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. 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
| Role | Bounded outcome | Current dependency |
|---|---|---|
| Systems | Three Horde Creature Proposals completed and read by PM; final narrow coherence correction preserves their counterplay | Ready as selectable proposals, not an adopted roster |
| Systems | Two independent shifting-station models, each with a concrete before/after-death journey, persistent work, useful historical records and a short-rescue example | Working on276; PM has separately saved an independent position, with both originals withheld until joint release |
| Design Lead and Independent Reviewer | Each independently develops two causal versions of the owner's hospital/godhood draft, including concrete discoveries and consequential player actions | Working on277 after verified automatic delivery to both original Claude sessions; undelivered268 is superseded |
| PM | Relay owner answers, verify actual outputs, release independent positions together and present concise proposals early | Original Claude connections recovered under their existing identities; no owner handoff text required |
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
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.
The previous Mystery Directions and Mystery Consequences preserve alternatives and costs for reference. Their protected triage, registration and sponsor mechanisms do not constrain development of the owner's new draft. New independent story positions will be shown before extensive cross-article refinement.
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, with one-minute scheduled checks as a fallback while useful authorised work exists. Local hosts must remain available. Routine unchanged checks stay quiet; substantive proposals, decisions and actionable outages are reported. Add specialist capacity only for a demonstrated need.