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.
Five proposal 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, and the six-page reading path. 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.
Next: make the moving scan concrete
The moving lamp promises a strong sequence: pursue an apparent constellation, fight alongside its carriage, earn a spectacular build release, and discover a bridge that changes the next trip. Systems is placing that sequence in the actual station, with one proposed location, visible sources, growth before the climax, a usable withdrawal and evidence that supports the discovery. Added geometry and content costs must be explicit.
One focused critique and one author response belong to this bounded outcome. The current reader pages remain stable while the separate proposal is prepared. PM is also checking the outside-edit bundle for lost meaning; this preservation work does not reopen every accepted design debate. 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.