This page lists the questions in the design that need an owner decision, as of 14 September 2026. Each entry says where things stand, what the problem is, and the options with their costs. Entries are ordered by how much of the rest of the design depends on the answer.

The suggestions come from an outside review and are not decisions. When the owner answers, record the answer in the [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief), then update or remove the entry here.

The owner found the wiki hard to read and asked for an outside review. The review read all 73 pages and the project chat, then sorted each problem into one of three kinds:

- **Text slop:** the document reads as machine-written. A player would never see it.

- **Game slop:** if the game were built as written, a player would feel it was generated.

- **Design weakness:** a real problem that a human team could equally have made.

Independent judges checked each finding, and separate reviewers tried to refute it; findings that did not survive were dropped. On 14 September the text slop was removed from 49 design pages without changing any rule, and each edit was checked against the original. What remains needs a decision.

- **Game slop:** a player would feel it as generated.

- **Design:** a real problem, not slop.

- **Latent:** becomes game slop if a deferred art or writing pass is skipped or done carelessly.

- **Already asked:** the team has already put this question to the owner elsewhere in the wiki.

1. How an expedition ends

2. How power grows during a trip

3. What the build system is for

4. What a horde is

5. The ending and its price

6. The astronaut, and what dying does to them

7. The cast

8. Rescue

9. The place

10. The alien languages

11. How the game talks to the player

12. How the station shifts

13. How big the game is

14. Contradictions that need one answer each

**Where it stands.** Three rules were set at different times. Everything the astronaut carries comes home on death. Temporary combat upgrades end on every return, alive or dead. A living return leaves the station as it was, with defeated crowds still gone; death reshuffles the unjoined rooms and brings new crowds. Each rule works on its own.

**The problem.** Together they break the loop. A second trip into a region starts at base power and walks through corridors that are already empty, with nothing to grow against until the next fresh fight, which is farther away each time. [Progress](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Progress) records this as unsolved: "Repeated returns can push fresh combat farther away; that design problem remains open."

Dying costs nothing and brings new crowds, so the efficient move is to die on purpose when far out with a full pack. Rooms change neighbours only at death, so joining the whole station turns into a run of deliberate deaths. [Station Assembly Example](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Assembly%20Example) counts up to "thirty-nine requested shifts" and says of a final deliberate death: "That is the accepted cost."

- **A. End every expedition the genre way.** Extraction or death, and the crowds refill either way, as in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor or Returnal. *Cost:* loses the feeling of having made a corridor safe; walking home becomes less different from dying.

- **B. Keep living returns, but let crowds drift back.** The layout and joins stay, but bodies move into emptied rooms from neighbouring sources, so the next trip meets resistance on the way out. *Cost:* needs a believable drift behaviour and tuning; a cleared route is only mostly safe.

- **C. Give death a small cost that is not loot.** For example, a day passes aboard, a survivor's project resets, or canisters come back empty. *Cost:* the owner rejected loss mechanics as frustrating; this reopens that.

- **D. Allow rearranging the station without dying.** A machine, lever or survivor project requests a reshuffle of the unjoined rooms. [Station Assembly Example](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Assembly%20Example) already names this "living realignment action" as the alternative. *Cost:* the shift becomes a tool earlier and loses a little mystery.

**Suggestion.** B and D together. B keeps all three rules and fixes the empty walk; D removes the deliberate-death puzzle. A is the safer choice if a pure genre feel matters most.

**Read:** [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Death And Persistence](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20And%20Persistence), [Station Assembly Example](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Assembly%20Example), [Expedition Proposal](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Expedition%20Proposal).

**Where it stands.** A temporary upgrade comes only from resolving a crowd stage: clearing everything a source released, or sealing its opening after the release began. Sealing before the release gives safety and access but no upgrade. Running away gives nothing. Killing enemies faster than they arrive keeps a lane clear but earns nothing while the source still feeds. [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules) expects three to five choices in a sustained trip. On 10 September the team asked the owner whether to switch to regular growth from kills, with larger transformations at milestones, and recommended it. There is no answer yet.

**The problem.** The cleverest move in a room, sealing a door before the crowd comes, pays nothing. Killing a hundred enemies changes nothing until a stage counts as resolved. Growth arrives slowly for the genre and feels awarded by a referee rather than earned in the fight.

- **A. Regular growth from kills, with milestone transformations.** The team's recommendation. Small upgrades come often; transformations come when a major surge breaks. *Cost:* more interruptions for choices; needs a meter and pickup design.

- **B. Keep stage rewards, and pay for the early seal.** Sealing before the release gives the same choice, or a defensive one, so no clever move pays nothing. *Cost:* still slow for the genre; a short trip may earn one choice.

- **C. Both.** Kills visibly strengthen the installed part that made them, while stages still offer choices. *Cost:* the most design work; the growth has to show on the equipment.

**Suggestion.** A now, C later. Answering the existing question lets the combat pages settle.

**Read:** [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), [Progress](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Progress).

**Where it stands.** Twelve parts connect like a sentence: one part starts an event, another splits or converts it, another delivers it. Three example builds exist: Storm Choir (chain lightning), Ricochet Foundry (bouncing discs) and Gravity Furnace (pulling pursuers into a heat burst). [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities) sets power, heat, hop and target limits so that no combination can feed itself. A Fork Relay that copies a signal instead of splitting it was considered and rejected because it "would be amplification".

**The problem.** The owner's second priority is "I made a ridiculous build work". Rules written to stop runaway combinations also stop ridiculous ones. All three builds share one core (Threat Sensor, Pulse Projector, Impact Dynamo, Capacitor), fill the same four-step store and spend it with one button; [Equipment Catalogue](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Catalogue) states "All three climaxes use Capacitor's built-in manual control." Each climax is capped at 42 or 48 bodies. A player would feel one build with three visual effects. In Noita, one of the owner's references, a poor wand still does something and a strong one can break the game.

- **A. Keep the wiring, drop the conservation rules, and add many more parts.** Around forty simple parts that combine freely. Loops are allowed, and their price is physical (parts overheat, misfire or hurt the astronaut) rather than a refusal. Close exploits after a prototype shows which ones matter. *Cost:* balance is harder, and some builds will be too strong for a while, which is part of the appeal.

- **B. Keep twelve parts, but make the builds feel different to play.** For example, one with no button that grows stronger the longer the astronaut stays in a crowd; one that is a joke (all nozzles, the astronaut flies); one that burns the loot the player meant to bring home. Drop the shared fill-then-press climax. *Cost:* the toybox stays small, and absurd builds stay planned rather than discovered.

- **C. Replace the wiring with a simpler known model.** For example, Backpack Hero's grid packing or Vampire Survivors' weapon evolutions. *Cost:* loses the idea that the same part runs both the rig and the station, which is the strongest idea in the design.

**Suggestion.** A. The link between rig parts and station machinery survives it. Do the build rework in B either way.

**Read:** [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20and%20Builds), [Equipment Catalogue](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Catalogue), [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities).

**Where it stands.** Every crowd comes from a source: a ward wing, duct, loft or store that "the astronaut never enters". Noisy work near a source makes it release a finite, announced stage of enemies, which ends when the stage is cleared or its opening is sealed. [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) places ten such encounters across forty rooms. Crowds always arrive by a visible route and never grow because a build is strong. Nine enemy roles exist, and the slow majority makes up most of every crowd.

**The problem.** The owner defined the flood as massed enemies. As written, a horde works like a wave counter: trigger, pour, clear or seal, reward. Ten encounters cannot carry a thirty-hour survivorlike, and each follows the same routine of doing noisy work and closing an opening. The wards where the patients lived exist only to release bodies. The strongest encounter idea, a moving lamp carriage under a window that turns out to be a live map, still needs a room placement. The enemy roles resemble Left 4 Dead's (a slow majority, runners, a screamer, a spitter, a tether), and none is a particular former patient.

- **A. Make ordinary travel a flood.** In an occupied region, pressure rises until the astronaut leaves, seals the region or breaks the surge. Sources become geography rather than counters. Keep finite announced stages for set pieces. *Cost:* quiet rooms for discovery are harder to protect; needs a pressure model and tuning.

- **B. Keep finite stages, but write many more and vary them.** Around thirty encounters instead of ten, with each region using a different kind of pressure: a chase, an oxygen siege, the moving carriage. Make at least half the wards rooms the astronaut can enter. *Cost:* content, which is where the hours go.

- **C. Make the special creatures particular.** Whatever the horde model, make each special creature a specific patient or experiment with a record to find, and let a survivor have known one. Give each a name the survivors would use. *Cost:* writing; small.

**Suggestion.** A for ordinary travel, B's variety for set pieces, and C regardless.

**Read:** [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Combat And Enemy Roster](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20And%20Enemy%20Roster), [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory), [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20and%20Builds).

**Where it stands.** Two endings are sketched. The apparent ending repairs the ship and undocks, sketched as irreversible and ending revival. The deeper ending reaches the core, looks behind a sight baffle (living tissue in the leading story, an empty template in the alternative) and offers to cut the coupling that feeds the hospital machines. [Story And Ending Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Story%20And%20Ending%20Map) makes that act reversible: the control previews "disconnect mixed profile; ordinary revival unchanged; reversible here". Every survivor keeps helping whatever the player chooses: "None withdraws help if the player chooses differently." The team recommends the living-captive story and lists "two owner choices that genuinely require taste".

**The problem.** After ninety hours the player reads a short preview, turns a control and risks nothing they care about. Both endings feel like difficulty settings. In the review, this was the only finding that every reviewer failed to refute: no art or writing pass turns a reversible switch into a discovery. Separately, the premise says the builders left "for an unknown reason", while the leading story gives a reason.

- **A. Put a price on the core act.** Re-sealing the core ends ship revival, so the walk home afterwards is the one trip in the game without a second chance, and at least one survivor leaves the ship over the choice. Undocking stays as the apparent ending. *Cost:* the owner dislikes punishing the player; this is a single, chosen, clearly shown price.

- **B. Keep it reversible, but make the station react.** The station changes visibly around the choice: wards go dark, creatures change, the addressed lines stop or start. Survivors take sides and some conversations close. *Cost:* the player can still undo it, so the reaction must matter more than the undo.

- **C. Choose the story and write its truth on one page.** Not what the player sees, but what actually happened. Check every evidence chain against it and define what each survivor knows. *Cost:* about an afternoon. Both other options need it.

**Suggestion.** C first, then A, with the living-captive story, which matches the owner's original image.

**Read:** [Story And Ending Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Story%20And%20Ending%20Map), [Hospital Story Directions](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hospital%20Story%20Directions).

**Where it stands.** The astronaut has no name, wish, history or line of dialogue anywhere in the wiki. [Player Information And Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information%20And%20Options) describes them through equipment: "Worn: integral tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter". [Resurrection And Corruption](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Resurrection%20And%20Corruption) offers three options: revival never marks the astronaut; an optional alien treatment opens old controls and draws hostility from hospital machines, and can be removed aboard; or each revival changes the astronaut a little, up to a limit. The team recommends the first two together.

**The problem.** The premise says repeated resurrection can turn people into creatures, yet the player can die many times without a mark, so the most personal threat in the story happens only to others. And a player who spends ninety hours as an unnamed set of equipment gives the survivors no one to talk to.

- **A. Write the astronaut on one page.** Who they are, why the ship broke, what they wanted before docking, and one thing a survivor wrongly believes about them. No dialogue system is needed; it shapes what survivors say and how the journal reads. *Cost:* small.

- **B. Adopt the third corruption option.** Each revival leaves a visible mark, up to a limit, so the astronaut's own body becomes evidence the survivors can read. A limit and a slow rate stop deliberate death from becoming a way to farm it. *Cost:* some players will dislike a permanent change they did not choose; that is also the horror.

- **C. Keep the voluntary treatment, but make it permanent.** The player can choose to be marked but cannot undo it. *Cost:* a middle ground; the involuntary version is the more distinctive one.

**Suggestion.** A now. Then B for a game with a body in it, or C if the player should choose.

**Read:** [Resurrection And Corruption](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Resurrection%20And%20Corruption), [Player Information And Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information%20And%20Options), [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief).

**Where it stands.** Five survivors: Yeva (pressure technician), Aster (supply clerk), Dorn (maintenance), Mara (sterile processing) and Ivo (rehabilitation). Each has a job, one belief about the collapse, a rescue with one choice, a project aboard that borrows a rig part, and a later scene where one belief changes. Yeva, Aster and Dorn have well-written moments. Mara and Ivo are built mainly around a part and a rule. Every survivor comes when asked, and a wary survivor's attitude changes "what she says, not access, help or friendship points". Whether a survivor can ever be lost, and who is rescued first, are still open.

**The problem.** By the second survivor the player can predict the third. Home reads as a workshop with a person standing at each bench. The team's open questions (can survivors be lost after reaching the ship, is there colony management beyond the projects, who is rescued first) all depend on a larger one: are these people, or fixtures with names?

- **A. Cut to three or four survivors, each with a want no project can satisfy.** Give each one belief they never fully give up, one way to lose their goodwill, and one line of dialogue written before more scene planning. Let one have no project and another have two. Fold Mara's and Ivo's roles into Dorn and Aster. *Cost:* fewer rescues.

- **B. Keep five, and rebuild Mara and Ivo around a loss or a deed.** For example, Ivo as the one changed patient aboard. *Cost:* more writing than A for a similar result.

- **C. Answer the rules underneath.** Whether a survivor can be lost after reaching the ship; whether there is any colony management beyond the projects; who is rescued first. *Cost:* none; these are answers, not work.

**Suggestion.** A, with C answered as: survivors cannot be lost once aboard, no management economy, and Yeva first, since her scene is the strongest.

**Read:** [Cast And Short Rescue Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Cast%20And%20Short%20Rescue%20Map), [Home And Colony Loop](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20And%20Colony%20Loop), [First Survivor](/Hold%20The%20Flood/First%20Survivor).

**Where it stands.** The owner accepted cooperative rescue on the condition that it never becomes a long escort. The crossing is short, one junction, but it is gated by a checklist: walk the route in this life, check the controls, pass a canister through a sleeve and wait for flow confirmation, reach a marked level on a gauge, stock a separate abort room with a spare canister, and arm a retreat line the survivor can use alone. "An under-supplied request refuses before the refuge door opens." If the astronaut dies mid-crossing, a safeguard pending owner decision freezes creatures and hazards while the survivor walks alone to the abort room, and the player learns the outcome only by returning there. [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity) calls the freeze "an artificial protection convention".

**The problem.** The emotional peak of the game, a person who has knocked on glass for a year finally walking out, arrives as a pre-flight checklist. All five rescues run the same checklist. The survivor is never at risk, never refuses and never judges the danger herself.

- **A. Reduce the checklist to one moment where the survivor judges the air.** She looks at the canister and says whether she will go. Drop the abort room and the gauge mark; an abort means she runs back to her own door. *Cost:* less mechanical certainty; a poorly prepared crossing can fail.

- **B. Decide what death mid-crossing means, and make it a story rather than a freeze.** Either she can die, or she always reaches the ship on her own, closes the airlock and tells the astronaut on waking. *Cost:* if she can die, decision 7 changes; if she always makes it, say so plainly.

- **C. Let one rescue be refused or already failed.** One person who will not come, or a ward reached too late. *Cost:* one fewer person aboard.

**Suggestion.** A and B (she always makes it home on her own and says so), plus C for one of the five.

**Read:** [Rescue Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20Rules), [Rescue And Home](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20And%20Home), [Cast And Short Rescue Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Cast%20And%20Short%20Rescue%20Map), [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity).

**Where it stands.** [The Game](/Hold%20The%20Flood/The%20Game) and [Connecting The Station](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Connecting%20The%20Station) describe corridors of former patients, a cracked observation window, a half-cleaned mural, bleach rings around thresholds, a Glass Theatre and a freight hall of hanging cargo. [Station Room And Module Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Room%20And%20Module%20Inventory) lists forty rooms named mostly for machinery: Pump Hall, Cable Junction, Regulator Gallery, Sampling Loop, Foundry Block, Archive Stack, Imaging Exchange. The player enters one ward. There is no operating theatre, morgue, pharmacy, staff mess or window onto space. After a death the rooms sit behind different doors, but nothing on the walls or floors shows that the station moved.

**The problem.** The room list reads as a list of the machines the plot needs, each given a room. A player describing the station to a friend would say "an industrial plant with a hospital sign on the door". The Regulator Gallery, where a pry scar runs through an alien inscription, shows the level of detail the other rooms need.

- **A. Base half the rooms in a hospital.** Ward bays with beds, a theatre, a morgue, a pharmacy and a staff mess, with the pumps and regulators as the machinery that served them. Merge rooms whose only content is a socket. Give every room one detail unrelated to its machine. Put a few rooms on the hull with windows onto space and the ship. *Cost:* rework of the room list; some mechanisms move.

- **B. Give each region its own fabric.** One visibly alien in scale, material and light, one plainly human and built over it, the core somewhere between. *Cost:* art-direction work, which a paper design can specify.

- **C. Show the shift physically.** Bleach rings, seams and scraped paint layers on thresholds that accumulate over the campaign, so a door's history can be read before opening it. *Cost:* small; a rule and an art note.

**Suggestion.** All three. A is the large one; B and C are cheap and make the shifting station readable.

**Read:** [Station Room And Module Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Room%20And%20Module%20Inventory), [Connecting The Station](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Connecting%20The%20Station), [The Game](/Hold%20The%20Flood/The%20Game).

**Where it stands.** The builders' script is cut into the station; its word order shows which service main a room controls (`KETH SORAN VEL` against `SORAN KETH VEL`). A later hand labels the two ends of transfer lines (`OSH·a`, `OSH·b`) and eventually writes lines addressed to the ship's berth, which the player can answer by seating a plate. The journal never translates; it stores images, notes and whether a predicted route led where expected. The words are placeholders: [Language Expedition](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20Expedition) says "no glyphs, alphabets, conlang or vocabulary catalogue are proposed". Every objective has a route that needs no language, so reading only saves time and oxygen.

**The problem.** Both scripts pose the same puzzle: find two examples, notice what differs, pick one of two controls. A player would learn a few rules over ninety hours and never read an alien sentence with meaning. The most original idea in the design, the station writing to the player, ends with "Recipient remains unknown." Chants of Sennaar confirms each guess so vocabulary builds up; Outer Wilds makes knowledge the only progression.

- **A. Design both scripts as visual systems first, then give them meaning.** Different materials, directions and word lengths, and no Latin letters. The second might not be writing at all, but a pattern in the shifts or the room layout. *Cost:* a real language pass of weeks, not days.

- **B. Give each language one moment where the player reads a real sentence.** The inward-facing seals naming what they hold; the later hand's last line naming the berth and what it wants. Gate one thing on it, with a slow physical route around. *Cost:* bends the policy that no player gets stuck, for one gate.

- **C. Settle how many languages there are.** [Two Language Discovery Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Two%20Language%20Discovery%20Map) says "two actual languages, not five"; [Clues And Help](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clues%20And%20Help) says wall strings "fulfil no whole-language requirement"; [Regional Discovery Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Regional%20Discovery%20Map) says the utterances are "not a third guaranteed language"; stamps are "technical notation, not counted as a language". *Cost:* none.

**Suggestion.** B and C now, A when an artist joins. Make the reply exchange with the station, described in [Alien Utterance Discovery](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Alien%20Utterance%20Discovery), a headline feature.

**Read:** [Two Language Discovery Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Two%20Language%20Discovery%20Map), [Alien Utterance Discovery](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Alien%20Utterance%20Discovery), [Language Expedition](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20Expedition).

**Where it stands.** [Player Information And Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information%20And%20Options) requires an interface that repeatedly says what it cannot vouch for: the oxygen reserve mark "never becomes a return estimate"; the breadcrumb trail "promises no current safety and no oxygen cost"; instrument reports "give no distance, path, safety or remote diagnosis"; lookalike suggestions are "labelled software-generated"; each upgrade offer shows "one situation where the choice fails". Oxygen and carrying space are exact numbers with fill states, and pickups that do not fit are refused.

**The problem.** The document's cautious voice has moved into the game's own voice. A player would feel the game hedging at them. Oxygen, the first survival pillar, reaches the player as arithmetic.

- **A. Remove the "never claims" rules from the interface.** A gauge is a gauge. If the reserve mark is not a return estimate, drop it; if a suggestion can be wrong, let the player learn that by being wrong. *Cost:* none; this deletes rules.

- **B. Make oxygen a tank to feel and the pack a thing to see.** One-press canister swaps, and a pack that opens on pickup so the player drops something on the spot. *Cost:* some packing arithmetic goes.

- **C. Replace refusals with consequences.** A special fires when pressed, scaled by stored charge; overheating glows and misfires instead of blocking. *Cost:* harder to balance; belongs with decision 3.

**Suggestion.** A now; B and C with decision 3.

**Read:** [Player Information And Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information%20And%20Options), [Survival And Loadout](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Survival%20And%20Loadout).

**Where it stands.** The owner chose a station whose rooms rearrange on death, with deliberate joins that persist, and made joining the whole station one of the deepest late puzzles. [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity) models room groups as rigid blocks that "may translate and rotate as units" without mirroring, around a dock that never moves, with validity checks on each arrangement. It lists as open "whether every reachable pre-completion persistent-group state, across all forty-room states, has a valid changed arrangement", and its fallback "violates the rule that every death shifts the station". [Development And Validation Handoff](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Development%20And%20Validation%20Handoff) estimates 289–490 role-hours for a first prototype slice, with low confidence, and says "Do not build that experiment yet." What happens once the whole station is joined is still an owner question.

**The problem.** The system may not be buildable as specified, and the design phase does not allow testing it. Blue Prince builds a changing house by drawing rooms from a deck; a simpler model of that kind may fit a small Unity team.

- **A. Draw rooms from a deck.** Each door opens onto a room drawn from its region's deck, and joined rooms always draw together. Joining the station becomes pinning every room. *Cost:* the station becomes a network of rooms rather than a consistent floor plan.

- **B. Keep the rigid-block model, but prove it with a prototype.** Authorise the small slice the handoff describes, and fall back to A if it fails. *Cost:* weeks of engineering before other questions are answered.

- **C. Answer the completion question.** Once every room is joined, does the station go still, or keep moving around the joins? The mechanism cannot close without this. *Cost:* none.

**Suggestion.** A, with C answered as "it goes still", which could be what lets the player reach the core.

**Read:** [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity), [Connecting The Station](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Connecting%20The%20Station), [Station Assembly Example](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Assembly%20Example), [Development And Validation Handoff](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Development%20And%20Validation%20Handoff).

**Where it stands.** The owner's ambition is about 30 hours to the apparent credits, 90 to the real ending and 100–200 for the deepest secrets. The smallest costed content set is 4 regions, 40 rooms, 12 objectives, 12 parts and 5 survivors with 3 scenes each. [Whole Game Outline](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Whole%20Game%20Outline) states: "Even the STRETCH column does not justify 30, 90 or 100–200 hours." For comparison, [Survivorlike Market Data](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data) records a median of 22 hours at review for Vampire Survivors, and [Length And Price Audit](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) records 26 hours to finish Noita's main story. The team asked which content band to cost first.

**The problem.** Ninety hours across twelve objectives is seven and a half hours per objective. Either the hours or the content must change, and nothing yet argues for either. Estimates also depend on decisions 1 to 4, which change what an encounter and an expedition are.

- **A. Lower the ambition to what the genre supports.** For example, 10–15 hours to the apparent credits and about 30 to the real ending, with secrets beyond. *Cost:* a smaller promise, and an honest one.

- **B. Keep the ambition and change the content model.** Survivorlike hours come from replayable runs, not hand-built rooms. If expeditions become runs (decision 1, option A) with a large part pool (decision 3, option A), ninety hours becomes plausible. *Cost:* the game moves toward roguelite and away from authored mystery.

- **C. Measure before deciding.** Build one region, time ten expeditions and scale up. *Cost:* no reliable estimate until the prototype exists.

**Suggestion.** A as a working figure and C for the real answer. Pick a content band only after decisions 1 to 4.

**Read:** [Whole Game Outline](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Whole%20Game%20Outline), [Production Scope](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Production%20Scope).

These are places where pages disagree, or leave a small choice open, and the cleanup did not choose because the choice is a design call.

- **Who is rescued first.** [Home And Colony Loop](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20And%20Colony%20Loop) opens with Yeva's rescue but lists who is rescued first as open; [Cast And Short Rescue Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Cast%20And%20Short%20Rescue%20Map) keeps both Yeva-first and Aster-first branches. *Suggestion:* Yeva.

- **What Dorn says on arrival.** [Home And Colony Loop](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20And%20Colony%20Loop) says he "heard a transfer cycle he still cannot explain, and then sealed the section"; in [Cast And Short Rescue Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Cast%20And%20Short%20Rescue%20Map) hearing the cycle is a later revelation that replaces his claim that nobody crossed. *Suggestion:* keep it as the later revelation.

- **Whether room groups rotate.** [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity) lets groups "translate and rotate as units"; [Station Assembly Example](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Assembly%20Example) has regions "retain orientation", possibly only to simplify its example. *Suggestion:* groups rotate.

- **Climbing creatures.** [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20and%20Builds) describes "climbing creatures" arriving from ceiling or maintenance routes; no creature in [Combat And Enemy Roster](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20And%20Enemy%20Roster) climbs. *Suggestion:* give one existing role a ceiling route, or remove the line.

- **What made the monsters.** The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) says repeated resurrection can turn people into the creatures; [Resurrection And Corruption](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Resurrection%20And%20Corruption) says "Hospital intervention—not resurrection count alone—made at least this monster class." *Suggestion:* state that both causes exist, if that is intended.

- **Whether survivors help with the languages.** The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) says survivors can help the player understand what they find; [Two Language Discovery Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Two%20Language%20Discovery%20Map) says "neither reads an alien language". Both hold if survivors know the station as a workplace but cannot read alien script. *Suggestion:* state that once.

- **The shift options the owner chose from.** The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) records a choice of Option 3 from three proposals, but [Shifting Station Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Shifting%20Station%20Options) no longer describes Options 1 and 2. *Suggestion:* link the Brief to the page revision that had all three.

- **The rescue safeguard.** The enemy freeze during a survivor's retreat is pending owner decision (decision 8), yet [Rescue And Home](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20And%20Home) already requires "a retreat line Dorn can operate" before a crossing counts as prepared. *Suggestion:* settle decision 8, then align that page.

- **Starting equipment.** [Survival And Loadout](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Survival%20And%20Loadout) starts the astronaut with four parts from the ship; [Progression Options](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Progression%20Options) offers alternatives where the Pulse Projector and Barrier Plate are found in the station. *Suggestion:* start with the ship kit, so the first expedition is about the Fork Relay.