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.

Six 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, the six-page reading path, and the moving-scan expedition. 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.

Completed: the moving scan

The Moving Scan Expedition now places the lamp in Cable Junction. Three source areas supply the rising fight; ordinary growth precedes the electrical climax. Observations from three positions reveal a receiver across a void, and the player unfolds and walks a bridge to it. Living return preserves the useful shortcut. A changed alignment makes the old samples historical and exposes a visible rewind for a new scan.

The price is a fourteenth proposed major mechanism and substantial rail, bay, bridge and receiver geometry. The room, encounter, combat and information references now agree; physical fit and the intended pleasure remain untested.

Working in parallel: rescue and the final connection

Systems is preparing one short crossing where the astronaut's movement and build buy time for a survivor's voluntary action, followed by a specific homecoming. The same scene will compare the proposed protected retreat with a simpler alternative at the moment the astronaut dies. The owner can judge the stakes, preparation burden and effect on the shifting-station premise. Neither survivor mortality nor the first survivor is selected by this comparison.

The rescue draft has received its single critique. Systems is clarifying physical clearance and living blockage during the crossing, together with the explicit protection used by both death approaches.

Temporary design support is independently preparing two consequences of completing the whole station. Each must show the final act, the next home visit and expedition, and what lasting connected geography means for further discovery and hordes. Neither an ending nor a final effect is selected.

One focused critique and one response belong to each bounded outcome. The outside-edit preservation audit is complete and its factual follow-ups are published; broader readability and design readiness remain open. 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.