Hold the Flood | Two concept directions

DES101 | r2 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review

Recommendation (proposal): Develop A: The Borrowed Route. One rule, current, decides what fights, what opens, where the Flood goes, how your pack is packed and what the colony holds dry. Learning it is the game.

What r2 changes (r1 = page history c340f6 and 4343a2, retained). Written by a new session of this role after reading Design Review r1 / REV101 and World and Mystery r2 / WLD101. REV101 Findings 1 and 2 are resolved by one spine rule: beacons are powered devices, so power draws the Flood and power is also what opens things. Findings 3 and 4 and Secondary 1, 2 and 4 are addressed because the fixes are short; Finding 5 gets a DES102 commitment. B is r1's second direction, condensed, substance unchanged. No canonical decision changed.

Owner requirements (Brief a449b2, D005 to D011): survivorlike; exploration, experimentation, mystery; the Flood is massed enemies; assume nothing exists; Unity; Steam; design only until the owner authorizes development after reviewing the design document; no AI-generated art; prefer existing free assets; purchases and rare custom assets need owner approval.

Provenance: Inspirations are owner statements, not research. Every setting, enemy, rule and number is a proposal; scenarios are illustrations, not playtests. Both directions assume a solo player with automatic basic attacks. Camera, 2D/3D, controls and operating systems remain open; top-down 2D is a reversible working assumption because water, cables and surge routes must read at a glance.

The problem both directions must solve

A survivorlike keeps you moving; a mystery asks you to stop and look. Both directions adopt the world designer's S1 to S3 (WLD101 r2), which resolves REV101 Secondary 1. S1 the notebook is a full pause and shows only what you have already observed. S2 a raised shelter is a hard stop: enemies neither enter nor spawn, repacking is allowed, the district stays visible, and the surge clock keeps running, so retreating to think costs surge time and position, never health. S3 new evidence, panel switches and experiments happen in the running world. Knowledge never changes these rules; it changes how much live time you spend exposed.

A. The Borrowed Route (recommended)

Fantasy and setting (proposal). A surveyor enters a sealed pumping-and-relay district under a drowned city to learn why its own machinery was turned against the Flood, and by whom. The Flood is a mass of bioelectric organisms that pours in through known intakes on a forecast schedule. You cannot outfight it. You can learn the district well enough to be where it is not, or to make it go where you want.

The spine rule (proposal), stated once for district, pack and colony.

1. Conduction. Current flows between touching conductors, and through water to everything the water connects. Insulation stops it.
2. Power. A device works only while energised: a hatch, lamp or beacon on a live cable or channel; a rack module touching a charged battery.
3. Attraction. An energised beacon pulses at each dispatch, and a surge enters by the pulsing beacon (WLD101 W1). The dispatch panel at the causeway head sends the district's one live circuit to Causeway, Yard, or Off, the forecast's own intake. A dispatched surge keeps its entrance (W2). Wiring, signs and wear never change (W3).
4. Charge. Stunned organisms shed charge. Batteries store it; modules and machines spend it; it never leaves the district.

A valve that joins channels extends where current reaches; a pump that drains one cuts it; the coil injects it; the panel routes it; and the powered branch is the branch the Flood comes to. That last line answers Finding 2: switching the panel is free and available on expedition one, as a knowledge gate requires, but energising a branch to open its hatches invites the next surge there, the panel stands in the open a dash from the nearest shelter, and committed surges do not turn back.

Topology (Secondary 4). Elevated dock; a raised dry causeway signed as the evacuation route, beacon live by default; a culvert beneath it, dry without payment, with cart wear and a sign turned to the wall; a pump hall and salvage yard beside a shallow channel, beacon dark; the interior beyond. Three intakes: Causeway, Yard, and the forecast's default when the panel is Off.

Core actions. Read the forecast: next surge, entrance, time. Choose a route. Gather salvage from marked deposits. Operate valves, pumps and the panel. Discharge the coil. Repack in a shelter. Reach a dock before evacuation.

Pressure. Three announced surges per expedition, each larger; quiet between them except for stragglers; a final evacuation window. Missing the dock, or losing all health, means rescue without cargo. Pressure is legible and steerable, which is what leaves room for curiosity: you can compute when you are safe, and knowledge extends that time.

In-run growth (Finding 4; decision for PM). Kills give no experience, because kill experience makes standing still the best move and exploration a loss. Growth comes from the world: two to four modules per expedition from fixed placements with varying contents, two to six salvage bundles from deposits, and charge from surges met at a chokepoint. The rack caps at six squares, so power grows by composition, not number: you leave with a cutter, one empty battery and an empty rack; by surge two you usually have one powered setup; surge three tests it. This is a moderate, front-loaded arc by design; the owner should judge it against the survivorlike requirement now. Fighting still matters because charge is the only fuel for powered experiments, stragglers yield little, and surges are finite, so nothing farms.

The rack (Finding 3). A 2 by 3 grid; each square holds a module or a bundle. Conduction applies inside it: salvage is dredged wet and conducts, so a charged battery touching a bundle leaks charge into it, shown as a drip; powered modules do not leak; insulation is the only blocker. With a two-square coil and a battery, the battery touches at least one further square in every position, so "three bundles and a leak-free battery" is impossible: carry insulation and two bundles, leave a square empty, or accept a battery that drains over the expedition. A placement decision with a readable consequence, and the same lesson as the district's joined channels.

Builds (three sketches; DES102 gives costs and counterplay). Electrician: coil, battery, insulation, two bundles; sets Yard on purpose, waits for the surge to wade into the yard channel, discharges: stun, charge harvest and an open pump-hall hatch in one act. Hauler: cutter only, six bundles; leaves Causeway, takes the culvert to the quiet yard, banks the most, never opens anything powered. Shepherd: portable beacon module plus battery; pulses while powered, so the next dispatch comes to wherever it is planted; pulls a surge off the interior route; misplace it and the surge comes to you; leaks unless insulated. Which fits depends on which surge is committed, what lies behind it, and where the dock is.

Gathering and colony (Secondary 2). Bundles compete with modules for squares. A bundle is banked, or spent in the district to run a pump and dry one channel this expedition only. The colony is the dock and its pump, and pump capacity is one exclusive standing choice: which dock it holds dry, causeway side or yard side. That inverts which panel setting is safe, because a surge sent toward your dock blocks extraction; changing it costs a full return's salvage. Two additive repairs, each a full return: a workshop (one extra starting module choice) and a forecast relay (the first surge's entrance shown before departure). Meta-progression is deliberately small; a larger colony is a scope decision for the owner. Excluded: citizens, hunger, decoration, production chains, because none changes a decision inside an expedition.

What you discover and what it changes.

Signature interaction (illustration). Quiet two. The panel is on Causeway, so the yard is dark: beacon dark, pump-hall hatch shut, a cable running from the yard circuit along the shallow channel to that hatch. Surge one is dispersing on the causeway. You want the hatch. Panel route: a dash to the causeway head, Yard. The yard lights up, the hatch opens and stays open, and the forecast now says surge two enters through the yard in ninety seconds, where you stand. Coil route: from the dry ledge, discharge into the channel; the current reaches the hatch for a few seconds, you cross in insulation, the yard stays dark, but you have spent surge one's charge, and if a dispatch pulse lands inside your discharge window the beacon fires and surge two comes anyway. Electrician's route: set Yard, then wait on the ledge for surge two to wade into the channel before discharging: stun, a full battery and an open hatch, because you invited the surge to where your coil is. The surge is bait, key and clock at once; knowing the rule is what lets you choose which.

Rhythm (illustrative fifteen-minute expedition).

Persistence. Persists: map, notes, learned rules, module recipes, colony state, banked salvage. Resets: enemies, surge state, water states, found modules, cargo, charge; the panel returns to Causeway. Death loses cargo and finds, keeps notes, reissues the starting kit: no loss spiral.

Presentation (Finding 5, commitment). One light convention, steady = powered and pulsing = dispatching; wet or dry by tint; the forecast as a UI overlay; text inspection as fallback for wear and signs. DES102 will table every readable state against its cheapest medium and name any residue needing owner approval. No asset is shortlisted or claimed.

Scope cuts. One district (dock, causeway, culvert, yard, interior), fixed layout, variable placement; discrete wet or dry per channel; four machine types, three intakes, about ten modules. No fluid simulation, destructible terrain, free chemistry, procedural layout, base-building grid, citizens or multiplayer. A content boundary, not a feasibility claim.

B. The Listening Below (r1, condensed)

Fantasy and setting (proposal). A field investigator enters a buried civic archive occupied by massed enemies that behave as one collective organism and follow sustained repeating signals. You learn to redirect its attention and use the swarm itself to reach sealed evidence; its origin is the central question.

Pressure and rhythm. Player-provoked. Powered investigations and harvesting add visible expedition attention; crossing a marked threshold releases a swarm at a telegraphed entrance; attention never decays and no rest erases a threshold. Clear an observation position, read its traces without a clock, choose an intervention, survive its consequences. Each operation previews its attention cost. Extraction ends the expedition; health loss loses carried finds.

Builds and gathering. Two sockets, combat and investigation, plus four cargo spaces; no grid. A narrow cutter with a muffled sampler keeps attention low but cannot send the long-range signal that redirects distant Flood; a broad sweeper with a resonator handles crowds and reaches signal mechanisms at higher attention per use. Bulky specimens take two spaces; scrap takes one and can become a placed beacon.

Signature interaction (illustration). Panels pulsing on the third beat draw tendrils; tracks converge on a pressure plate linked to a gate. Place a beacon on the plate, pulse three times: the mass moves onto it and the gate opens while it is occupied. Cross knowing the swarm now stands on your return route.

Persistence and colony. Notes, signal rules, equipment, banked finds persist; attention, mechanisms, enemies, carried finds reset. Finds buy a listening post (next expedition's entrances revealed) or a workshop (muffled sampler). W1 to W3 hold here with beacon = signal source.

Scope cuts. One archive wing, a few authored pulse rules, marked arrival sites; no simulated acoustics, adaptive learning, procedural rooms or sound-only clues.

Comparison and recommendation

Recommend A. One rule serves combat, access, routing, packing and the colony, so exploration, experimentation and mystery reinforce one another instead of competing, and the world designer's chain drops in without a second machine family. The surge schedule keeps urgency after the mystery is solved. B gives more deliberate observation, but its pressure depends on the player choosing to escalate, which risks slow accounting and a lost survivorlike pulse. A third premise, a persistent frontier map where the colony is territory and the tide advances between expeditions, was considered and set aside because territorial loss punishes experimentation and scope grows; it can be written up if the owner wants that steer.

Risks (unvalidated). A: the deadline may produce anxiety rather than planning; live water, current and a surge's destination must read on a crowded screen; the panel or the shepherd's beacon may still dominate if the invited-surge cost is too light. B: attention accounting; over-safe clearing. Neither rhythm, balance nor repeated-expedition appeal is validated; those need an authorized later phase.

Decisions requested from PM (and the owner via OWN101).

1. Working direction: A, B, or a premise change.
2. Carry the spine rule with W1 to W3 and S1 to S3 into DES102 as candidate rules (recommended).
3. No kill experience; charge is the only kill yield (recommended).
4. Fixed layout with variable placement, for fair clues (recommended).
5. Top-down 2D as the working presentation assumption (reversible).

Acknowledgment and PM report. Lead Game and Systems Designer, new session of the role; DES101 / Design r2 / In review; work page: Design. Read Hub, Brief a449b2, Tasks 254220, Team 3ddc81, World and Mystery r2 (438f1b) and Design Review r1 (7ad187) at 2026-09-06 13:39 UTC. On REV101 Secondary 3: the changelog shows local time, UTC+3 (the Home page's patch note dates a hang to "15:30 to 15:50 UTC+3", matching the changelog's own stamps for that window), so r1's and WLD101's UTC read times are consistent and no record contradiction exists. D011 and D012 acknowledged; design-only gate and asset restrictions accepted; no build, prototype, asset or test was made. No canonical decision changed. Evidence is written reasoning against the cited revisions, not player data. Next handoff: critic re-reviews r2 against Findings 1 and 2; PM decides whether OWN101 proceeds on r2 and records the working direction; the world designer checks the spine rule against W1 to W3. If both sessions of this role continue, PM should name which is canonical; this session treats the latest revision on this page as current.

Integration with WLD101 r2 (supersedes the r1 coordination note, page history 4343a2)

The r1 note proposed treating the coil as optional and the beacon chain as central; REV101 Finding 1 showed that demoted A's reason for existing. r2 replaces it with the spine rule, under which beacons sit on the same circuit as hatches and lamps. WLD101 r2's topology mapping, S1 to S3, W1 to W3 and contradiction-check items 1 to 6 are adopted as proposals, with one adjustment: the yard hatch is on the beacon circuit, so energising a branch is both key and lure. The culvert stays dry without payment, so the false-refuge chain is never resource-gated. Request to the world designer: confirm that Notice, Compare and Understand survive with steady = powered and pulsing = dispatching as the only light convention. No owner relay, agent creation, development or testing is requested.

Integration note 2 | WLD101 r3 received | 2026-09-06 13:51 UTC

Read: World and Mystery r3 (c92838). The confirmation requested in the note above is received: Notice, Compare and Understand survive the single light convention, and the yard hatch on the beacon circuit is accepted. DES101 r2 above is left unchanged so the critic's re-review can cite it; the following are recorded for DES102 as proposals, not accepted rules.

• Accepted as candidate rules: W1 with dispatch-instant evaluation, W2, W3, W4 turned signs, the unlabelled panel with a forecast marker, the pump-hall reachable answer, Off closing both branches, and the four-part cost of diversion.
• Correction to r2 accepted: the portable beacon is steady while powered and pulses only at a dispatch. DES102 carries that wording.
• Planted-beacon override (r3 item 1): accepted as a candidate under two constraints so it does not reopen REV101 Finding 2: the planted beacon overrides only for dispatches that occur while it is powered, and, proposed for the rack, a battery powers only one module at a time, so the shepherd cannot lure and harvest from the same battery. That also tightens the rack's placement decision (Finding 3). Whether it is enough is for DES102's counterplay section to show and the critic to judge.
• Status: no canonical decision changed; no question is open to the world designer; PM's working direction (OWN101) is still awaited before DES102 starts. No build, asset or test was made.

Integration note 3 | REV101 r2 and r3, WLD101 r4 received | 2026-09-06 14:02 UTC

Read: Design Review r3 (698c13, r2 47d51d retained) and World and Mystery r4 (e54d6a). REV101 r2's verdict is ready for owner concept steering (OWN101), unchanged by r3; Findings 1 to 4 and Secondary 1, 2 and 4 are recorded resolved and Secondary 3 withdrawn. DES101 r2 above stays unchanged. The items the critic routed to the lead are answered here as proposals for DES102; no canonical decision changed.

• W1 split confirmed (N1). The panel alone chooses the intake; a planted beacon changes only the path an entered surge takes, toward the nearest pulsing beacon it can reach. The override I accepted in note 2 is withdrawn as moot. The rack constraint stays: a battery powers one module at a time.
• N2, what sheds charge. Proposed wording for spine rule 4: a killed organism drops a small charge mote; a mass stunned in water sheds a large one; motes fade within seconds; walking over a mote fills a battery in the rack, and without a battery the charge is lost. So the starting kit (cutter, empty battery) can charge on expedition one, the minute-3 rhythm row holds, and the coil remains the only way to harvest in bulk.
• N3, N4. WLD101 r4's topology adopted: two docks, the yard dock flooded and conducting until the colony's pump holds it dry instead; the sluice as the Off intake, opening onto the interior route.
• N7, a battery touching two modules. Proposed: when packing, the player draws one link from each battery; a module touching a battery without a link is unpowered and shown dark. Default link: the module placed first.
• N8, N9. The culvert sign faces the yard (W4); DES102 cites WLD101 r4's items, not earlier lists.
• Expedition example request. DES102's written expedition will include the pump-hall moment: the player inside when the invited surge reaches the yard, with the hatch's behaviour on power loss stated as a rule there.

Status. PM's working direction (OWN101) is still not recorded on Tasks; DES102 starts when it is, carrying the spine rule, W1 to W4, S1 to S3, the r4 topology and the items above. No question is open to the critic or the world designer. No build, asset or test was made.