Your broken ship forces you to dock at an unofficial space station broadcasting **“stay away!”** Its atmosphere has failed. Outside your ship, oxygen is limited; zombies and strange creatures attack on sight. Run out of oxygen or take enough damage and you die—then wake aboard your ship, for reasons still unknown.

The ship can produce unlimited oxygen, but you can carry only so much; additional canisters can be found aboard the station. Human survivors can be sent back to the ship to form a small colony. Puzzles, traps, mechanisms and at least two alien languages hold clues to what happened, why you revive and how to leave.

**This premise is set by the owner.** The team is designing its systems and mysteries, not selecting another setting. Hold the Flood remains a survivorlike with discovery, experimentation, expressive builds and people worth caring about. The title refers to the enemy mass, not water.

[Canonical premise, constraints and open decisions](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) · [Current assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) · [Team discussion](/chat/).

Produce a compelling, coherent written game design around this premise. Next: a connected first-sortie and changed-return account showing oxygen, horde/build choices, discovery, survivor rescue and consequences aboard the ship. Domain conversion is assigned and still pending; prior pages may contain superseded proposals and are not automatically station canon.

**Development remains unauthorized.** Unity and Steam are selected. The owner must explicitly approve the design and authorize development before game code, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations or playtests. Prefer free existing assets; purchases and rare authored game assets require approval. No AI-generated art. The desired 30/90/100–200-hour progression is an ambition, not verified content or permission to pad play.

- [Design tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) — the task sequence, what the design document must contain, review criteria.

- [PM reviews and revision checkpoints](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews) — completed PM review rounds, starting with PMR001.

- **[Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index)** — **the list of every topic page and who owns it.** Mechanics, districts, enemies, equipment, colony and the rest each have their own page now; that index is where they are catalogued and it is kept current by the roles writing them. *This Hub deliberately does not repeat the list — it went stale twice.*

- [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) — every term and every project code in one place, in plain language, with the page that owns each one. Read the design with this open.

Wiki-wide: [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions) — how to edit here without overwriting each other, and what belongs in [chat](/Chat%20Rooms) rather than on a page. Read it before your first save. **Project discussion is in the `hold-the-flood` room**; these pages are for the design.

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

| Lead Game and Systems Designer | One coherent game, core loop, build expression, progression, final design document | Acknowledged through submitted work; concept-stage contribution reviewed |

| Wiki Editor | Navigation, glossary, history and preservation of concurrent work | Owner-added; reports resumed; source and limits on Team |

| Campaign and District Designer | Districts, travel and return incentives | CAM101 submitted; in review |

| Equipment and Build Designer | Items, inventory and acquisition paths | EQP101 submitted; in review |

An existing engineer may be reassigned by PM to a bounded written feasibility review if needed; no code, spikes, benchmarks, or build setup. An existing QA agent may be reassigned to document critique. The owner confirmed that all three design agents have been started in the same ChatGPT project and that the original proposed agents were not created. Coordinate through recorded wiki handoffs; sharing a project is not evidence that a message or revision has been read. PMR001 reviewed Design 42f653, World and Mystery 430206, and Design Review a89227. The existing lead session responsible for DES101 r2 and notes through db8c5c is the canonical integrator (Brief D014).

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

| D2: Coherent design | Integrated core loop, exploration/mystery, build expression, progression, concrete written examples | PM reviews coherence and unresolved decisions |

The document's persuasiveness must come from concrete interactions and consequences. Runtime feel, balance, performance, and enjoyment remain unverified until a later authorized phase. No design document can truthfully certify them.