Hold The Horde — Design Plan
The team is designing a discovery-first survivorlike under the Owner Brief, with expressive builds, meaningful hordes and an authored colony. The work below is design only. Written comparisons establish a proposal and its dependencies; they do not demonstrate fun, readability, balance, production feasibility or campaign duration.
Current milestone: ordinary horde combat
The next outcome is a concrete pair of ordinary encounters and their proposed combat rules. All three independent first positions were saved, read, hash-verified and jointly released. They disagree on whether route pressure or pressure during investigation should be common. Their examples and costs, rather than a majority preference, guide this comparison.
| Writer | Owned forthcoming output | Required outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Horde Encounters | A route crowd and an investigation/action encounter: readable information, player choices, powerful-build success, withdrawal and a changed return. Compare the common rhythm with its strongest alternative. |
| Systems | Combat Rules | Controls and aiming assumptions, perception/pursuit, reinforcement cues, interruption/progress, journal pause and build events sufficient for both examples. |
| Reviewer | Focused review in project chat | Read each verified submission on arrival and their combined interface, without another PM permission step. Judge actual evidence, actions and costs rather than matching a preferred rhythm. |
Both combat articles and the focused review161 are complete, with actual sources verified. A single coordinated response162 is active: clarify alert/clearance scope, record exposure, completed-work persistence, condition/recovery and evidence/cost claims. The reviewer independently prepares a discovery-chain comparison under163 while authors revise; authors prepare their own after response submission. Those new positions remain private until all are saved and jointly released. Systems supplied the shared contract157 before Lead’s draft. No combat proposal is accepted yet. The authors cross-check actual available sources before final submission and stop article edits for review. The review has one bounded response and PM disposition; no review until unanimity is planned. The original assignment155 and unchanged positions152–154 remain in project chat;162 assigns the coordinated response and163 the reviewer’s independent next comparison. The owner has been asked about ordinary firing controls; no answer has been inferred, and the current control proposal remains provisional.
No numerical balancing, implementation, simulation, playtest, art, complete enemy roster or central mystery answer is assigned. A strong build can win decisively and avoidance can be legitimate. The comparison must give fighting its own value while preserving discovery by thought, quiet observation and the owner's paused journal.
Completed written foundations
- Expedition Proposal and Build Comparison: a provisional sortie with observed glyph evidence, contrasting equipment/cargo builds, carrying choices and a survivor interpreting a player-shown clue. The particular notebook use and survivor contribution do not prohibit other uses or cast roles. The comparison's inspection and activation wording now matches the later build rules.
- Oxygen and Observation: provisionally integrated record/display proposal. The owner decided that opening the journal pauses the rest of the game, including enemies and oxygen during combat; that requirement is in the brief. Other journal details and the wider oxygen rhythm remain proposed.
- Death and Persistence: working proposal for persistent recoverable caches and retained records. Equipment availability and recovery journeys are costs. The suit baseline proposed in Build Rules answers the minimum-expedition dependency on paper; actual reach, part supply, abandonment and recovery viability remain unvalidated.
- Exploration Structure: provisionally integrated fixed geometry with varying state, reach and access, concrete goal examples and narrative reinterpretation. Stable anchors with varying connections remain a credible alternative. Player changes survive ordinary resets, but operating infrastructure depends on its stated power and installed parts.
- Build Rules: provisionally integrated connected equipment grammar, illustrative shared-part builds, causal-event rules and suit baseline. Navigation records traversed breadcrumbs without promising an unseen safe route; local equipment previews remain understandable while learned families help with unfamiliar objects and preparation. Fields, capacities and performance are not tuned or validated.
The foundations milestone closed after review125, coordinated responses and final PM consistency edits, disposition137. Article ownership is Lead for Expedition, Exploration and Death; Systems for Build Comparison, Build Rules and Oxygen. No further broad foundations review is pending. Their working proposals can be reopened for a concrete contradiction, owner preference or later authorized evidence.
Rescue and Home and Rescue Rules are provisionally integrated after focused review and response, disposition158. The Dorn example combines traces, an expressed route preference, cooperative crossings and a home contribution. Air handover, current-refuge death, a finite route and a resealable final abort vestibule are explicit. Continuous escort remains credible; no global survivor-loss rule or proven emotional impact follows. Ownership is Lead for the story and Systems for the rules.
Acceptance and remaining scope
A useful design preserves the astronaut, hostile station, limited carried oxygen, unexplained revival and growing authored colony. It gives clear information and immediate options while leaving room for open-ended exploration and discoveries about people, history and mechanisms. Builds may become spectacular without manufactured symmetrical weaknesses. Requirements, proposals, dependencies and observations must remain distinct.
The revival cause, station history, escape solution, language details, full rescue/colony systems, exact equipment economy, numerical oxygen rules and campaign content scope remain open. The 30/90/100–200 hour ambitions remain unproven. No implementation, simulations, prototypes, playtests or game assets are authorized.
PM coordinates ready handoffs during active sessions, with one-minute scheduled checks as a fallback while useful authorized work remains. Hourly checks apply only when no such work can continue. The Team page records the working agreement. Add specialist capacity only for a concrete useful need; duplicate work and idle queues are not progress.