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. The design must make that sequence exciting on the third trip as well as the first.
The current correction
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 complete requirements.
The first reviewed packet contains two connected proposals:
- Build Comparison: three builds with different ordinary play, growth, manual specials, physical costs and discoveries using their parts in the station.
- Expedition Proposal: three successive outings with fresh growth, meaningful hordes, changing objectives and permanent progress.
Both proposals completed an independent critique, one response per author and PM checks. They are ready for owner reaction; the new build exceptions still need detailed reconciliation. Systems is now developing a concrete growth rhythm and a renewed route through existing rooms, with independent review criteria saved before its draft. In parallel, a separate reviewer is examining the revised hospital-story and survival proposals on their current sources. Both workstreams continue while the owner chooses which build direction to deepen first. Actual task states and delivery estimates are on Progress.
What makes a proposal ready
The reader must be able to picture ordinary play: the player's immediate goal, movement, decisions, growing pressure, breakthrough and relief. Hordes and ridiculous builds must be meaningful throughout the expedition. Discovery must change an understanding or a later action, with at least one payoff larger than routine maintenance.
The builds must differ in behavior and attention, not just appearance or damage. Their strongest results should feel constructed and discovered. Costs must create interesting decisions rather than automatically suppressing powerful combinations. A proposal should identify one plausible way its intended pleasure could fail.
Readable prose leads with the player and explains necessary terms in context. Each rule has one owning article; detailed references support the explanation. Review history and execution records stay outside game descriptions. Written consistency is useful but cannot establish fun, balance or campaign duration.
After the core proposal
The selected renewal and regular-growth rules are aligned in the main combat, persistence, equipment and encounter references. Next, map that growth onto real routes and reconcile the selected build directions with their detailed mechanics. Develop the hospital and alien setting, characters, short rescues, language discoveries and story consequences through concrete scenes alongside that combat work. Present the owner with consequential creative alternatives; handle routine consistency and readability within the team.
Use Open Decisions as the issue index. Its recommendations remain proposals, and its categories overlap. The team should not wait for fourteen separate owner answers or assume that every criticized rule needs wholesale replacement.
The full reading path runs from The Game through an expedition and builds, into the changing station and its discoveries, then home, people and story. Supporting articles will be revised from their current live text, preserving the outside review's useful cleanup.
Open questions
- Which precise growth rhythm, reward presentation and milestone conditions best support the selected direction?
- How should permanent changes alter fresh crowd placement without creating long empty approaches?
- Which story and rescue consequences should be offered to the owner next?
- What does completing the station connection do, and what content scope can support the intended journey?
- The rules and numbers are proposals; practical testing awaits the owner's development-phase authorization.