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1 | # Hold the Flood — Design Tasks |
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| 3 | Maintainer: PM. Revision: design-only reset, 2026-09-06 UTC. |
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| 4 | States: Ready, In progress, In review, Accepted, Blocked, Deferred, Superseded. |
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| 5 | A proposed agent is not assumed to exist. PM accepts design work; the owner authorizes a phase change. |
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| 6 | ||||||||
| 7 | ## Active design sequence |
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| 8 | | ID | Deliverable | Responsible role | Current state | Dependencies / review criteria | |
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| 9 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 10 | | PM001 | Original wiki kickoff | PM | Accepted historically | Four original pages published and checked at the previous address | |
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| 11 | | OWN001 | Initial creative and production brief | Owner | Accepted | Follow-up supplies genre, priorities, references, engine, platform, asset rules, and phase gate | |
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| 12 | | PM002 | Revised brief, team prompts, tasks, approval gate | PM | Accepted | Four revised pages published via the wiki's documented agent interface and their saved source verified | |
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| 13 | | DES101 | Two compact concept directions and one recommendation | Lead Game and Systems Designer | Blocked on agent invocation | Each: player fantasy, main actions, survival pressure, discovery, build expression, progression, one distinct interaction, major scope cuts / critic + PM | |
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| 14 | | WLD101 | Exploration and mystery contribution | World and Mystery Designer | Blocked on agent invocation | Can start alongside DES101; show a complete clue-to-deduction-to-action chain, knowledge progression, and pressure/curiosity tradeoff / lead + critic | |
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| 15 | | OWN101 | Steer the recommended concept | Owner, facilitated by PM | Waiting for concept packet | Confirm or adjust premise and priorities; this is not development approval | |
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| 16 | | DES102 | Integrated game design document draft | Lead Game and Systems Designer | Waiting for working concept | Integrate accepted world/mystery work; meet the document criteria below / critic + PM | |
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| 17 | | REV101 | Independent design critique | Independent Design Critic | Blocked on agent invocation and first draft | Start with DES101/WLD101 when available; identify specific contradictions, weak choices, asset/scope risks and corrections / PM | |
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| 18 | | DES103 | Revised owner-facing design document | Lead Game and Systems Designer | Waiting for integrated draft and critique | Resolve material findings; preserve explicit unknowns; concise pitch plus supporting detail / PM | |
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| 19 | | OWN102 | Design verdict and possible development authorization | Owner | Waiting for reviewed document | Revise / reject / approve design; development remains gated until explicitly authorized | |
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| 21 | DES101 and WLD101 begin from the confirmed brief; they may propose assumptions for undecided setting details. The critic need not wait for the entire document to identify early contradictions. |
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| 23 | ## Superseded or deferred work |
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| 24 | | Previous ID / assignment | New status | Reason | |
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| 25 | | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 26 | | DES001: smallest playable experiment specification | Superseded by DES101 and DES102 | Current deliverable is a compelling game design | |
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| 27 | | ENG001: build inventory / technical experiment | Deferred | Assume nothing exists; written feasibility only if PM assigns it | |
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| 28 | | QA001: prototype checks | Superseded by REV101 | Current review concerns design documents | |
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| 29 | | ENG002: playable implementation | Deferred; not authorized | D007 owner gate | |
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| 30 | | QA002: executed prototype review | Deferred; not authorized | D007 owner gate | |
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| 31 | | OWN002: prototype play session | Deferred; not authorized | D007 owner gate | |
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| 33 | Do not take old Ready/Blocked build tasks as authorization to execute them. No technical spike, prototype, playable mockup, simulation, or build setup is an exception. |
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| 34 | ||||||||
| 35 | ## What the design document must make clear |
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| 36 | 1. **Identity:** player fantasy, intended experience, premise, and a compelling reason this game exists. Explain it in its own terms, with references as supporting context. |
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| 37 | 2. **Core play:** player actions, controls as a design proposal, readable feedback, immediate decisions, pressure, failure, retreat/end conditions, and return/retry. |
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| 38 | 3. **Exploration:** world organization, route choices, landmarks, revisiting, and how a discovery changes future action. |
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| 39 | 4. **Experimentation:** proposed rules and combinations, limits/costs, at least three genuinely different build examples, and an example where a plausible experiment fails for an understandable reason. |
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| 40 | 5. **Mystery:** one fully specified example with clues, a fair deduction, the action it enables, and the consequence. Mark solutions as designer spoilers. Explain what knowledge persists and how discovery avoids simple stat locks. |
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| 41 | 6. **Progression:** separate what resets, what remains as resources/world/colony state, and what persists as player knowledge. Explain any colony loop's actual decisions and cost. |
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| 42 | 7. **Integration:** one clearly labeled illustrative expedition, followed by a later expedition changed by what was learned. Show causal links between pressure, gathering, build choices, exploration, and mystery. Do not invent playtest outcomes. |
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| 43 | 8. **Presentation and assets:** coherent direction, essential asset categories and reuse strategy, plausible existing-asset routes, coverage gaps, and requests needing owner approval. Asset availability and usage terms must not be invented. |
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| 44 | 9. **Scope:** minimum complete intended experience, optional extensions, explicit cuts, complexity drivers, and cheap alternatives. Avoid huge item/lore catalogues before the rules justify them. |
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| 45 | 10. **Honesty:** contradictions resolved or explicitly presented for a decision; uncertain runtime feel/balance/performance marked for later validation. No claims of tested enjoyment. |
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| 47 | The owner packet should open with a short pitch and concrete play example, followed by enough detail to assess the game. Quality is determined by specificity, coherence, and appeal to the owner, not document length. |
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| 49 | ## Review criteria |
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| 50 | A useful critique identifies the exact section/revision, the claim or interaction in question, the conflict or missing causal link, its player/scope consequence, and the smallest constructive correction. Separate violation of an owner requirement, internal contradiction, under-specified design, taste judgment, and future empirical uncertainty. |
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| 52 | PM requests revision when central systems compete without a resolved design, all builds amount to different damage numbers, mysteries lack a fair discovery path, scope depends on unapproved assets, or prose hides missing rules. Document review does not establish actual balance, feasibility, or fun. |
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| 53 | ||||||||
| 54 | ## Progress report |
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| 55 | Task ID; artifact/revision; changed decisions; sources or written reasoning; outstanding risks; next handoff; one exact PM request if blocked. Stop repetitive reports and unbounded polishing; PM decides the next useful revision. |
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