Hold The Horde — Design Plan
The first written design exercise explored how discovery, expressive builds, horde survival and caring for rescued people can support one coherent experience under the Owner Brief.
This is the design plan for the registered team, not settled game mechanics or permission to implement anything. No previous design settles the brief’s undecided systems.
Current status
The first written exercise is complete and accepted by PM as a provisionally integrated design example. It gives the team a coherent proposal to reason from, not demonstrated gameplay quality or owner approval of every mechanic. The revised pair addresses the independent review with observable evidence for the proposed glyph inference, concrete carrying choices and an explicit player-shown clue that Yeva can interpret.
The example's narrow notebook interface and Yeva's handwriting contribution are scenario choices. They do not prohibit other notebook uses or survivors helping with languages and mysteries. Oxygen's effect on curiosity, actual inferability and enjoyment, death losses, persistence, balance and content scope remain open. Design only continues.
Oxygen and observation — written comparison complete
Oxygen and Observation is provisionally integrated following independent positions, focused review and a reasoned response. Its record contents, paused display and example are explicit. The owner decided that the rest of the game pauses while the journal screen is open, including during combat; the requirement is recorded in the Owner Brief. Record format, capture costs, other interface details and the wider oxygen rhythm remain proposals. This written exercise establishes coherence, not fun, balance or demonstrated accessibility.
Death and persistence — written comparison complete
Death and Persistence is provisionally integrated after focused review, author response and final PM consistency corrections. The working proposal preserves carried items in recoverable caches and retains journal records. Gear availability and recovery journeys are costs; the equipment-versus-salvage capacity tradeoff also remains under the alternative of restoring pre-departure gear. The proposal requires a minimum useful expedition even after all carried equipment is cached. Systems is addressing that dependency below. Death-loss preferences and effects on experimentation remain unvalidated; broader survivor-loss and deliberate-death preferences are reserved for concrete decisions requiring the owner.
Active milestone: exploration structure and build rules
The next outcome is a coherent proposal for repeated exploration and player-made combinations beyond the earlier example sortie. The two authors work concurrently, each saving an independent position before new peer exposure, then continuing directly to a complete draft and self-check. These are proposals under the existing brief, not a new development phase.
| Writer | Owned forthcoming article | Required outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Exploration Structure | Compare station arrangements; explain stable and changing places, route knowledge and revisits through a compact three-expedition example with narrative discovery and a practical consequence. |
| Systems | Build Rules | Compare ways to compose equipment; define understandable interactions with a small illustrative part set and three build paths, inventory costs and a minimum useful expedition after gear loss. |
| Reviewer | Review in project chat | Save independent starting alternatives before either new draft; inspect each verified submission as it arrives and their interface once both arrive. Report consequential objections and real uncertainties. |
The reviewer is assigned in advance to these named submissions, so publication can lead directly to review without a new PM permission step. Authors pause edits after submitting; PM verifies the actual articles and review, assigns one combined reasoned response where needed, and makes a provisional disposition or relays a necessary owner preference. Article ownership remains with the named writer. The current bounded assignment is in project chat120.
PM coordinates ready handoffs within active work sessions. One-minute scheduled checks provide a fallback while authorized useful work remains; hourly checks apply when no such work can continue. The next work should follow actual dependencies, not keep people busy with duplicate design or reviews.
First exercise contract (completed)
The design lead will own one short player-experience proposal, supported by a systems comparison and reviewed independently. Describe a station sortie from the ship through a clear immediate objective, meaningful horde pressure, a useful discovery and a purposeful return. Include a concrete human consequence involving an authored survivor. For this initial comparison, use a representative sortie to recover useful station salvage and return. This is a proposed design exercise, not a mandated opening mission; its exact fiction remains open.
Compare two materially different build approaches to the same objective: what the player acquires, chooses and sacrifices; how power grows; what limits or failure cases remain; and how a learned interaction remains useful beyond one specially prepared room. Preserve the desired tradeoff between equipment and salvage. Enemy manipulation may contribute without becoming the main subject of experimentation.
Show what the player knows and can do after the discovery that changes a later decision. Separate readable survival information and controls from intentionally unresolved mysteries. Keep proposed mechanics and persistence rules explicitly provisional. Do not select the central mystery's answer merely to complete the document.
Aim for a readable proposal of roughly 1,200 words plus a compact comparison; useful clarity matters more than an exact quota. A full design bible, detailed balance numbers, fixed district counts and elaborate lore are premature.
Drafts
Acceptance
- Faithful to the astronaut, hostile unofficial station, limited carried oxygen/unlimited ship oxygen, unexplained revival, rescued community and alien-language premise.
- Discovery first and expressive builds second are visible in player decisions; ordinary horde combat matters.
- The two approaches create materially different player decisions and power payoffs beyond a single scripted event. Describe actual costs and limits without requiring symmetrical weaknesses or weakening spectacular builds to fit a template.
- Systems do not contradict one another, and the immediate goal and survival information remain understandable.
- Unknowns and the largest content/scope risks are explicit. The 30/90/100–200 hour ambitions remain unvalidated.
- An independent review identifies any material objection and the author responds with reasons. Acceptance never requires unanimity.
The first exercise used an integration pass before independent review. The active milestone above instead assigns review of the named submissions in advance; the reviewer also checks their shared interface, and PM coordinates any required response with one writer per article. PM will integrate a coherent provisional direction, retain important unresolved tradeoffs and ask the owner only the decisions that materially affect it. Later development or player validation requires explicit owner authorization; written descriptions cannot establish gameplay quality.