**Status.** First-pass planning scaffold, not owner-approved canon and not a promise of duration or production scope. The opening direction is selected; later mechanisms, story interpretations and ending actions below remain proposals. “Apparent,” “deeper” and “secret” describe layers of discovery, not confirmed endings. The 30/90/100–200 hour figures are owner ambitions that this desk outline cannot validate.

The recurring rhythm is: leave the ship with a deliberate rig and finite carried oxygen; enter a station whose useful connections may differ after death; observe a local system while surviving its horde; spend shared carrying capacity on tools, oxygen and findings; then return with parts, people or knowledge that changes what can be attempted next. Death returns all still-carried property to the ship, leaves consumed, installed, dropped or handed-over things where they are, and changes the station. Home is a place to prepare with authored survivors, not a passive upgrade menu.

| Layer | Expedition goal and pressure | New player action | New interpretation earned |

|---|---|---|---|

| **Opening: one part, two machines** | Restore the docking-collar isolation bridge with the loose Fork Relay while the first horde crosses a constrained lane. Keeping the relay in the rig improves combat; installing it keeps the patient-bay shutter closed. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, choose whether the same part serves the rig or station, fight through the consequence, return and see what death preserves and shifts. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the selected Option A direction, while its exact room tuning remains proposed. |

| **Early expeditions** | Reach R-3, complete one short cooperative survivor rescue, claim the first small family of functioning parts, and test builder service marks against doors, air and power. | Reconfigure a three-part rig, decide what occupies pack capacity, escort through one prepared crossing, and record observations rather than receive a translation. | The hospital still has operational logic; people remember it incompletely; the journal preserves evidence, not truth. |

| **Middle expeditions** | Pursue several regional objectives: stabilize a useful route, recover ship-repair assemblies, investigate patient transfers, and bring a small authored cast home. Hordes make stopping to observe costly. | Choose between competing viable builds, lend and reclaim parts aboard, use local language predictions, exploit or repair persistent station connections, and decide whether to try an optional treatment. | “Corruption” may be an intervention in the astronaut’s active profile rather than a death tax. This is a question the player can investigate, not a settled explanation. |

| **Apparent ending layer** | Assemble enough recovered ship function to leave. Before the irreversible departure, clearly state that leaving the station field ends its revival effect. | Depart and receive a coherent apparent close, or postpone departure and keep investigating. No secret counter or hidden death threshold removes either choice. | Escape solves the astronaut’s immediate problem but does not explain the hospital, its disappearances, or the source of revival. Exact credits timing and what follows departure remain owner decisions. |

| **Deeper layer** | Reach the hospital’s sealed central system through accumulated operational knowledge, survivor evidence and station connections. | Make an explicit, previewed choice about an unchosen central mechanism—for example, isolate a template process, restore a safer one, or leave it untouched—then accept a visible consequence for revival and the colony. | The player can distinguish some mechanisms and consequences without the game declaring the station’s ultimate metaphysics. The example actions are replaceable until story and corruption directions are chosen. |

| **Optional secret layers** | Complete personal investigations, rare utterance exchanges and the late whole-station connection puzzle. | Build the entire playable station into one physical ship-rooted network, test cross-language hypotheses, and revisit places for consequences rather than checklist residue. | The station itself becomes a manipulable historical object. The deepest discoveries may complicate every prior account without supplying a single omniscient answer. Whether any secret is required for a “true ending” is unresolved. |

Discovery must change play at every layer: a route sign predicts an operation; an operation opens or safely alters a path; the path yields a component, person or bounded fact; and that result changes a later preparation or interpretation. Lore that supplies none of those consequences is optional texture, not spine content.

This is a replaceable middle-game example, not established fiction. After Yeva is home, she recognizes the identifier on a photographed R-3 pressure log but cannot infer where its line now runs. Dorn can lend his collar receiver, while the player’s relay-family part can either power that receiver before departure or remain in a Fork-based combat rig. Listening yields one pressure value and a suspect channel—not a route or proof—while keeping the part provides stronger lane control. Either preparation remains viable.

Inside the station, builder service marks let the player predict which of two valves performs “sample” and which performs “purge.” A visitor-language source/destination pair then predicts that the line was redirected through a decontamination ward. The player tests the prediction in world time, holds a horde at the valve, and finds an **Impact Dynamo** powering the abandoned sampling loop. Removing it ends that shortcut but earns a new build change: motion or impact can now trigger the player’s Barrier Plate or Pulse Projector, enabling a mobile counterwall instead of the opening’s fixed sensor rig.

The ward ledger shows only that a named transfer occurred after the time Yeva believed transfers had stopped. It does not say why, who survived or which witness was right. Back aboard, Yeva revises one accusation and asks the player to look for the destination ward; Dorn retains a different reading. Thus one expedition connects observation, two language tests, an earned expressive build change and a human consequence without converting evidence into authorial truth. Its room layout, character names and recovered part remain replaceable.

| Stage | Builds | Colony | Languages and journal |

|---|---|---|---|

| Opening | Two legible trigger/payload chains; first shared-use relay choice. | Empty ship and a visible reason to return to R-3. | First repeated service mark recorded with its observed result. |

| Early | A small part family supports at least two meaningfully different three-part rigs. | First short rescue; survivor contributes a bounded capability and personal lead. | Builder marks support one tested operation; visitor patterns are noticed but not translated. |

| Middle | Several viable rigs trade safety, control, mobility and carrying capacity; a recovered part enables a new behavior, not a numeric tier. | A small authored cast creates preparations, disagreements and linked personal objectives; no upkeep economy is assumed. | Each language supports multiple predictions and at least one corrected hypothesis; historical routes are marked as possibly stale after shifts. |

| Late/deep | Local build grammar scales into station connection work without making one universal loadout. | Survivors react to central choices according to what they know and what the player shared. | Cross-language evidence opens or reframes a route; utterance interaction remains bounded and never becomes an all-purpose oracle. |

These are comparable scoping proposals, not commitments, production forecasts or implied playtime. A “region” is a coherent expedition territory; a “room module” is an authored reusable encounter/discovery space; a “chain” is a multi-step discovery with a gameplay consequence.

| Authored unit | SMALL | TARGET | STRETCH |

|---|---:|---:|---:|

| Regions / room modules | 4 / 24 | 7 / 45 | 10 / 70 |

| Survivors with rescue plus home follow-through | 5 | 9 | 14 |

| Distinct equipment parts | 12 | 24 | 36 |

| Ordinary enemy roles / special roles / major set-pieces | 6 / 3 / 2 | 10 / 6 / 3 | 14 / 9 / 5 |

| Language discovery chains, split across at least two languages | 4 | 8 | 12 |

| Colony projects with a person-specific consequence | 5 | 9 | 14 |

| Major mystery or personal investigation chains | 4 | 7 | 11 |

| Region-binding converter sites, including the final station-scale use | 2 | 4 | 6 |

Even the STRETCH column does not justify 30, 90 or 100–200 hours. Missing measurements include average expedition and revisit length; how often death creates a genuinely new route rather than repetition; clue discovery and correction rates; viable-build count after dominance testing; horde encounter variety; dialogue/state volume per survivor; gating and backtracking costs; accessibility pacing; and the proportion of players who pursue secrets. Only later implementation, play evidence and production costing can relate inventory to duration or feasibility.

The PM must assign ownership; the roles below are recommended single owners. Ranges estimate focused design time for one role, exclude waiting, review, implementation, asset production and playtesting, and assume current sources remain usable. They are neither deadlines nor safe to sum into a schedule.

| Missing area | Proposed owner | Predecessor | Completion criterion | Rough active work |

|---|---|---|---|---:|

| Expedition/region topology and gates | Systems | This outline; selected opening | Every layer has entry condition, return value, alternate route and explicit dependency; no circular gate | 8–14 h |

| Shift, latching and final station connection | Systems | Connecting the Station; owner’s stabilization answer | Death transition, persistence, converter limits and whole-network completion are one contradiction-free rule set | 6–12 h |

| Build acquisition and part catalogue | Systems | Progression Options; Build Rules; content band choice | Each part has source, reusable behavior, counter-cost and at least two supported combinations; no generic stat ladder | 10–18 h |

| Horde encounter progression | Systems | Combat Rules; Horde Creature Proposals; region topology | Each region has readable pressures, build interactions, retreat case and escalation purpose | 8–14 h |

| Apparent/deeper story path | Design Lead | Hospital Story Directions; owner story choice | Scene-and-evidence map supports departure and continued investigation without declaring an unchosen truth | 10–18 h |

| Corruption/treatment consequences | Systems | Resurrection and Corruption; owner corruption choice | Access, consent, benefits, hazards, reversibility and ending interaction are explicit; ordinary death stays unpunished | 5–9 h |

| Survivor cast and rescue/home arcs | Design Lead | First Survivor; Rescue Rules; Coming Home | Chosen band has distinct rescue, contribution, relationship changes and bounded knowledge for every survivor | 12–22 h for SMALL; add 2–4 h per survivor |

| Two-language discovery map | Design Lead | Language and Journal; Language Expedition; Utterance Discovery | Every chain records evidence, test, correction path and concrete action unlocked; neither language becomes exposition | 8–15 h |

| Content feasibility pass | PM | Owner chooses a band; preceding specifications | Dependencies, reuse assumptions, authoring load and unvalidated duration claims are recorded for owner decision | 6–10 h |

| Whole-game coherence review | Reviewer | Readable versions of all selected specifications | Finds missing pillars, hidden dependencies, unsupported duration claims and contradictory player rules, or records no material objection | 4–8 h |

1. After a local binding, does that connection stabilize permanently, or can deaths continue rearranging it? The station-wide mechanism cannot close until this is answered.

2. Which hospital-story direction, if any, should lead: captive ascendant, departed being/template engine, or a revision? No exact explanation or ending is canon.

3. Should ordinary revival remain evidence-only with optional voluntary treatment, or should death itself alter the astronaut? The outline assumes the former only as the safer replaceable default.

4. Should functioning found parts be the progression spine, with fabrication limited to repairs/adapters, or should observation-led fabrication dominate?

5. Is voluntary departure the apparent-credit action, and may the player postpone it indefinitely? The outline proposes yes to both.

6. Must the whole-station connection unlock a deeper ending, or remain an optional secret whose reward is interpretation and access?

7. Which provisional content band should be costed first? Choosing one authorizes planning around counts, not a duration claim or implementation phase.

Until those decisions are made, this outline is a dependency map: it shows a complete shape of play while keeping its most consequential answers visibly open.