Hold The Horde — Design Coverage
PM coverage assessment, 8 September 2026. This is the remaining-work map for the whole-game outline, alongside the dated Progress and forecast. It is management work, not an additional completed gameplay package.
Across fifteen major areas, four have usable first-pass rules, eight have examples or alternatives, and three still need a dedicated contract. These are coverage categories, not weighted progress or a percentage of the game. Even an area with usable rules still needs its finite content, edge cases and integration. “Written” does not mean owner-approved, implemented or validated.
The first complete wiki must describe actual behavior, progression and consequences across every major area. It may use clearly labelled provisional defaults and numerical tuning; a major area left only as “TBD” does not qualify. The later detailed-content milestone specifies the individual authored rooms, clues, encounters and scenes.
Remaining first-pass work
SMALL below is the outline's proposed planning sample, not an adopted game size. Counts help expose work and may change after the scope decision.
| Area | Coverage now | Concrete remaining v1 outcome | Dependency and work that can proceed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expedition progression and regions | Examples: opening, outline | Four-region, twelve-objective SMALL dependency map: discoveries, return value, alternate access and build/cast/language gates | Draft now. Final counts, ending destinations and physical joins remain replaceable until selected. |
| Death, shifts and station connections | Conditional joining mechanism | One shared rule set for death order, room/object identity, permanent joins, recovery, rescue interaction and whole-station completion | Local permanence is already selected. The final-layout answer affects the rigid candidate; identity and recovery requirements can proceed now. |
| Oxygen, condition and carrying | Usable first-pass rules | Variant/edge-case matrix and provisional opening quantity sheet | No owner answer blocks paper variants. Pressure and balance need later authorized evidence. |
| Connected-build grammar | Usable first-pass rules | Conversion, storage, saturation, readiness and rig/infrastructure conformance matrix | Draft now; exact geometry and quantities may stay provisional. New catalogue behavior must be reconciled with the shared rules. |
| Equipment and acquisition | Twelve-part catalogue preparation-closed400; acquisition alternatives | Catalogue plus source/acquisition map, material uses and exception rules | Catalogue behavior is prepared. Found parts versus fabrication is unselected, but neither blocks observable part design. |
| Combat and contested work | Usable first-pass rules | Shared combat state sheet linking auto-fire/manual specials, controllers, oxygen actions, interruption and recovery | Draft now; targeting assistance and field healing remain proposals. Readability is unvalidated. |
| Enemies, encounters and traps | Three creature proposals, two encounters | Four-region pressure matrix and five trap/mechanism families, with cues, counters, reset/persistence and discovery purpose | Assigned to Systems401 after catalogue closeout400. Functional designs can precede final region placement or story origins. |
| Two alien languages and discovery | Expedition example, journal rules, testable interaction | Four SMALL discovery chains across both languages: evidence, competing interpretations, discriminating action, correction and later use | Draft operational chains now. Define how visitor marks and utterance registers relate; a response alone does not prove request semantics or a god. |
| Story, endings and corruption | Story and corruption alternatives | Beat/evidence/consequence map through apparent, deeper and optional secret layers, including visible ending choices and colony consequences | Final canon needs owner choices. Draft the causal alternatives now; no automatic death budget, ending lock or mandatory treatment. |
| Authored cast and short rescue | Two first-survivor alternatives and local examples | Five SMALL cast briefs: motives, disagreements, bounded knowledge, home contribution, three-scene arc and short rescue outcomes | The first-survivor choice and global mortality affect specific branches. Other characters and living crossings can proceed. |
| Colony and home projects | Home example, cooperative project | Home-loop state map and five person-linked projects with voluntary contributions, results and equipment reclaim | Draft using an explicit provisional no-upkeep baseline. A management economy needs an owner decision before adoption. |
| Information, controls and accessibility | Usable first-pass contract | Cue/interaction inventory, journal/manifest structure and option/default interactions, including non-colour/non-audio equivalents | Most work can proceed. Mechanical uncertainties affect their particular displays. Full journal pause is settled. Existing article ownership must be respected. |
| Save, identity and content authoring | Dedicated contract missing | Design-only save/resume, death transaction, room/item/record identity, authored-content versions and recovery requirements | Start requirements now. Final shift/rescue order affects transaction ordering; engineering and migrations belong to later development. |
| Content scope and production feasibility | Dedicated game-specific contract missing | Deduplicated finite inventory, reuse assumptions, unique authoring/state costs, asset categories, Unity/Steam constraints and explicit scope cuts | Cost alternatives now. Scope commitments and purchases need owner approval; verify current licences/specifications when considering actual assets. |
| Development and validation handoff | Consolidated plan missing | Prioritized design risks, later discriminating evidence, interpretation of success/failure and the decision affected | PM can write the plan now. No prototypes, code, simulations, assets or playtests are authorized by writing it. |
Work sequence and forecast
| Window, Jerusalem dates | Planned result | Staffing/dependency |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Sep | Catalogue review/response; this coverage map; next trap/encounter proposal | PM and existing GPT Systems continue. Both Claude roles stay paused until the owner confirms their return. |
| 9–11 Sep, core buffer to 14 Sep | Shared core rules and identity requirements; start region, cast, language and production work | Two additional specialist setups planned 9–10 Sep. Ready scopes, not provider availability alone, determine assignments. |
| 14–18 Sep | Domain designs and finite inventories sufficiently concrete for cross-domain review | Content counts and major story/mechanism choices must be dispositioned or visibly provisional. |
| Target 22 Sep; likely 18–29 Sep | Complete first-pass wiki with integrated interfaces and a development handoff outline | PM integration and review are on the critical path; more writers do not remove that work. |
| Target 10 Nov; likely 20 Oct–1 Dec | Detailed finite authored campaign specification | Low-confidence estimate until an inventory and representative detailed packages are checked. |
The core target remains 11 September (10–14 September). These are planning estimates, not guarantees or demonstrated playtime. The next substantive re-estimate is 9 September at 18:00 Jerusalem. Early completion of a local written package does not by itself justify bringing the whole-wiki date forward.
Shared integration outcome04 must replace obsolete fixed-map and long/multiple-refuge assumptions in article bodies, rather than accumulating warning banners. A pending choice blocks only the rules that actually depend on it. It does not suspend the rest of the design.
Estimate accounting
The outline's 111–208 role-hours is a partial original specification allowance, not remaining labor. Its survival and information first-pass packages are now prepared. The later survival22–39 and information35–59 role-hour envelopes describe deeper inventories; they are not measurements of elapsed effort and must not simply be added to the old total. Equipment's first-pass allowance likewise differs from its later detailed catalogue.
Track deliverable and depth separately: first-pass rule set, finite content inventory, and later implementation. Count a shared survivor scene/colony project/clue/region objective once, then estimate only its distinct additional work. Keep package review/response, PM cross-page integration and whole-game coherence review separate without double counting. Reconcile these scopes before publishing a new remaining-hours total.
This map is based on the current owner brief, Whole Game Outline revision65595abf, the linked owning articles and a source-by-source PM coverage audit. The catalogue was subsequently read at submission396, received one focused review/response397/399 and was preparation-closed400 at revision737b3cfd. Outcome21 now covers the trap/encounter first pass. The management checkpoint retains the exact inspected source revisions. No page count, model agreement or desk review establishes fun, balance, usability, performance or campaign duration.