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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You are a surveyor for a dozen survivors living on one dock above a drowned district. Below you is a flooded pumping station whose machinery still runs, and a mass of hostile bioelectric organisms, the Flood, that pours in on a schedule. You cannot kill the Flood. You can learn the district well enough to be where it is not, and to make it go where you want.

The whole district runs on one rule: **current**. Current flows through touching metal and through water to everything the water connects. Current opens doors, lights lamps, and calls the Flood, because the Flood follows lit beacons. Current is also how your gear works, how your backpack is packed, and what keeps the colony's dock dry. Every discovery you make is a new consequence of that one rule, and every experiment is a bet about what the current will do.

Each expedition is about fifteen minutes. Three surges of the Flood arrive, each larger, each announced in advance. Between them you explore, gather salvage, and run experiments. You leave by a dock before the third surge closes the district, or you are rescued without your cargo. What you learn stays with you. What you carried out repairs the colony. Then you go back down, knowing more.

**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.

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.

There is a switch at the head of the causeway that decides which side of the district gets power. If you run to it and throw it to the yard, the hatch will open and stay open. The yard beacon will light. And in ninety seconds the surge will come in here, not there, because the Flood goes to the lit beacon.

You could instead take the tool on your back, a coil that stores a charge, wade into the channel wearing insulation, and discharge it. The water carries the current to the hatch and it opens for a few seconds: long enough to get through. The yard stays dark. The surge still goes to the causeway. But you have spent the charge you spent the last surge harvesting.

Or you could do what the experienced player does: throw the switch, let the hatch open, stand in the channel's edge in insulation, and wait. When the surge wades into the water to reach the beacon, you discharge the coil into the water they are standing in. They stop, stunned, and shed charge you can pick up. The hatch is open. The battery is full. You invited the Flood into the water where your coil was waiting.

The rule is the same in all three. What differs is what you knew.

---

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.

- **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.

- **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.

- **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.

- **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.

- **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.

- **Interior.** Beyond the junction; the later mystery tiers (section 11). Not part of the first expeditions.

- **Shelters.** The two docks (when dry) and one raised platform at the junction. Repacking happens only in shelters.

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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.

**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.

**Health.** A short bar, five hits. Touching an organism costs one, with a moment of immunity after. Standing in energised water without insulation costs one per second. Health does not regenerate in the district. Leaving by a dock restores it. A found **kit** module restores it once and costs a rack slot.

**Surges and the forecast.** The district's relay still runs on its old timer. At each scheduled tick, a **dispatch**, it sends a pulse down the line the panel has selected, the beacon on that line flashes, and a surge comes in there. Three dispatches per expedition, at roughly three, eight and twelve minutes, each surge larger. The **forecast** is the relay's own schedule, read from a board at the dock and shown as a countdown and a map marker at the intake. It exists because the district always had it; it is the Flood's timetable only because the Flood follows the pulse.

- **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.

- **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.

- **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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Everything below is a consequence of four clauses. They apply identically to the district, to the rack on your back, and to the colony's dock.

1. **Conduction.** Current flows between touching conductors, and through water to everything the water connects. Insulation stops it.

2. **Power.** A device works only while it is energised: a hatch, lamp or beacon on a live line or in energised water; a rack module linked to a charged battery. A lit beacon is steady while powered.

3. **Attraction.** The district has two kinds of line: a **power line** and a **signal line**, both switched by the panel to the causeway, to the yard, or to neither. At a dispatch the relay's pulse travels the *signal* line only, the beacon on it flashes, and the surge enters there. **The panel alone decides the intake.** After entry, a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon it can reach, re-evaluated continuously, and gathers around it when it arrives; with no lit beacon reachable it spreads along the branch it entered. Current you inject yourself (the coil, a planted beacon's battery) travels power, never signal: it can light a beacon steady and open a hatch, so it can draw a surge that is already inside, but it can never choose where the next surge enters.

4. **Charge.** Organisms carry charge. A killed one drops a small **mote**; a mass stunned in water sheds large motes. Each organism sheds once per expedition and is visibly dimmer afterward. Motes fade in seconds; walking over one fills a battery in your rack; with no battery, the charge is lost. Charge never leaves the district.

What this gives the player, in plain terms:

- 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.

- **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.

- **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.

- **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.

**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.

---

**The rack** is the frame on the surveyor's back: six slots in two rows of three. It is the whole inventory apart from the cutter, which needs no slot. Each slot holds one module or one **bundle** of salvage.

Rack rules, from clause 1:

- Modules have insulated housings and do not conduct, powered or not. Salvage is dredged wet and conducts, and wet bundles pass current onward to bundles they touch.

- When packing, you draw one **link** from each battery to the one module it powers. An unlinked module is dark and inert.

- A battery leaks into every bundle connected to it by touching bundles, whatever the links say: one unit a minute per connected bundle, shown as a drip per bundle. Insulation is the only slot that breaks a chain.

- A battery holds ten units. A discharge of the coil spends the whole battery. A kill mote is one unit; a stun sheds one large mote of five units per ten organisms stunned.

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.

**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.

**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.

The battery touches the coil (linked) and the insulation; the insulation stands between the battery and the bundles, so nothing leaks. Two bundles. Play: set the panel to yard on purpose, stand in the channel's edge in insulation, wait for the surge to wade in, discharge: stun, large motes, and the hatch already open by the panel. Cost: four of six slots on gear, one full battery per discharge, and you must be standing in the water you electrify. Counterplay by the district: the surge only sheds once, so stunning the same crowd again yields nothing; a discharge during a quiet interval opens a door but harvests nothing; if the panel is thrown while you are inside the hall, the hatch shuts behind you. Best when a surge will stand in water and you have the charge to greet it.

Six bundles. Play: leave the panel on causeway, take the culvert to the quiet, dark yard, gather, come back under the surge. Cost: never opens a powered door, never harvests, has no answer to a surge except distance. Counterplay: anything that lights the yard, including another player's habits from an earlier expedition (the panel resets, but a coil-lit beacon does not need the panel). Best on the expedition after a discovery, when you know exactly where the salvage is and how to avoid the road.

The beacon and its battery are packed together; the insulation keeps the battery off the bundles. Three bundles. Play: carry the lit beacon into a surge's reach and plant it; the surge walks to it and stays while it is lit. Planting sets down the beacon and its battery as one piece and frees two slots; retrieving is walking over it. Darken it (retrieve it, or let the battery run down) and the pull stops. Cost: the beacon draws the surge toward wherever it is, including you while you carry it; its battery runs down while planted; and it can pull only what is already inside, never choose an intake. Counterplay: a lit fixed beacon nearer the surge outcompetes it; a surge pulled off one route occupies another. Best for clearing the interior route for a run at a distant deposit, or for pulling a surge off the causeway so the hauler's road is clear.

The battery is linked to the coil below it, correctly. But it also touches the bundle to its right, which touches the next, which touches the one below: three connected bundles, three drips, three units a minute. The battery is empty in a little over three minutes, before the second surge, and the coil is dead when it is needed. The fix is visible in the rack: move the insulation between, or leave a slot empty, and carry less.

---

Kills give no experience. The reason is a design bet, not a law: in a game about routing a crowd, rewarding kills per se pulls the player toward the biggest crowd and away from the district, and this design wants the district to be the reward. What kills give instead is charge, which is fuel for experiments, and fuel is only worth harvesting if you have somewhere to spend it. Whether that keeps moment-to-moment fighting satisfying is an open question for play, not something this document can settle.

Growth comes from the world. Per expedition, two to four modules from fixed placements whose contents vary; two to six bundles from deposits; and charge from surges met on your terms. The rack caps at six slots, so power grows by composition, not by number: you leave with a cutter and an empty battery; by the second surge you usually have one powered setup; the third surge tests it. Later expeditions grow faster because the workshop lets you start with a chosen module and because you know where the placements are.

**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 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.

What you can discover, and what each discovery changes:

| Discovery | What it changes |

| --- | --- |

| 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 |

| Surge behaviour: intakes, the dispatch cycle, the press, pursuit range | 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 |

Knowledge is the persistent progression. No discovery is gated behind a module or a stat: the panel works on the first expedition; what changes is knowing what it does.

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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.

- **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.

**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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Designed with the World and Mystery Designer; this section takes their corrected revision when it lands. The solution is a **designer spoiler**; the owner should read it, players should find it.

**The question the player is asked by the place.** The causeway is signed as the evacuation route. It is where the Flood is. The culvert beneath it, unmarked, has cart wear and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. Why is the marked refuge overrun while the passage beneath it still looks used?

| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |

| --- | --- |

| 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. |

| 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. |

| 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. |

| 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. |

| 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. |

**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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| Persists as knowledge | Persists as colony state | Resets each expedition |

| --- | --- | --- |

| Map, notes, observed rules, module recipes | Banked salvage; which dock is held dry; workshop; forecast relay | Enemies, surge sizes and timing, water states, field pumps, found modules, cargo, charge, the panel (returns to causeway), spent organisms |

**The colony** is the dock and its pump, and the people on it. It is deliberately small, and it makes exactly three kinds of decision:

- **Which dock is held dry.** One exclusive standing choice. Changing it costs a full return's salvage. It inverts which panel setting is comfortable (section 4) and where the coil works, because a flooded dock is wet ground.

- **The workshop.** One additive repair, a full return: lets you choose one starting module each expedition instead of leaving with only a battery.

- **The forecast relay.** One additive repair, a full return: the first intake is known before you leave the dock, so the first three minutes can be planned.

**No upkeep.** Salvage repairs and improves the colony; nothing decays between expeditions, nothing is charged per expedition, and repeated failed expeditions lose nothing already banked. The colony's stake is long-run: every repair, every change of held dock, and the ending itself are paid in salvage, so a surveyor who stops hauling can never change anything. This is a drafting default: the alternative, a per-expedition pump cost, would punish an investigative expedition that returns light, which is the meta-level version of pressure that leaves no room for curiosity. If the owner wants the colony to feel more precarious, the place to add it is the ending's cost, not a tax.

**Is that enough colony?** Honestly: it is a small colony by the standard of colony-management games. Its decisions change the value of what you know rather than adding systems, which is the intended relationship. If the owner wants a larger settlement, with people, needs and building, that is a scope decision that adds a second game to this one and should be made knowingly.

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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.

- **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.

- **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.

**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.

**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.

**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.

---

A first-time player. Panel untouched, on causeway. Causeway dock held dry. Starting kit: cutter, one empty battery. Times are approximate and proposed.

**0:00.** The dock. The forecast board reads: first surge in three minutes, intake causeway. Ahead, the causeway; its far-end beacon is lit steady. To the right, a dark tunnel mouth: the culvert. The player takes the culvert because the causeway looks like where the trouble is.

**0:40.** The culvert. Cart wear on the floor, heading away from the causeway. A refuge sign on the wall, turned to face the far end. The player inspects it: three lines of text. The notebook records both.

**1:30.** The yard. Salvage deposits; the player gathers two bundles into the rack. A module placement in a wrecked cart: a coil. It goes in the rack, unlinked. The shallow channel runs past a shut hatch into a dark pump hall; a cable runs from the hatch along the channel to a dark lamp on a post at the hall door. The player inspects the lamp: dark, and the notebook records it.

**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.

**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.

**9:00.** The culvert, back toward the dock end. The player emerges at the causeway head, twenty metres from the dock, with the press's edge thirty metres up the road. Four organisms break off and pursue. The cutter takes two; the player takes one hit; the dock is a hard stop and the pursuers stop at its edge.

**9:40.** Extraction, three bundles and a coil, one point of health down, a battery with two units minus what leaked. The player banks three bundles. The notebook holds: the culvert is safe and marked; the surge comes in where the lamp flashes; the yard lamp is dark and the hatch is shut; there is a switch at the causeway head with cables to both lamps.

Nothing was solved. Everything needed to solve it was seen.

---

Expedition six. The player has solved the false refuge, banked enough for the workshop, and chooses the coil as the starting module. Loadout: the electrician, from section 5. Causeway dock still held dry.

**0:00.** The forecast reads: first surge in three minutes, intake causeway. The player leaves the panel alone and takes the culvert to the yard, gathers two bundles, and waits at the channel's edge.

**3:00.** Surge one, causeway. The player ignores it. Two stragglers, two motes; the battery reads two.

**4:00.** The player runs the culvert back, dashes the eight seconds to the panel, and throws it to yard. The yard lights. Across the district, surge one leaves the causeway beacon and starts toward the junction. The forecast reads: second surge in four minutes, intake yard. The player returns through the culvert at a run.

**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.

**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.

**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.

**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.

---

**Direction.** Top-down 2D, one small district, readable at a glance. One light convention carries the whole rule: **steady means powered, flashing means a dispatch, dark means unpowered.** Wet and dry are a tint. Energised water shows arcs. The rack is a six-cell panel with drawn links and drip icons. No AI-generated art of any kind; existing free assets first; purchases and custom assets only with the owner's approval.

**Readable states and their cheapest medium.** Sources are listed only where their terms were actually read today; nothing else is claimed.

| What the player must read | Cue | Reused asset category | Source and terms | Fallback / approval gap |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Branch powered / dispatch / unpowered | Lamp sprite in three states; flash animation | Prop sprite, three frames | Not yet selected; candidate sources below | Engine-drawn glow if no sprite fits |

| 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 |

| 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 |

| Hatch open / closing / shut | Door sprite, three states, blink | Prop sprite | Not yet selected | Text state |

| Shelter boundary | Floor marking | Tileset | Not yet selected | Line overlay |

| Deposits, modules, motes | Small sprites | Prop sprites | Not yet selected | Icons |

| Turned sign, cart wear, tally board, inked plan | Prop plus text inspection | Prop sprites | Not yet selected | Text inspection alone, which is acceptable for clues but not for live combat cues |

| Health | Bar | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text |

**Sources checked today, read-only.** OpenGameArt's published FAQ states that hosted assets are offered under one of CC0, CC-BY 3.0/4.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0/4.0, OGA-BY 3.0/4.0 or GPL 2.0/3.0, that each asset carries its own uploader-chosen licence, and that commercial use is allowed under those terms; no specific pack has been selected. Kenney's asset listing page does not state a licence on the listing itself, but the individual page for its "Top-down Shooter" pack states "Creative Commons CC0" and describes 580 files of 2D top-down sprites including tiles, furniture and zombie-style figures; that makes it a plausible candidate for tiles, props and a reworkable creature sprite, subject to a suitability check nobody has done yet. No asset has been downloaded, purchased or created.

**Coverage gaps, honestly.** The enemy sprite is the likely custom-art request. Everything else in the table can be carried by generic top-down tiles, a UI kit, engine particles and text, at the cost of some atmosphere. Sound is not designed here.

---

**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.

**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.

**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.

---

**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.

**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.

**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.

---

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.

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.

Development remains unauthorized until you have read this and said so explicitly.

---

- **Survivorlike:** a game where you steer one character through ever-larger crowds of enemies while your weapons fire by themselves; your hands move, dodge and position, and your choices are where to go and what to carry.

- **Expedition:** one trip from a dock into the district and back. The Brief's "run" means the same thing.

- **The Flood:** the massed enemies (owner requirement). Proposed here as bioelectric organisms.

- **Surge:** one wave of the Flood entering the district.

- **Dispatch:** the scheduled instant the relay releases a surge and pulses the selected beacon.

- **Relay:** the district's old automatic timer and transmitter.

- **Forecast:** the relay's schedule, shown as a countdown and an intake marker.

- **Intake:** where a surge enters: the causeway's far end, the yard channel at the pump hall, or the sluice.

- **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.

- **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.

- **Leak / drip:** charge lost from a battery into connected wet bundles, shown as a drip per bundle.

- **Coil, insulation, beacon (module), kit, siphon:** the modules, section 5.

- **Cutter:** the handheld tool that fires by itself. Needs no slot.

- **Charge / mote:** the Flood's shed energy; a mote is a dropped fleck of it.

- **Loadout:** the modules you carry and how they are arranged. Older pages say "build"; this document avoids that word because the Hub uses it for compiled software. **Loadout expression** is the way a loadout shows a strategy.

- **Knowledge gate / stat gate:** a knowledge gate is passed by understanding something; a stat gate is passed by having a number high enough. This design uses only the first.

- **Telegraphed:** announced before it happens. **Counterplay:** what the district or the Flood can do against a loadout, and what the player can do back. **XP:** experience points, the per-kill growth this design does not use.

- **Field pump:** a pump fuelled by one bundle that drains one channel for one expedition.

**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.

**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.

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.

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.

**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.

**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.

**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.