Proposes no count.**
+	First revision. Written because [Brief D019](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) records the owner rejecting the
+	three-to-four-hour scope and asking for *"a substantially larger campaign with many districts"* and
+	*"detailed mechanic, enemy and weapon pages"*, and PM has proposed **eight districts as a first planning
+	target, explicitly not an owner-approved count**. Nothing on this wiki records what comparable shipped
+	games actually contain. This page does, from developers' own published lists.
+	Sources read: [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) D019–D021,
+	[Expansion Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief),
+	[Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) §15, [Reference](/Reference).
+
+	> **Read this before the numbers, because it changes what they mean.**
+	>
+	> **Every manifest below is a game's *current* content, not what it shipped with.** Vampire Survivors has
+	> been updated since October 2022 and has DLC; Halls of Torment since September 2024. A first release is
+	> not the right thing to compare against a mature product's accumulated content, and I have **no sourced
+	> figure for either game's launch-day content**, so none appears here.
+	>
+	> This page therefore shows **what these games grew into**, which is a real and useful thing to see, and is
+	> **not** a statement of what a version 1.0 needs. It proposes no district count, endorses none, and takes
+	> no position on PM's eight.
+
+	---
+
+	## 1. Halls of Torment — the developer's own full content list
+
+	Halls of Torment publishes a complete content manifest on its Steam store page. Quoted verbatim from the
+	*Full Content List* section of [its store page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/)
+	(read 2026-09-06 via Steam's public `appdetails` endpoint — query in §4):
+
+	| Content | Count |
+	|---|---:|
+	| Stages with unique environments | **6** |
+	| Playable characters & character marks | 11 |
+	| Blessings | 25 |
+	| Unique items to retrieve and unlock | 60 |
+	| Higher rarity item variants | 240 |
+	| Abilities and ability upgrades | **74** |
+	| Artifacts | 30 |
+	| Unique bosses | 35+ |
+	| Unique monsters | **70+** |
+	| Quests | 500 |
+	| Traits that upgrade characters and abilities | 1000+ |
+
+	For context on the game those numbers belong to: $6.66 list, 31,812 Steam reviews at 95% positive, released
+	2024-09-24 ([REF102 §2](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data)).
+
+	**Cross-check.** Steam's achievement descriptions name five distinct stages — Haunted Caverns, Ember
+	Grounds, Forgotten Viaduct, Frozen Depths, Chambers of Dissonance — against the store's stated six. That is
+	consistent: an enumeration from achievements is a **lower bound**, since a stage need not have an
+	achievement naming it. The developer's own figure of six is the one to use.
+
+	## 2. Vampire Survivors — stages, by category
+
+	From the [official Vampire Survivors wiki's Stage page](https://vampire.survivors.wiki/w/Stage):
+
+	| Category | Count |
+	|---|---:|
+	| Base game, **normal stages** | **5** |
+	| Base game, bonus stages | 7 |
+	| Base game, challenge stages | 9 |
+	| Base game, other | 3 |
+	| DLC stages | ~10 |
+
+	The wiki's own DLC grouping is internally ambiguous — it lists ten entries while labelling nine as
+	"special" — so that row is given as approximate rather than resolved. The five **normal** stages are
+	Mad Forest, Inlaid Library, Dairy Plant, Gallo Tower and Cappella Magna; Cappella Magna is where the
+	ending marker sits ([REF102 §3a](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data)).
+
+	## 3. The shape these manifests have (inference, for PM, the Lead and the proposed designers)
+
+	Labelled as inference and offered, not urged. **It is an observation about two games' current manifests and
+	is not a norm, a target, a budget or a recommendation.** The district count is PM's and the owner's, and
+	the content counts in the [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) are its own labelled
+	proposals.
+
+	**Both games carry few distinct environments and very large per-run variety.** Halls of Torment: **6
+	stages** against 74 abilities, 60 items with 240 rarity variants, 70+ monsters and 1000+ traits. Vampire
+	Survivors: **5 normal stages** in its base game. In both, the number that is small is the environment
+	count, and the numbers that are large are the things that differ *within* an environment.
+
+	Set beside this project's current position — PM proposing **eight districts** as a planning target, and the
+	Design Document's §15 minimum listing about ten module types and one enemy type with variants — **the two
+	axes point in opposite directions**: the environment count would be above both comparables while the
+	per-run variety count is an order of magnitude below them. That is a description of where the numbers
+	currently sit. Whether it matters, and which axis should move if either does, is a design and scope
+	judgement this page does not make and has no standing to make.
+
+	**And the caveat at the top applies hardest here:** those large numbers are years of post-launch
+	accumulation. Comparing a first release to them is the same category error this section's own
+	[REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) warns about — a plan measured against a mature
+	product. The honest use of §1 and §2 is *"here is what these games grew into"*, not *"here is what you
+	must ship"*.
+
+	## 4. Method, so every figure can be re-run
+
+	```
+	# developer's own store description, including any content list
+	https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=<appid>&cc=us&l=en&filters=basic
+	-> data.about_the_game
+
+	# achievement names, descriptions and unlock shares (used for the §1 cross-check)
+	https://steamcommunity.com/stats/<appid>/achievements/
+	```
+
+	App IDs: Halls of Torment 2218750, Vampire Survivors 1794680. The Vampire Survivors stage list is from its
+	official wiki, not from Steam, because the store description states no stage count.
+
+	**Games checked that publish no usable content count**, so that nobody repeats the search: Vampire
+	Survivors, Brotato, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Noita and Pathogenic give no content manifest in their
+	store text. Two smaller figures did turn up and are recorded for completeness rather than built on —
+	20 Minutes Till Dawn states *"over 50 different upgrades"*, and Brotato's description gives run length
+	rather than counts. Achievement descriptions in Noita, 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
+	and Brotato name no stages in a form that could be enumerated.
+
+	---
+
+	## What this page does not claim
+
+	No district count is proposed, endorsed or criticised — not eight, not any number. No claim that this
+	project's content counts are too low, too high, or right. No launch-day content figures for any game,
+	because none was sourced (see the box at the top). No sales, revenue or audience claim. No claim that
+	these two games are representative: they are two titles that happen to publish enumerable content, chosen
+	for that reason, which is a selection rule that favours games willing to advertise a big list.
+
+	## Sources
+
+	- [Halls of Torment on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/) — the *Full Content List* quoted in §1
+	- [Vampire Survivors wiki: Stage](https://vampire.survivors.wiki/w/Stage) — the stage categories in §2
+	- Steam public endpoints `appdetails` and the community achievement pages — §4
+	- [REF102](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data) — prices, review counts and the ending-marker share referenced in §1 and §2
+	- [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) D019–D021 and the [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) — the scope change this page was written for
+
+	## Bookkeeping
+
+	**Method.** Developer store text and one official game wiki, read 2026-09-06 through the public endpoints
+	in §4. Nothing was built, prototyped, tested or played. The §1 cross-check between store-stated stages and
+	achievement-named stages was run because a single figure with no second source is how a wrong number gets
+	into a table; it agreed, with the difference explained.
+
+	**Stated limits.** Current content, not launch content, and no launch figure was estimated. Two games, both
+	selected because they publish counts. The Vampire Survivors DLC row is approximate because its own wiki is
+	ambiguous there, and it is marked rather than resolved.
+
+	**Corrections.** Kill any figure here by re-running its query and posting the result.