Hold The Horde — Design Plan

Design a discovery-first survivorlike under the Owner Brief, with expressive builds, meaningful hordes and an authored colony. Written comparisons establish proposals and dependencies; they do not demonstrate fun, balance, accessibility, production feasibility or campaign duration. This phase remains design only.

Current owner direction

The station shifts after each death, preserving uncertainty about what is where. Selected player changes, such as unlocked doors, remain permanent. This supersedes the fixed-layout proposal. The owner selected permanent connections binding rooms/groups, with connecting the entire station as one of the deepest/latest puzzles. Exact linking rules, mistakes and the completed station's later shifts remain open. Cooperative rescue is accepted provided it does not become a long escort quest. Everything still carried returns aboard on death; completed work persists, the journal pauses the whole game, and ordinary combat uses mostly automatic fire with manual specials. Linked reusable parts, shared oxygen/equipment/loot capacity, practical clue exploration and route/work hordes are accepted directions. Home equipment loans are tentative.

The leading story is now the owner's early, fully revisable hospital draft: ancient aliens attempted godhood and abandoned the station; humans made it a hospital because of extraordinary healing and revival; research revealed a captive god in the core, and medical systems became harmful. Repeated revival and the experiments of both eras could explain the creatures. Every narrative detail remains open. This does not automatically adopt a player death counter, transformation deadline, specific ending or retrieval mechanism. The former Registry/Unit/Clinic comparison is no longer an unanswered equal-choice gate.

Active outcomes

See the dated Progress board: 27 design packages,25 preparation-closed and2 open, with decision status kept separate. The owner now requests reports every15 minutes while work is active, plus meaningful milestone/blocker updates. The owner also requires forward estimates: current F1 target for a complete first-pass game-design wiki is22 Sep (range18–29 Sep), with a coherent core targeted11 Sep (10–14 Sep). See the Progress forecast for completion definitions, staffing and assumptions.

The PM marked conflicting old rules in their owning articles after a source impact audit. Permanent map placement is superseded; remembered positions are historical; death/rescue ordering is unresolved. The next consolidated update will follow a concrete shift comparison. Do not silently treat the former fixed-anchor alternative as owner-selected, or invent destruction, duplication or survivor loss to handle a shift.

Ready for reaction

Equipment Acquisition And Rig Growth26 preparation closed434 at18:57:01 Jerusalem, finalf5f6d7681325bc5e52d1a7503133a15d8e4293f55df3961fe6f7210b9503db6e. The complete twelve-part contract maps four proposed starters/eight physical sources, counts three added fixtures and separates active-area growth from carrying capacity. One focused critique/response clarified independent receiver acceptance, possible spent-cargo loss after downstream refusal, the unplaced repair/adapter template and the bounded empty-ship guarantee. Late author notice436 records pre-maintenancef7ede725; PM’s paragraph-only maintenance433 and final434 remain current. Acquisition preference, starter/capacity choices, source-fixture detail and exceptions remain open.

Regional Discovery Map preparation closed426 at18:32 Jerusalem, final3acda0183b13d531e5e93cfd7ef41909c33b19d970bdb4b0b3c01f4360427247. One focused review/response made both evidence orders concrete, replaced the abstract central gate with a pressure iris and recovery alternative, and clarified calibration, rig capacity and source/access conditions. Four regions and twelve objectives remain a SMALL proposal;24module/40room v1 briefs, physical placements and story/ending choices still need work.

Save And Content State preparation closed417 at18:09:56 Jerusalem, final438cdf35f53bb537aed50bb8efab810866b289d6cf401b949d95bc7e27e8938c. One focused review/response clarified the carried rig/cargo set, actual person-and-airlock delivery, historical evidence and the provisional save-policy boundary. This is a first-pass continuity contract, not verified software; save policy, rescue/death/shift order, full-station behavior, transients and recovery remain open.

Traps And Encounter Progression and Development And Validation Handoff preparation closed410 after one focused review/response each. The five trap families have distinct observable causes and responses; the plan separates local mechanics evidence, sustained progression and production feasibility. Neither constitutes an implementation or playtest.

Rescue Shift Proposal and Station Assembly Example are additional unadopted contributions under PM intake407. Protected pre-shift retreat and a guaranteed inspected-face meeting are new candidate capabilities, not answers inferred from existing owner selections. Their authorship context and geometry/authoring obligations remain pending.

Equipment Catalogue preparation closed400 after one independent GPT review and response399. Twelve proposed reusable parts include a deliberate-movement switch and a directional nozzle. Three legal rig examples disclose capacity, activation and rewiring costs. Fork provisionally splits usable payload. Acquisition/growth paths are now prepared in26; exact tuning and owner selection remain open.

Survival and Loadout preparation closed392. It proposes resource/capacity lifecycle rules and opening packing choices, including retained prepared oxygen. Exact quantities and balance remain unselected.

Player Information preparation closed387 after one review/response. It separates observed, recorded and reported information, preserves the full journal pause and short rescue limits, and sets a proposed accessibility baseline. Its full cue inventory is later work; no usability is claimed.

Whole Game Outline is preparation-closed378 after draft369, focused review370 and response374. It connects the opening to middle, ending and secret layers, including a later expedition and finite content bands. It is a planning scaffold: story/ending choices, quantities and complete estimate coverage remain open.

Shifting Station Options records the owner's selection of actions binding connected groups and the whole-station late puzzle. Moving districts and freely rearranged rooms remain prior alternatives. Its special local rescue reconnection is still a proposed exception, not automatic transfer.

Connecting The Station completed focused review323 and response324, with PM disposition329/331. It retains permanent latches as a local candidate, but the deep whole-station puzzle is unresolved: a source can be reused to latch seams one after another, so scarcity alone does not establish the proposed global ordering problem. Seams and power machinery are unchosen. New independent originals340/342 were read and jointly released346–348. Systems comparison349 now evaluates room transformations, family bridges and simpler matching; the mechanism comparison preparation closed363 after review356 and response361; detailed whole-station content and owner mechanism/payoff choice remain open. A single late insight is PM's quality target for the owner's ambition, not an additional quoted owner requirement; combining earlier discoveries could also satisfy it. A final stable layout is proposed as a reward and is awaiting owner reaction.

First Expedition Options completed review325, response326 and closeout333. The owner has now selected Option A, the reusable-machinery opening, recorded344–345. One opening discovers a reusable part that powers both equipment and station machinery; the other discovers a risky route by watching a body lift. Temporary deployment has explicit time/capacity costs, and the lift needs extra local content. Both preserve natural death, carried property and existing connections. Option A is the selected direction; detailed rooms, values and loadout remain proposals, and neither opening is validated.

Horde Creature Proposals offers a telegraphed pressure-wave creature, a moving screen for a crowd and a readable oxygen-tether attacker. All can be avoided, interrupted or defeated, and a strong rig may overwhelm them. Their origins are replaceable candidates from either experimental era.

Progression Options compares claiming functioning components from station machinery with observing their behaviour and fabricating chosen parts aboard. Both include useful legal build traces, changed uses of old parts and motivation for another expedition. The two independent originals were read, hash-verified and jointly released before Systems' practical comparison; preparation closed272. No economy, starting loadout, fabrication bench or installed-object persistence model has been selected. Comparative claims about surprise, targeting and attachment remain expectations rather than measurements.

Hospital Story Directions develops the fully revisable hospital draft into a captive ascendant or a departed being's surviving repair engine. Focused review296 and response301/304 are complete; PM closeout308 keeps the remaining semantic evidence gap explicit. The captive's proposed request needs evidence distinguishing a request from a maintenance record; correlation alone is insufficient. Alien Utterance Discovery finished one focused review and response353: the gallery supports useful interaction with a responsive process, not proof of a request, living writer or god. Neither story nor its ending is adopted.

Resurrection and Corruption compares external evidence with safe ordinary revival, voluntary treatment with access and hazards, and visible death-driven attunement. Preparation closed299. The last option encourages deliberate death and needs a stable ceiling; pausing its progression does not reverse accumulated state. No option is selected.

The older Mystery Directions and Mystery Consequences remain reference alternatives. Their triage, registration and sponsor mechanisms do not constrain the current draft.

Existing written foundations

• Expedition Proposal, Build Comparison and Build Rules: linked reusable parts, contrasting rigs, causal-wave rules and shared carrying choices. Exact grammar, capacity, part catalogue and starting equipment remain proposals. The compressor example no longer requires live delivery or an uncracked object.
• Exploration Structure and Death and Persistence: safe carried-property return and retained work remain; the old fixed geometry requires replacement with the new shift direction.
• Oxygen and Observation, Discovery Chain and Clues and Help: readable survival state, captured evidence, voluntary investigation and truthful bounded survivor help. Prior geographic observations cannot guarantee current routes after a shift.
• Horde Encounters and Combat Rules: route crowds and selected contested work, with persistent completed stages and strong builds allowed to succeed. Targeting and individual creature behaviour remain proposals.
• Rescue and Home and Rescue Rules: a short cooperative crossing remains useful. Finite multi-stage routes need to meet the owner's short-rescue condition, and death/shift/abort ordering still needs a coherent contract.
• Coming Home and Home Projects: a tentative loan, canister preparation and human contributions. Prepared charge and communicated knowledge persist; the whole colony economy and emotional effect remain unvalidated.
• Language Expedition, Language and Journal and Language Design Evidence: observable repeated contexts, partial interpretations, factual arrival/incomplete records and fallible requested visual assistance. These completed focused review252 and response254, with final integration269. A transfer connection never proves a walking route. Historical evidence needs to be reconciled with shifting layouts; this does not require another whole-language review or a full conlang.

Acceptance and remaining scope

Preserve clear immediate goals and understandable controls while discoveries change the meaning or use of familiar things. Judge concrete player choices and costs, not agreement counts, provider confidence or prose volume. Independent first positions precede new peer recommendations; a focused critique and response lead to PM disposition, not a unanimity loop. Articles retain one writer, and current-live-versus-proposed diffs and readback protect shared work.

The hospital draft's causes and ending, player consequences of resurrection corruption, shift/persistence rules, short rescue logistics, full colony systems, language details, equipment economy, numerical oxygen rules and campaign scope remain open. The 30/90/100–200hour ambitions are unproven. No game implementation, prototypes, simulations, playtests or assets are authorised. No AI art. Purchases and rare custom/authored assets require owner approval.

PM follows ready handoffs during active work. Owner393 clarified that only Claude is paused: PM and GPT Systems continue, with bounded temporary GPT independent review. The original Claude roles receive no wakeups or replacements until owner resumption. Active one-minute fallback monitoring and15-minute numeric/forecast reports continue for available workers. Local hosts must remain available. Between scheduled owner reports, routine unchanged checks stay quiet. The owner requests a numeric progress report every15 minutes during active work, including an honest unchanged interval, plus substantive proposals, decisions and actionable outages. Add specialist capacity only for a demonstrated need.