**2026-09-07 · Game Visionary · Working design direction.** The owner has authorized an hourly vision pass and changes or removals where the design contradicts its identity. The direction below synthesizes the current campaign and D024; it is a design judgment, not owner approval of the fiction or permission to develop.

**The game:** You are a surveyor keeping a small refuge alive in a drowned city. The Flood is the mass of creatures that overruns its machinery and roads. Survive that mass long enough to understand what moves it, turn the machinery into routes and weapons, and decide what your home should keep running once you discover what powers it.

**The theme:** Survival makes you responsible for the system you depend on. The machine that endangers you also keeps your refuge working. Mastery can remove an immediate danger and earn an easy, profitable return. Responsibility lies in the lasting state you choose for the city; it does not require a new fight, payment or uncertainty on every visit.

*Written illustration from [Campaign r9's Tram visits](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), not playtest evidence.* On your first trip, you switch power to an old tram. Its lamp draws a whole arriving mass up the road behind you. A large creature blocks the rail; while you cut it down, the crowd catches the tram. You fight only long enough to climb aboard, spend your medical kit at the next quiet moment, and put out the lamp at the summit. The mass spreads where the light abandoned it. You read the timetable, take one bundle and return by the dry stairs through the edge of that spread crowd. You learned that light can tow the Flood—and that every powered route darkens another.

Much later, you have learned that the creatures are delivered through the city's machinery. You close an upstream holding gate before returning, delaying this district's first delivery. You clear the same rail obstruction, switch power to the tram and ride up. Below, the warning lamp flashes and nothing arrives: your understanding worked. You leave the tram's lamp at the summit so the next crowd climbs away from the depot road used by your refuge, take a salvage bundle down the dry stairs, crank the dark lower gates open and go home before that crowd comes.

**Continuity:** project-room messages handled this pass: **4, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21 and 22**; last successfully processed message ID: **22**. Equipment accepts the Siphon simplification; World submitted its notation pass; PM accepts earned ease, requests the early encounter and refuge consequence, and withholds acceptance of World's separate wording regression; Colony's message 21 supplies the same-state service argument judged above. The Troll's message 22 and [register r2](/Disagreement%20Register/Support%20Assembly?revision=701901) confirm that comparison is answered while correctly withholding campaign-wide balance claims. The World correction remains its author's task. Earlier vision pass: [Brief 6d869e](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=6d869e).

[PMR006 evidence, rationale and assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006). Targeted domain contributions are accepted, while the expanded game remains in integration review and is not authorized for development.

| D022 | Draft seven external districts plus the refuge; no forced refuge-defence expedition. Additional districts require useful content justification, not a count quota | PM, 2026-09-06, responding to CAM101 and COL101 | Superseded as the proposed complete-game scope by the owner’s 2026-09-07 30/90/100–200-hour ambition. Existing areas are reusable candidates, not an accepted campaign size. |

| D024 | Develop World Answer A, continuing harvesting machinery, for the next mystery draft. Local drum AND trunk permit authorize dispatch; actual arrivals also need enemy supply; fixed power is separate | PM, 2026-09-06, responding to Lead/World and REV104 | Rejected for now by the owner on 2026-09-07: the city depending on the creatures is not the active revelation. Its harvesting theme and dependent ending require replacement; prior text is historical design material. |

- Owner expansion request, 2026-09-06: three to four hours is far too little; design a substantially larger campaign with many districts. The owner expects detailed mechanic, enemy and weapon pages. The premise was called promising, not approved for development. See D019–D021 and the [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief).

- Genre: survivorlike.

- The owner has started all three revised design agents in the same ChatGPT project. The original proposed agents were not created; all three now have wiki submissions reviewed in PMR001; this progress observation is PM-verified, not additional owner input.

The initial synthesis is superseded by the [game vision](#game-vision) above. This heading remains for existing links. Earlier wording is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief/history).

| ID | Decision | Authority | Status |

| D001 | Owner manually creates agents; PM supplies prompts and coordinates | Owner kickoff | Confirmed |

| D009 | Free assets preferred; paid/authored assets require approval; no AI-generated art | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed |

| D012 | Owner started the three revised design agents in this ChatGPT project; original agents were not created | Owner clarification, 2026-09-06 | Confirmed; first handoffs reviewed in PMR001 |

| D018 | Add audience/value evidence as document criterion 11; combine related product choices into a recommendation | PM, 2026-09-06, accepting External Critic X18 and addressing X20 | Revises PM's criteria, not owner requirements; no price or commercial viability accepted. Earlier no-expansion position superseded by owner D019 |

**D013 rationale and limits.** A currently connects investigation, enemy routing, equipment arrangement and hauling through electricity more concretely than B. The current packet still contradicts itself on movement after entry, coil-powered intake, dock safety and newly implied colony upkeep; Tasks PMR001 assigns the smallest corrections rather than accepting those claims as settled. Carry S1–S3 and W3–W4 as candidate foundations, revise W1/W2/topology and equipment rules consistently. Earlier provisional scope defaults included one fixed district and an ending; that complete-product limit is superseded by owner direction D019. No kill XP (charge as combat yield), top-down 2D, and no mandatory colony upkeep or decay remain revisable design assumptions; assess them against the expanded campaign. Panel alone chooses the entrance; movement after entry follows the nearest reachable energised beacon continuously. Do not carry Design r4's split-surge or glow-range exceptions into this baseline; Tasks explains the reconciliation. Use r4's nonconductive modules and wet-salvage leakage. All are revisable design assumptions, not owner approvals. Bioelectric enemies, the drowned-city setting, a small colony and moderate equipment growth remain proposals for the owner to assess in a complete document. A is not an approved production scope. This updates the earlier PM milestone sequencing only; the owner's design/development gate is unchanged.

Record each consequential decision's maker, date/source, rationale, affected tasks, and superseded decision. Concept acceptance is not approval to build.

| D021 | Propose four additional designers: Campaign/Districts, Combat/Enemies, Equipment/Builds, Colony/Progression | PM, 2026-09-06 | Four roles now evidenced by CAM101/CMB101/EQP101/COL101 submissions; Team and PMR004 record staffing; existing Lead remains integrator |

PM initially proposed eight districts; D022 now selects seven external districts plus refuge as the next-draft baseline following CAM101's content-backed recommendation. This is not an owner-approved count, production budget or duration promise. Existing pumping district becomes an opening-area candidate. [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) states quality criteria, ownership and the next milestone; [Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) carries DES104/WLD103/EDT102 and proposed CAM101/CMB101/EQP101/COL101.