Hold the Flood — Design Review

REV101 · r6 · 2026-09-06 14:25 UTC · Independent Design Critic · In review — re-review of Design r3 (a folded, glossaried body) and World and Mystery r5/r6 (a rule change I had not seen, plus fiction), with the outside reader's round-2 contradiction claims verified. r5–r1 are retained verbatim on the Archive sub-page and in page history (d3679b, 3fd6df, 698c13, 47d51d, 7ad187); every finding is indexed at the foot of this page.

What was re-reviewed

Verdict — unchanged: ready for owner concept steering (OWN101) — with one correction required before any owner-facing text is derived from these pages

The concept is intact and much clearer: Design r3 is the first revision an outsider could read end to end. But r5's rule change (surge path is now continuous) left three older sentences that state the opposite, and one of them is the sentence that prices A's central lever. That is N12 below. It does not affect A-versus-B; it must be fixed before the pricing paragraph or the signature scene is shown to the owner.

Status of carry-forwards after r3 / r5 / r6

New findings — priority order

N12 — The panel now moves entered surges; three sentences still say it cannot (CLR101 Q22, verified)

• Where: World and Mystery 430206 — W1 path ("after entry, a surge moves toward the nearest energised beacon it can reach, re-evaluated continuously") and §Topology ("re-routing the panel after entry is what drags a surge across the district toward the new light") versus W2 ("Re-routing at the panel affects only surges not yet dispatched") and §"Cost of diversion" cost (3) ("committed surges do not turn back, so a diversion made after dispatch buys nothing this surge"). Design 0b4039 — spine rule 3 (continuous path) versus the pricing sentence ("a surge already dispatched does not turn back").
• Why it fails: under continuous path, switching the panel darkens one fixed beacon and lights the other, so every surge in the district walks toward the new light. W2's sentence has no intake/path qualifier and has not been reworded since W1 was split in r4; cost (3) is simply false under r5; "does not turn back" is true of intake and false of path. The reader's framing is correct: the per-dispatch reading makes the panel a planning tool used between surges; the continuous reading makes it a lever that drags a surge off you mid-emergency. Both designers state the second (WLD item 3, Design spine 3); the unrevised sentences state the first.
• Consequence: the cost-of-diversion argument — the closure of Finding 2 — was made for the first game. For the second, the mid-surge re-route is unpriced in text: the four costs (panel in the open; lighting a branch opens its hatch and invites the next surge; committed surges; the held dock) still apply, and the world designer's counterplay reasoning is sound, but nothing states what a "panic switch" costs when a surge is already on you. That is A's central lever and the paragraph the owner will read.
• Category: contradiction (same page and cross-page); load-bearing.
• Minimal change: (1) reword W2 to the split: "Re-routing never changes an entered surge's intake and never teleports it; it does change every entered surge's path, because it changes which beacon is lit." (2) Replace cost (3) with the cost of a mid-surge switch — e.g. that the dragged surge crosses the district through the low end, so the route it takes to the new light is the route it now occupies, and the hatch on the darkened branch shuts. (3) Change Design's "does not turn back" to "keeps its intake". Then re-read the four costs once under the continuous reading and say whether Finding 2 still closes; I expect it does, but it has to be argued, not inherited.

N13 — The electrician's scene needs the surge in water; r5's topology has it holding beside a dry beacon (CLR101 Q23, verified; half already fixed)

• Where: Design 0b4039 §Signature interaction ("wait on the ledge for surge two to wade into the channel before triggering") and §Loadouts Electrician ("waits for the surge to wade into the yard channel") versus WLD 430206 §Topology and Design 0b4039 §Topology ("the yard beacon stands at the pump hall… A surge enters beside its beacon and holds there while it stays lit") and WLD r6's definition ("Intake: … the pump hall").
• Why unclear: the scene needs surge two standing in the shallow channel; the rule has it entering at the pump hall and holding beside the beacon. No sentence places the yard intake or the beacon's holding ground in the channel. (The scene's other half — "surge one is dispersing" versus "holds" — Design r3 already corrected to "holding at the causeway's far end".)
• Consequence: the one concrete moment meant to sell A does not follow from the rules as written. Small to fix, large if left, because it is also the electrician's whole loadout.
• Category: missing design detail.
• Minimal change: one sentence in both topologies: "The yard intake opens into the shallow channel in front of the pump hall; a surge holding at the yard beacon stands in that water." That also makes the yard branch inherently the wet one, which is what the coil, the flooded dock and the conducting rack all want.

N14 — The pump's upkeep exists in fiction and not in rules

• Where: Design 0b4039 §Fantasy and motive ("The pump burns salvage; that is why you haul. Stop hauling and the dock floods") versus §Gathering and colony (bundles are banked or spent on a channel pump; pump capacity is one exclusive choice; two additive repairs — no upkeep rule) and §Persistence (colony state persists; nothing decays).
• Why unclear: either there is an upkeep cost per expedition, or there is not. If there is, the colony becomes a treadmill in which an investigative expedition that returns light is punished — the meta-level form of "pressure that leaves no room for curiosity", and a gathering grind by another name. If there is not, the motive paragraph promises a stake the rules never collect.
• Consequence: decides whether exploration is the reward channel (Design r3's own argument against kill XP) or competes with a maintenance bill.
• Category: missing design detail; owner-requirement risk if upkeep is chosen (Brief: colony "without becoming a disconnected chore").
• Minimal change: one sentence. Recommended: no upkeep — the pump is fuelled by banked salvage once, and the flood threat is what makes the held-dock choice exclusive; "stop hauling and the dock floods" then reads as the colony's long-run stake, not a per-expedition tax. If upkeep is wanted, state the rate and say what a zero-salvage expedition costs.

N15 — Minor: "Quiet 3, shorter" is the same length (CLR101 Q24)

Design 0b4039 §Rhythm: Quiet 2 is minutes 5–8, Quiet 3 is minutes 10–13; both three minutes. Either tighten the numbers or drop the word. Wording.

N16 — Scope of the minimum: three mystery tiers, one designed

Design 0b4039 §The whole game proposes three tiers (false refuge; the interior; the relay's source) and an ending at the source in 12–20 expeditions. Only tier one is designed. Not a defect at concept stage — it is presented as owner decision 5 — but Tasks criterion 9 (minimum complete intended experience) will require DES102 to state which tiers are in the minimum and sketch tiers two and three in a paragraph each as recombinations of the spine rule, not as new machine families or a lore catalogue. Scope; carry-forward.

What works in r3 / r5 / r6, and why

• Design r3 can be read by someone who has not read the wiki. A one-line glossary, plain motive, combat and health stated, the whole game shaped, bookkeeping at the end. This is the Tasks criterion 1 standard, reached without the owner-facing document yet existing.
• The two designers converged on the same dispatch fiction independently (a relay on its old timer, built to call crews, that the Flood answers). A fiction that two authors reach from the rules is a fiction the rules support.
• N10 was closed with a reason, not a word (WLD item 3): continuous was chosen because a standing lure is readable and counterable. N12 is the cost of that reason; it is the right kind of cost.
• The extraction trace holds by construction. "Withdrawal never requires solving this" is now shown, not asserted.
• The lead adopted the stricter rack rule (dark modules drain) without being asked, which makes the rack's one decision sharper.
• The outside reader's method is worth keeping: for every sentence carried into DES102, ask whether it was written before or after the intake/path split. Adopted into the DES102 checklist below.

Recorded for later empirical validation — not defects

• Whether a panel that can drag an entered surge dominates (depends on N12's re-pricing).
• The open stretch between culvert exit and dock (WLD r5).
• Everything under r2–r5.

DES102 checklist (current)

Tasks criteria 1–10; N12–N16 closed; Finding 5 table with owner-approval residue; pump-hall moment with hatch power-loss rule; the extraction trace in the written expedition; tiers two and three sketched as recombinations; codes to an appendix; and the reader's pass — every carried sentence checked against the intake/path split.

PM report — r6

• Task: REV101. Artifact: Design Review r6, In review; r5–r1 retained.
• Reviewed: Design 0b4039; World and Mystery 430206 (r5 33dc2a via diff); Clarity Questions cba5eb. Design Document and PM Reviews still 404. Tasks/Brief unchanged.
• Changed decisions: none by this role. Verdict unchanged; Finding 2 conditionally re-opened pending N12.
• Evidence: written comparison; diff of WLD r4→r6; the reader's Q22 and Q23 checked against the exact sentences and confirmed (Q23 half already fixed in Design r3). No players, sessions, scores or asset checks; nothing built, prototyped, tested or created.
• Remaining risk: N12 is the only item that must precede owner-facing text; N13/N14 are one sentence each; N15/N16 are DES102. PM pages remain stale (Tasks still shows DES101/WLD101 "Ready", REV101 "Waiting for first submission"); CLR101's author is not on the recorded Team — PM to decide whether to adopt the page; two lead sessions still unnamed.
• Next handoff: lead and world designer — N12 (three sentences and a re-argued cost paragraph), N13 (one sentence, both topologies), N14 (one sentence). PM — record the working direction under OWN101; decide CLR101's status. I review DES102 when it exists and will not revise again for DES101/WLD101 unless a change is material. One exact PM request: record the working direction (A, B, or premise change) and confirm whether the spine rule, W1–W4 and S1–S3 are carried into DES102 as candidate rules.

Where the earlier reviews are, and where every finding lives

Added by the wiki editor, 2026-09-06. REV101 r5–r1 used to sit below this line, 62 KB of them. They are now on Design Review / Archive, verbatim and unedited, and each is separately in page history. Nothing was summarised or dropped. This index exists so that a citation of any finding, from any page, still resolves in one click.

Reviews: r5 · r4 · r3 · r2 · r1

Vocabulary used in these findings is defined on the Glossary.