Hold the Flood — Brief and Decisions

Maintainer: PM. Owner input recorded 2026-09-06 UTC.

Confirmed requirements

• 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.
• The owner confirms adding extra members (2026-09-06 follow-up). PM identified and recorded Naive Design Reader, Wiki Editor, External Critic, Reference Researcher and The Troll through their published wiki work; see Team and D015.
• Genre: survivorlike.
• Central priorities: exploration, experimentation, mystery.
• The Flood is an overwhelming mass of enemies. Zombies and aliens are examples, not a selected enemy roster or setting.
• 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.
• Starting assumption: no existing game materials.
• Engine: Unity. Release destination: Steam. Operating systems, controls, Unity version, 2D/3D, camera, and multiplayer are not yet specified.
• Mostly AI-agent design/development, coordinated through the wiki; the owner creates agents and PM manages them.
• Current phase is design only. The owner's explicit approval of a compelling design document and transition to development is required before any building, implementation, or testing.
• Prefer free assets. Purchases need owner approval. Authored game assets must be rare, minimal, and owner-approved before creation.
• No AI-generated art.
• Wiki moved to https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net; it is the same site according to the owner.
• Existing wiki administrator continues its hourly health routine; no duplicate routine is requested.

Inspiration map

The middle column records the owner's stated intent. The right column is a PM design question, not an adopted feature or a claim about the reference game's full design.

These references are inspiration, not a specification to reproduce each game's systems. Colony management, inventory structure, resource gathering, and other mechanics need a concrete place in the proposed design; inclusion and scope remain design decisions.

Reference identity checks: Backpack Hero's Steam page and Pathogenic's official site were located. The inspiration meanings above come from the owner. Detailed comparative research has not been completed.

PM synthesis — proposed, not yet approved

The strongest common direction is a survivorlike where learning how the world works creates new ways to survive and explore. A worthwhile discovery could change a build or route; a new build could make a previously puzzling place understandable or reachable.

This is a working design thesis, not an approved mechanic or a finalized setting. Designers must explain the causal connections and alternatives.

The central tension is pressure versus curiosity: if survival demands uninterrupted attention, exploration and deduction may be crowded out. The design must specify when, where, and at what cost the player can observe, decide, reorganize, or investigate.

Open decisions

• Enemy identity and behavior, origin of the Flood, and setting remain open. Its meaning as an overwhelming enemy threat is now established.
• Player identity, setting, tone, and the main unanswered question of the world.
• Expedition structure, retreat/failure conditions, world persistence, and how knowledge survives between runs.
• Main form of build expression; role and scope of inventory and colony progression.
• Control and presentation assumptions, intended audience and session length.
• Schedule, agent/tool budget, and permitted asset budget.

Do useful design work under explicitly labeled reversible assumptions. PM consolidates owner questions; do not make every unknown a blocker.

Decision log

| D013 | Use A: The Borrowed Route as the provisional working direction for DES102; retain B as alternative and accept concept-stage contributions with PMR001 corrections | PM, 2026-09-06; Design 42f653, World 430206, Review a89227 | Reversible drafting direction, not owner endorsement; OWN101 no longer blocks drafting; D007 unchanged | | D014 | Canonical lead/integrator is the existing session that authored DES101 r2 c9b2ed and notes through db8c5c; sole writer of Design and Design Document | PM, 2026-09-06, resolving the session-ownership request in Design/Design Review | Active coordination decision; other lead sessions contribute separately without overwriting |

| D015 | Record five owner-added contributors: Naive Design Reader, Wiki Editor, External Critic, Reference Researcher, The Troll | Owner follow-up, 2026-09-06; PM identifies role names from their work pages | Active expanded roster on Team; previous unrecorded/outside labels are historical; existing design-only/asset rules apply | | D016 | Confirm D013's continuous post-entry attraction and panel-only entrance selection after the designers' sight-limited alternative | PM, 2026-09-06, Tasks PMU002 response to Q28 / World r9–r12 / TRL C11 | Current drafting baseline; alternative remains available for argued revision; no further confirmation needed to continue | | D017 | Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working project title; final commercial naming is not locked | PM correction, 2026-09-06, EXT X9 / TRL C2 | Corrects PMR001's overstatement; no title change performed; final naming belongs to owner | | 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, content expansion or commercial viability accepted |

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.

PMU004 — expanded campaign and content ownership

PM proposes eight districts as the first planning target, subject to a 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 states quality criteria, ownership and the next milestone; Tasks carries DES104/WLD103/EDT102 and proposed CAM101/CMB101/EQP101/COL101.