Hold The Horde — Design Plan
You leave home with a modest rig, fight through a growing horde, discover a powerful interaction between your equipment and the station, and return with something that changes the next expedition. That sequence must be exciting on the third trip as well as the first.
The current design
The owner chose fresh hordes each expedition and regular combat growth with larger transformations. Permanent changes and physically carried property remain, while temporary power resets on returning home. The Owner Brief records the requirements.
The main reading path now begins with The Game, follows three expeditions, returns to the people aboard, and opens into discovery in the changing station. Hordes and Builds explains the current examples; Build Comparison presents alternative controls and payoffs for owner reaction.
Eighteen proposal or editorial packages completed review and response today: builds/expeditions, hospital story/survival, regular growth on a renewed route, a second route state after permanent source seals, the six-page reading path, the moving-scan expedition, the short-rescue comparison, the station-completion payoff, the campaign scope comparison, the language journal, the whole-campaign overview, the cast and rescue map, the equipment guide, the Receiver Vault expedition, the enemy guide, the repeated upgrade-choice comparison, the former-patient scene, and the first useful invention. Combat Rules and the room/encounter references describe the two concrete route states. They preserve completed work while giving fresh opposition a physical route. Other seal combinations and shifted layouts remain design work.
The new Ricochet and Gravity mechanisms remain proposed replacements for parts of the detailed build rules. The hospital-story alternatives remain revisable. Completed review does not select them for the owner or establish fun, balance or duration.
Completed: the moving scan
The Moving Scan Expedition now places the lamp in Cable Junction. Three source areas supply the rising fight; ordinary growth precedes the electrical climax. Observations from three positions reveal a receiver across a void, and the player unfolds and walks a bridge to it. Living return preserves the useful shortcut. A changed alignment makes the old samples historical and exposes a visible rewind for a new scan.
The price is a fourteenth proposed major mechanism and substantial rail, bay, bridge and receiver geometry. The room, encounter, combat and information references now agree; physical fit and the intended pleasure remain untested.
Ready for a choice: the short rescue
Rescue Under Pressure is now a reviewed comparison: the astronaut’s movement and build earn a short crossing for Yeva, followed by a specific homecoming. It compares a protected retreat with completing the crossing after the astronaut dies. The owner can judge the stakes, preparation burden and effect on the shifting-station premise. Neither survivor mortality nor the first survivor is selected by this comparison.
The single critique and response are complete. The proposal now makes physical clearance, living blockage and both death-protection windows explicit. The owner is considering whether the survivor should finish or take shelter; shared rescue rules remain unchanged.
Ready to compare: the final connection
Completing The Station now offers two reviewed consequences. The last join completes route certainty earned gradually, with a further visit to the newly secured core. The alternative adds an optional departure carrying the station and docked ship, with its added story and production work explicit. Review and response finished at 14:36; neither ending nor final effect is selected.
Ready to compare: campaign scope
Campaign Scope Choices completed review and response at 14:56. It compares 40 rooms with a denser 36-room alternative through named discoveries, build moments and recovery spaces. Five supporting references now agree on fourteen proposed mechanisms, while the historical cost allowance keeps its original thirteen-mechanism basis and leaves the added work uncosted. Neither scope nor a revised hour estimate is selected. Systems has finished this outcome.
Ready to read: the language journal
The existing Language And Journal page has been rewritten around what the player does: capture a clue during an expedition, pause to compare records, make a prediction and try it. The revision preserves the current observation, testimony and historical-route rules while making the pleasure and cost of discovery easier to understand. The rewrite completed its independent critique and reasoned response at 15:06. No material correction was needed; its longer visitor and scan examples retain the reasoning behind those discoveries.
Ready to read: the whole campaign
Whole Game Outline completed review and response at 15:26. It follows the player’s journey from forced docking through deeper investigation and optional secrets. The page makes the horde scale, growing builds, useful discoveries and relationships concrete, with carried equipment and open choices preserved. The home-loop page’s old living-return clearance wording has also been corrected to fresh hordes after either return.
Ready to read: five people
The Cast And Short Rescue Map completed review and response at 15:44. Meet the five people through their wishes and disagreements, then follow each person’s rescue, home contribution and later change of belief. All fifteen scenes remain. The rescue references now preserve a person’s current shelter if the astronaut dies while preparing a retry. The separate owner choice about death during a crossing remains unanswered.
Ready to read: equipment and combinations
The Equipment Catalogue completed review and response at 16:05. It starts with a working build, then shows each part's visible behavior, useful combinations and costs. The shared references now make clear that a failed attempt preserves the rig's current readiness, and that a part installed aboard is already home while remaining outside the carried inventory.
Ready to read: the Receiver Vault expedition
The Receiver Vault Expedition completed review and response at 16:30. It proposes a transformation earned by opening a firing angle during the horde, a banked-disc climax and an old hospital record acquiring a new meaning at the iris. A proposed shorter approach can deliver the first major transformation here; the established longer route retains its earlier reward. Ordinary equipment and partial progress remain options. Timing, useful banks, breathing margin and repeat-visit upgrade variety remain explicit design risks. Combat and encounter references now link the proposal and describe actual burst limits.
Ready to read: the enemy guide
The Combat And Enemy Roster completed review, response and integration at 16:46. It opens with a mixed horde, then introduces six ordinary creatures and three specials through visible warnings, pressure and useful responses. Existing placements and both setpieces remain. The rescue example now includes safe bypass and bodies still present after a door seals; the carrying example allows both finds when there is room. The two proposed roster cuts retain their different reasons.
Ready to read: two trips, two different builds
The two-trip upgrade comparison completed review, response and integration at 17:18. The same equipment supports an electrical reach trade and a banked-disc/electrical hybrid. Both earned decisions have a tempting declined alternative. The proposal makes the shortcut's lost second choice explicit, explains the discoveries in place and shows how a small pool can run out of offers. Build and combat rules now link the comparison; its broader variety and intended pleasure remain design questions.
Ready to read: a person in the crowd
The former-patient scene completed review, response and integration at 17:59. Nadi Kelm once stopped a rehabilitation carrier because it moved before she was ready. The full proposal lets the player recognise her altered body inside an ordinary horde, or discover a crossing trace later; card-only history supports a different conversation with Ivo. The simpler treatment keeps the record and memory without a marked body. Both remain proposals.
Ready to read: your first useful invention
The opening rewrite completed review, response and integration at 18:28. The optional personal Fork branch gives the player something useful to lend away when that same part controls station machinery. The warning on arrival gives the repair its tension; a plain explanation of the shutter latch makes the alternative approach understandable. The first discovery remains a control choice whose appeal needs later testing.
Working now: a hospital worth remembering
Systems is developing four existing Clinical Exchange spaces: the quarantine ward, long ward approach, clinical comparison bay and sampling loop. The pass connects what people did there to what the player sees, chooses and remembers. Crowd pressure, quiet investigation, refuge and useful equipment should feel different as parts of one hospital, even when shifts change their neighbours.
The author is working and the independent review criteria are ready. Existing rooms, sources, mechanics, rescue variants and evidence remain. No new room or encounter is part of this pass. Draft target 20:00, likely 19:15–20:45; reviewed proposal 21:00, likely 20:00–22:00.
The owner has been offered three short existing experiences for reaction: horde climax, coming home and opening. That optional taste feedback can steer priorities while authorized work continues.
One focused critique and one response belong to each bounded outcome. The outside-edit preservation audit is complete and its factual follow-ups are published; broader readability and design readiness remain open. States and estimates are on Progress.
What makes a proposal useful
The reader can picture what the player wants, sees and does. Pressure develops through meaningful horde combat. A growth choice changes the next movement decision; a build breakthrough creates a visible payoff; quiet lets a discovery change an understanding or future action.
Builds differ in behavior, attention and cost. Their strongest results should feel constructed and discovered. Practical limits should support interesting choices without automatically suppressing powerful combinations. Each substantial scene identifies a plausible way its intended pleasure could fail.
Readable prose leads with an example and explains necessary terms where they arise. Detailed references support the explanation. Discussion history and execution records stay outside game descriptions. Written consistency helps us design; later evidence is still needed to establish the experience.
Remaining design work
- Extend renewal and regular growth across worthwhile expeditions with different goals and crowd patterns.
- Reconcile selected build directions with their detailed mechanics while retaining expressive combinations.
- Develop the hospital, alien setting, people, short rescues, languages and story consequences through concrete scenes.
- Decide what completing the station connection changes and cost a content model that can support the intended journey.
- Continue the readability pass through supporting articles, preserving useful outside edits and resolving actual contradictions.
Use Open Decisions as an overlapping issue index. Its recommendations remain proposals; the team handles routine consistency and brings consequential creative alternatives to the owner. Development, simulations, playtests and game assets await separate authorization.