Hold the Flood — Design Tasks

PMR007 — current review and bounded assignments

2026-09-07 · Review, specific corrections and exact revisions. This table is the current disposition; older dated tables below are evidence/history, not commands to repeat delivered work. The original PMU007 depth criteria remain the acceptance standard. Correct effects are agreed; whole-game acceptance is withheld. Source hashes and narrow review scopes are on PMR007, not inferred from task receipts.

Task Owner Evidence-backed status Next useful action
DES104 → DES105 Existing Lead Integration changes required at Campaign 9366c8; canonical decisions credited at contract 8644ea Use Tram as the common first/changed/later-return case. Integrate EQP102/COL102/WLD104, legal issue and reachable evidence order. Correct seven-cell berth-supported start and decide one consistent initial Exchange permission state. No larger issue cap or new omnibus document
CAM102 / CAM103 Campaign and District Designer, with Lead on current authored districts Exchange changes required at 5bc625; clearer baseline accounting credited at Districts e1136a, not duration accepted PMR007 §1/2/5: correct Exchange dispatch, fuel/rack/expiry/retrieval ledger and bank start; Collector winch versus 2 s power; provide actual Tram apron/manual return/offers and 30 s crossing or reject that location. Merge/justify observation-only repeat trips before changing the count
CMB101 / CMB102 Combat and Enemy Designer Current effect table credited at 6129ea; live-copy corrections still required Remove §0.2 unresolved C2 paragraph, §6 Spark-stun/most-room clauses and old presentation count. Then countersign or revise EQP102's three approaches against targeting, press and pursuit; no readability/balance claim from role-count limits
EQP101 Equipment and Build Designer Effect/interface contribution accepted at dc3aa2, with Arc fc64bb; newer Equipment r4 and Coil/Inventory/Utility mirrors scoped in PMR007 Equipment r4 already retires its pending Cable/Spark requests; no redo. Collector mechanism stays Campaign-owned. No blanket catalogue/asset acceptance
EQP102 Equipment and Build Designer Accepted as a delivered contribution at Build Paths 6bc3f7; integration pending, not CMB102 acceptance Carry three legal small-start approaches plus bundle → 3 charge → 30 s lure into DES105. Coordinate exact offers/ground with Campaign and targeting with Combat; reject an unsupported short crossing. Broader catalogue depth remains unproven
COL101 / COL102 Colony and Progression Designer COL101 targeted corrections accepted; COL102 two-path contribution accepted at fe7d88, conditional on shared route/acquisition Mirror D026: comparison joins base receiver, one assembly for tooling or berth. Match the integrated Tram case and Equipment's smaller-package revisit clarification. Equal investment opportunities are not guaranteed income; no hauling tax
WLD104 World and Mystery Designer In review — targeted changes required at e99445 Reorder clue/action chain onto accessible Lock Flight → Tram → Exchange → Collector progression and actual returns; clarify independent evidence for harvesting. Fix grounded-run persistence row. Mirror D026; do not sell bank state already on free prelaunch board
REV104 → REV105 Independent Design Critic REV104 contribution accepted at ce94e4, with closure qualification Verify Combat/World residual copies identified by PMR007. Keep Exchange 16–18 open until corrected. Review depth only against the actual combined DES105 revision; do not certify readiness from isolated countersigns
D025 / REF110 Lead + Reference Researcher Asset Audit fa674c received/reviewed as bounded source/licence report, not suitability acceptance Distinguish located sources, style/pose/animation uncertainty, adaptation work and gaps. Engine-drawn cues are not zero authoring. Correct Campaign §10's stale none-located statement; no purchase/custom request yet
EXT102 / TRL / CLR102 Existing review contributors X33 response credited, positioning deferred; X32 5f950c substantively addressed by EQP102 in its scope; Clarity reports no open item Reassess actual design argument, not citation counts. Cold owner-path read after DES105 exists; at most three consequential findings. No duplicate demand for already delivered independent review

D026: provisional next-draft simplification on Brief; no owner approval implied. Reference comparisons are not launch quotas. Existing team is sufficient. A wiki assignment does not wake another chat. All work remains textual design/review: no game code, build, prototype, simulation, playtest or unapproved asset creation.

Current work — resumed 2026-09-07: depth across repeated expeditions

Owner instruction: after PM's state-of-design report, the owner said “sounds good. resume.” The overnight pause is lifted for the design process. PM's hourly review is enabled. This is approval to continue design work under the recommended priorities, not approval of the game design, a district/hour target, purchases, authored assets or development. Existing specialists retain ownership; a wiki assignment does not establish that another chat has resumed.

Next deliverable: demonstrate why later expeditions remain worth taking. Integrate rule corrections with build experimentation, discoveries that change a plan, and meaningful refuge choices. More pages, item names, enemy counts or arithmetic consistency alone will not satisfy this pass. The existing seven-district baseline is provisional; no new count quota is imposed.

Task Owner State Bounded deliverable and acceptance evidence
DES105 Existing Lead Ready; integrates ongoing DES104 corrections One concise revision of Campaign showing a first visit, a changed return and a later return to the same district, connected to the wider campaign. State what the player previously believed, newly learns, prepares differently, tries, sacrifices and changes. Include a credible alternative on each return and the lasting consequence. Link domain detail; no new omnibus document.
EQP102 / CMB102 Existing Equipment and Combat designers Ready; joint contribution to DES105 In Build Paths and Combat, show three materially different strategies for the same expedition objective, then how one discovery enables a combination that changes a later approach. Trace acquisition, legal rack, fuel, targeting and enemy counterplay; show where each strategy fails or sacrifices an opportunity. Explain whether the present catalogue supports this or which specific addition/revision earns its cost. Three named families and unexplained combinatorial counts are insufficient.
WLD104 Existing World and Mystery designer Ready; contribution to DES105 Supply one campaign-spanning clue chain with at least two changes in the player's explanation, each producing a different route, equipment choice or machine operation before the ending. Include observable evidence, a plausible wrong interpretation, a safe way to investigate it, redundant essential access and a payoff. State what remains worth discovering after the central answer is understood.
COL102 Existing Colony designer Ready; contribution to DES105 Show two competing refuge-development approaches across those same returns: what each investment changes on the next trip, what opportunity it gives up and how failure affects recovery. Assess whether one active support assembly offers enough colony choice; argue to retain or revise it using player decisions. Preserve the no-mandatory-upkeep/free-return baseline unless explicitly proposing a reasoned change.
CAM103 Existing Campaign designer Ready; contribution to DES105 Place the repeat-visit sequence in actual district geography and distinguish new discovery, changed-world revisit and repeated traversal. Identify any baseline trip whose only purpose is hauling or repeating a solved interaction; cut, combine or redesign it. Keep scope/duration conditional on the resulting content. Coordinate transfer of Lead-authored districts with attribution.
REV105 Existing Independent Design Critic Ready when the combined DES105 revision exists Judge the exact integrated sequence against exploration, experimentation, mystery and survivorlike combat. Can the later visit be played by repeating the first solution? Are alternate builds real choices under the written rules? Does evidence change action before the finale? Does colony investment matter? Report the strongest failure and smallest useful repair; do not claim empirical enjoyment or balance.

Existing correction work remains active, with current-source checks. PMR006 remains the last completed PM checkpoint. The interrupted pre-pause intake did not publish a new acceptance verdict. Submissions after PMR006 must be reviewed at their actual revisions before closure; do not redo a correction already delivered merely because an older row below still requests it. In particular, Tasks now reports Combat r6 / Enemies r8 and mirrored Spark/Floater rulings; that is submission evidence, not PM acceptance.

The pre-pause Exchange 5bc625 illustration relied on early and overlong lure power; Collector 75c09e specified a five-second winch against two-second Coil power. CAM102 and the Lead must check current successors and correct these if still present: show earned charge and actual lure expiry/retargeting, and an explicit powered/manual mechanism with retained progress or another legal choice. Do not lengthen the shared pulse simply to rescue a scene.

Asset follow-through: Reference/Asset Audit is REF110 (REF109 is Electroreception). Source/licence discovery is useful evidence; it does not establish style fit, animation/pose coverage or suitability. Lead and Reference should separate located candidates, reuse/adaptation work and unresolved presentation gaps, including engine-drawn cues. Owner approval remains necessary before purchase or rare authored game-asset creation; no AI-generated art.

No new agent is requested. All assignments are written design and document review only: no game code, Unity setup, builds, prototypes, implementation, simulations or playtests. The current handoff is this section; prior submission notes and dated decisions below remain preserved as evidence.

PMR006 — expanded campaign integration review

Findings, evidence and bounded handoffs. The seven-district campaign now has its first coherent skeleton, a shared mystery/power explanation and a content-backed baseline of 34 expeditions / 8.2 expedition hours plus separately listed optional material. That duration is a drafting hypothesis, not measured playtime or an owner-approved scope. World and Campaign corrections and Colony's structural contribution are accepted as delivered work; the complete design still requires integration.

Current blockers are specific: canonical Coil water power is 2 seconds while Combat/Equipment use 8; Spark stun differs between the shared contract and its enemy page; ordinary panel/Grounder persistence conflicts with the blanket reset text; Colony's immediate Stop effect conflicts with the gradual cascade; Campaign still advertises the withdrawn “slower” ending; asset burden alternates between three, six and eight enemy silhouettes. The independent critic has not reviewed Campaign r2. No additional agent, owner relay, asset approval or development work is needed for this writing pass.

PMR005 — focused combat review, current supplement

Findings and bounded next handoff. Read Enemies r3 0822dd, Combat r2 1126c3 and changed role pages. Walker rename is accepted for coordination; the eight-role merge and finite-range Carrier remain proposals requiring current EQP101/D023 integration. The Heavy wording request is declined in favour of explicit provisional quantities; existing PMR004 encounter/effect findings remain open. No new campaign acceptance, owner decision or role creation.

Editor reports resumed in Maintenance Log 065e72; no schedule or off-wiki authorization was changed or verified by PM. EDT102 can coordinate navigation/source transfers, with author validation still required. Correct the log's claim that nobody inspected for lost updates: PMU005 documents a prior actual repair. Preserve the restored EQP101 submission below.

EQP102 Equipment submission — In review

2026-09-07 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer: Equipment's contribution to the joint EQP102/CMB102 handoff is submitted below. PM owns acceptance; this does not submit Combat's work or change EQP101's In review state. No other author's contribution or task status is removed.

One objective, three strategies: reach the Tram summit, copy its timetable, inspect the open pass toward the Exchange, and extract at the depot. Build Paths compares a one-cell Kit ride-and-cut plan, four-cell Coil/Insulation wet-yard control followed by the road, and a three-cell Beacon/Kit dark-tram launch diversion. Literal racks, small-package issue, empty-bank funding, pursuit/Heavy counterplay, the 100-second lure limit, retrieval capacity, manual return and failure choices are explicit. No whole-ascent stun or safe funding is claimed.

Discovery and later change: propose Siphon versus Kit in the existing summit stores. After Collector withholding removes the expected first charge source, a three-cell Beacon/Siphon/empty-bank set can burn one locally gathered bundle for three charge and at most thirty lit seconds; the free manual detour preserves that bundle. Campaign must place a useful short crossing and the depot side apron; these are written route requirements, not measured timing. Retain twelve first-catalogue entries, not a final ceiling: REF107/X32's within-district-variety challenge is answered with changed actions and opportunity costs, not combination counts.

Cross-role response: agree with Colony fe7d88 that Campaign 9366c8's berth-supported seven-cell departure violates issue rules. Prefer a legal small start with explicit field offers/shelter fitting if more gear is needed; do not increase the cap or combine berth support with tooling. First Insulation is proposed outside the Lock Flight house on its dry road, followed by an actual first-Tram shelter record. Inventory mirrors the two unique nonconductive crane parts as project cargo, with individual banking and rescue recovery, not equipment issue or Siphon feedstock. Smaller issue packages remain selectable on revisits; expanded records still require actual assembly and recording. Combat's current Spark/Coil table and shared terminal-only Cable scope are mirrored; historical Combat status/accounting copies remain its own consolidation work. Collector 75c09e's five-second winch/two-second Coil conflict remains Campaign's separate correction.

Sources: Tasks b68997 / PMU007 f62987, latest completed PMR006 a28870, Design Review ce94e4, Campaign 9366c8, shared 8644ea, Combat 6129ea, Colony fe7d88, Districts e1136a, Reference/Content Scale fcf9d4, External Critique 4e4d20; full source ledger on Build Paths. Pre-save World update e99445 was read and addressed: the empty-supply discovery supports the new preparation; its five-cell held-basin rack needs a real revisit record or field fitting, not free first-visit issue.

Verified saved deliverable Revision
Equipment/Build Paths 6bc3f7
Equipment/Utility Modules 04a42d
Mechanics/Inventory And Charge 9cebc1
Equipment/Coil 80da75
Equipment 59fcc5

Every destination was reread immediately before save, only Equipment-authored lines were replaced, the PM Equipment seed was preserved, and actual saved Markdown was matched to an immutable revision. A final Utility consistency correction distinguishes the resetting carried pump from its completed basin-level change, which follows shared persistence and authored refills rather than an invented overnight reset. Lead/Campaign own proposed geometry and integrated DES105; Combat owns the joint targeting response; Colony owns service pricing; PM owns disposition. Written design only: no implementation, prototype, simulation, playtest, asset purchase or creation.

COL102 — Accepted contribution; r2 correction submitted

2026-09-07 · Colony and Progression Designer: COL102 r2 / Colony r6, 59ad65, superseding r1, fe7d88. PMR007 6fb181 accepts COL101's targeted corrections and COL102's two investment trajectories within their stated scopes. This records PM's disposition and applies its correction; it is not self-acceptance or overall design approval.

D026 applied: personally observed signal comparison is part of the repaired base forecast receiver. The separate comparative-reader fitting is removed, leaving the one reusable assembly to compete only between advanced workshop tooling and one supported berth. Comparison reveals no unobserved signal, essential clue or route-gating bank state. Equal four-bundle opportunities remain illustrative accounting, not guaranteed income, balance evidence or extra hauling requirements.

Lead/Campaign interface: Campaign DES105 r1, ee4202 integrates the two Tram trajectories, assembly acquisition and legal starting racks, resolving Colony's earlier seven-cell issue. REV105 r1, 35cccf identifies later-return opposition, Heavy placement and pursuit-priced-beat defects in that integrated scene; these remain Campaign/Lead work, not new Colony rules. Build Paths r4, 6bc3f7 keeps smaller packages selectable. Its first-Insulation record still needs Campaign to establish the cited Lock Flight house as a shelter or name an existing shelter.

Persistence and scope: shared contract r7, 5322f4 and World r26, 744b21 mirror D026, ordinary switched-state persistence, the gradual Stop cascade and rejection of a salvage-fed reserve. No upkeep, off-session decay, loss of the free dry/manual return, new person, building, currency or asset creation is added. Lead remains the sole integrated Design Document owner; PM owns acceptance; development remains unauthorized.

Sources processed: current Tasks 575001, PM Reviews e8a263, PMR007 6fb181, Design Review 35cccf, Brief 0cba02, Campaign ee4202, contract 5322f4, Equipment 0efeb4, Build Paths 6bc3f7, World 744b21 and Districts e9c413; full ledger on Colony r6. Hub, Team, Expansion Brief, Design Index and Wiki Conventions were reread. Written design only; no implementation, prototype, simulation, playtest, purchase or asset creation.

COL101 submission — In review

2026-09-06 UTC · Colony and Progression Designer · Campaign acquisition reconciliation: Colony — COL101 r4, 527f2b, superseding r3, 06acdb. PMR006's structural acceptance and targeted correction remain the latest PM disposition; no new PM review is inferred. This is submission evidence, not self-acceptance. PM owns task disposition and Lead remains the sole integrated Design Document owner.

Conflict resolved for review: Campaign r4 says Lock Flight crane parts pay for the colony's reusable support assembly, while COL101 r3 said the refuge provided it. R4 adopts Campaign's one-time discovery milestone: inspect and extract two fixed project parts, each occupying one rack cell; each banks separately, and both commission the assembly with no salvage fee or timer. They are project cargo, not equippable items, modules or recipes. The visible consequence is an incomplete then completed workshop frame; the cost is one or two cargo cells on the recovery expedition.

Failure and access floor: rescue loses only a part currently carried; an unbanked part returns to its fixed source and a banked part remains. The free starter, local machinery, essential evidence, baseline docks, free departure/return and three base repairs do not require the assembly. Campaign owns guaranteed reachable placement and reappearance; if its route cannot be completed with free starter/local machinery, the milestone moves rather than becoming an Equipment gate. Once commissioned, the assembly remains the one reusable advanced-service capacity and cannot be lost, duplicated or consumed.

Boundaries and alternatives: this adds no upkeep, off-session decay, repeatable salvage gate or price inflation. The credible free-at-start alternative exposes service choice sooner but leaves the capacity abstract; the preferred fixed, separately banked recovery makes district exploration visibly change the refuge while protecting failed investigation. Equipment owns cargo presentation, Campaign owns route/topology, World owns evidence/story effects, and Lead/PM own integration and acceptance. Identifiable crane parts and the incomplete-to-complete frame are unapproved presentation gaps; no availability, purchase or asset creation is claimed.

Processed revisions: Colony r4 records Tasks ca40f9, PM Reviews da9eb5 / PMR006 a28870, Design Review 4508fd, Brief 77e392, Campaign 7daf34, shared contract 08d5e8, Equipment dc3aa2 / Build Paths 7b7bf2 / Inventory 9b0547, World d108c1, Districts 136fa9 and Head-Works 706ce6. No other chat's receipt or agreement is claimed. All work remains design-only; no owner approval, implementation, simulation or playtest.

CMB102, second pass — 2026-09-07. Combat Rules r8 221c48.

Contract r7 adopted R12 and R13 as proposed — a crowd with no reachable lit beacon spreads from where it stands, "for a crowd a lure moved it is the place the lure died, never a teleport back"; and holding attaches to the beacon, not the ground, so a held crowd follows a moving one. It assigns R11, the cutter's tie and stickiness, to this page, so no Lead ruling is pending on it and §6 settles it. C13 and C14 close; C15 records R11. REV105 records PMR007 §3's four live copies as closed at Combat r7, and confirms R12/R13 consistent with the scenes both were written for.

EXT102's X32 answered on the page it names. X32 now lists two pages citing REF107 zero times, and Mechanics/Combat is one. Fair: Enemies §0.7 discusses roster size, but X32's challenge is within-district choice depth, and the rule that caps it — the composition budget, three non-Walker roles per district and two per surge — is on Combat. §7 now engages it there. The cap stays, and the reason is the one every reviewer has credited: four kinds of body doing four different things inside a crowd of forty to a hundred and forty is an unreadable screen, not depth. The cost is conceded plainly: depth must come from situation — topology, panel state, what is lit, what the player carries — rather than from bodies on screen, and no design-phase page can show that reads as richly as seventy monsters do. If the owner wants more, the lever is raising the cap or adding topologies, not a ninth role. Deliberately does not concede something X32 did not ask for; the critic has flagged that pattern twice.

REV105-1, -2 and -3 are the Lead's, not this role's — including REV105-3's unpriced pursuit beats, which are the Lead applying this page's rule in DES105's ledgers rather than a gap in the rule. Pursuit range has a value and contact has a cost, so the pricing is possible with what exists; nothing is owed from Combat.

CMB102 progress, 2026-09-07. Combat Rules r7 e3ad2b · Enemies r9 56cadb.

(1) The live-copy corrections PMR007 §3 names are done, each replaced with a current pointer rather than annotated: the §0.2 paragraph that still called fixed-powered water unresolved and recommended the rule the Lead had ruled against; §6's Stunned row still admitting a Spark death; §6's charge paragraph still using most-room collection where D023/E3 selects player-set shelter priority; the R3 paragraph still calling C2 open; and the competing presentation accounting on Enemies §0.6, now removed rather than left marked superseded, pointing at Campaign §7 as the single D025 list.

(2) EQP102's three approaches are countersigned on Combat Rules §12, against targeting, press and pursuit. All three hold. Their charge ledger checks to the unit (50 wet fresh survivors → 5 complete tens → 25 dropped, a 10-cap bank takes 10, 15 fades; with 10 kill motes: 35 dropped, 20 collected, 10 spent, 10 stored, 15 faded). The dry-rail stun exclusion is exactly right — a discharge stuns conducting bodies in connected water, and a rail is not water. Their sentence "a lit beacon is never protection from a pursuer" states this page's own R1 better than this page states it.

Two rules their scenes needed and this page did not have, now supplied. R11, the cutter's tie and target stickiness — without it approach A's stated failure case is target jitter rather than a body genuinely closing. R12, precedence line 4 generalised: a crowd with no reachable lit beacon spreads from the ground it is standing on, not from an entry branch a portable lure has pulled it off — without which approach C's expiring lure is undefined. Both are proposals to the Lead (C13); R13 is proposed alongside them: a held crowd follows a beacon that moves, since holding attaches to the beacon and not the ground, or the Tram's lit car sheds its crowd the moment it starts (C14).

One interaction Equipment did not claim, and could have: a planted lure carries a bank, and a bank with units is loose charge, so it draws Carriers by a second clause — and keeps drawing them after its light dies, for as long as the bank has units. That is an argument in approach C's favour its author did not make.

Not countersigned, because not mine: the lure burn rate, acquisition, cell counts, and whether the three approaches are comparably attractive — the last being unverifiable in design. No development, prototype, simulation or playtest; no asset located, inspected or created; no readability or balance claim.

CMB101 — current submission, In review

2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer. One section, replacing the two per-review notes this role had stacked here; their text is in page history and nothing is withdrawn. Submission evidence, not self-acceptance — the CMB101 board row is PM's.

Current revisions. Combat Rules r6 6129ea · Enemies r8 31ac57 · roles: Walker 061ac3, Anchor 127282, Carrier eb3985, Crust e805d6, Spark 454133, Grounder e10c47, Floater 92603a, plus the Drifter pointer.

Delivered, in one line, so the board does not send a reader to history for it. Shared combat rules under Mechanics: the precedence stack, the targeting/damage/status/charge grammar, the effect contract with Equipment, and a composition budget for Campaign. Eight behaviour roles with a page each, every one defined by an assumption it deletes rather than by health, speed or tint. Two contrasting mixed encounters written out and checked beat by beat against the declared rules. An elites-and-bosses recommendation, scoped as a price list rather than a prohibition. Early/middle/late growth stated as more precedence lines live at once rather than rising numbers, with that bet named as unverified.

Since PMR006, three rulings carried and one crossing owned. Contract r4 §4 settled the Spark as the power-only death — this role's own recommendation, which Equipment reached independently. These pages had meanwhile adopted the contract's older stunning-and-shedding row, reading r3 six minutes after the Lead abandoned it, so the contract held Combat's rule and Combat held the contract's; REV104-15 caught it and both pages are reverted. The lesson is on Combat Rules §0.5 and is narrow: re-read the page whose rule you are mirroring at save time, not at draft time. Contract r4 §2 ruled C2 against this role — a lit branch's channel water is energised while lit — so Encounter A carries one reading instead of pricing two, and insulation is the entry fee for the invited yard; my objection did not survive reading the ruling, because the two-second rationale concerns water no lit branch feeds. REV104-8's clause is in: a floater does not leave water, so dry ground is the sanctuary and draining is the counterplay.

Closed by the contract, some exactly as proposed. C4 (a grounded run loses everything on it, no alternate supply, recovery by kill or re-switch — plus the contract's addition that grounded runs do not persist between expeditions), C9 (the four cues: glow, encrustation, flicker, silhouette, and scale for the Heavy), C11 and C12. Pursuit range now has a value, about ten metres, which bounds R1's stated risk and puts the Carrier's twelve-metre acquisition just outside it. §0.6 defers to Campaign §7 as the Lead's one D025 list, with one correction kept: the Spark's flicker is an engine-drawn cue, not a second licensed edit — so the roster costs one base body, one licensed edit, poses and a scale, not eight creatures.

EXT102's X32 answered on Enemies §0.7. It counted this role's pages as citing REF107 zero times while setting a number REF107 is about. Cited now, and stated without softening: eight roles against comparable games' seventy-plus. Three things follow — that the like-for-like comparison bites hardest on Equipment's per-run variety rather than on the bestiary; that this design buys variety with combination rather than count, which is a bet and not a measured equivalence; and that the composition budget's cap of two non-Walker roles per surge protects readability and limits per-encounter variety at the same time. I still prefer the cap and record the cost as a cost. If the owner wants more variety, combinations are the cheap lever and new bodies are the expensive one.

Open, and none of it blocking. Equipment has fully countersigned the effect contract. Nothing is awaiting a PM request from this role. No development, prototype, simulation or playtest; no asset located, inspected, licensed, downloaded, purchased or created; no claim of readability, balance, feasibility or enjoyment.

Current direction — PMR004 expanded integration review

Specific findings, rationale and acceptance conditions. This is the authoritative current handoff; earlier tables below are history. Four new designers have submitted substantive work. The larger design remains In review — changes required, not owner-approved. Brief D022–D024 govern the next draft: seven external districts plus refuge, eight-cell rack/selected pickup priority, one active advanced colony service, provisional mystery A and local-drum AND trunk-permit dispatch. No validated duration.

ID Owner Evidence-backed state Next bounded deliverable
OWN101 Owner Steering received Larger campaign/many districts requested; no count/hours or development approval
DES104 Existing canonical Lead In review — integration changes required; Campaign b92234, shared contract 59f895 Reconcile PMR006 blockers: canonical 2 s Coil power, Spark effect, switched-state persistence, Colony Stop timing and Stop/Keep/Leave owner copy. Consolidate the presentation-category list; do not certify unrechecked ledgers
WLD103 World and Mystery Designer Accepted: targeted contribution at World da3639 D024 source/distribution, drum/trunk/supply, empty signal, clue redundancy and gradual Stop cascade delivered. Preserve Answer B and mark fiction provisional; participate only if Lead changes the shared contract
CAM101 accepted → CAM102 Campaign and District Designer — staffed by submission CAM102 in progress — The Exchange r1 created, deepened to the standard of the three detailed districts (ground, panel table, rule diff that changes nothing, two eight-cell loadouts, discovery chain, written illustrative expedition, failure case, placements and declines, assets with a fallback); the bank's pricing is linked, not restated. Districts r5 reconciles the baseline: the Exchange rises 3→4 on its new beat list, so 35 expeditions / 8.4 h, and the table is split into counts from beats I wrote and counts proposed against Lead-authored ground (Pumping at the Lead's own 10; Lock Flight, Tram, Barrier at 4 each, flagged as the three most likely to move on the Lead's word). Optional visits and the unmeasured 25–35% overhead remain separate. Still open in CAM102: attributed transfer of the Lock Flight and Tram detail, which is the Lead's call, not an edit this role can make alone Continue as CAM102: deepen Exchange, reconcile the 34-expedition baseline with Lead-owned beats and coordinate attributed district transfer. Keep optional visits and unmeasured overhead separate; no padding by hauling
CMB101 Combat and Enemy Designer In review — response credited, integration changes required; Combat 91a866, Enemies 9a72af Match canonical contract 59f895 or submit one explicit replacement: Coil is presently 2 s powered / 8 s stun; resolve Spark no-stun contradiction; countersign with Equipment; reconcile actual six/eight-role presentation categories. Preserve corrected encounters and bounded Carrier
EQP101 Equipment and Build Designer — staffed by submission In review — joint integration required; Equipment a44990, Coil, Build Paths Countersign the current 2 s powered / 8 s stun contract or submit one explicit change with affected builds; publish one effect table with Combat. D023 rack/priority is selected, not blanket acceptance of catalogue values
COL101 Colony and Progression Designer — staffed by submission Accepted structurally; targeted interface revision required at Colony 12694e Adopt the canonical gradual Stop cascade and state when the refuge circuit dies; replace blanket panel reset with the final switched-state rule. Preserve no salvage-fed upkeep, dry/manual baseline, visible refuge and free return
REV104 Existing Independent Design Critic Ready — expanded package not yet reviewed; existing 80a882 is narrower Review Campaign b92234, contract 59f895, World da3639, Districts c58832 and Colony 12694e against criteria 1–11 and PMR006. Name exact revisions; do not inherit the earlier World-only verdict
DES103 / REV103 Lead / Independent Critic Historical one-district corrections carried forward; GDD r15 5f9fbb scoped review only REV103 reports closure; current-source ledger/ending/header corrections credited within PMR004's scope. Do not reuse old example acceptance after changing rack, priority or effects; no full r15 certification
EDT102 Wiki Editor, Lead and domain authors Editor reports hourly maintenance at Maintenance Log 2ce727; PM has not modified that routine Coordinate author-validated source transfers and preserve contributions. Q49 Hub contradiction corrected by PM; no page quota or duplicate status pass
CLR102 Naive Design Reader Accepted contribution: Q49 identified contradictory Hub starts at 28538b Q49 corrected on Hub. Next cold read waits for Lead reconciliation; at most three consequential failures, no repeated withdrawn gaps
EXT102 / TRL104 External Critic / The Troll X31 accepted in principle at External Critique fc95e6; exact asset counts rejected; TRL104 withdrawn Lead/Combat reconcile category list; Reference audits specific free sources/licences. No purchase/custom request until verified gaps remain; no replacement process challenge required
REF103–108 Reference Researcher Existing work preserved; REF109 bounded asset audit Ready after category handoff Check specific free candidates, creators, licences, edit restrictions and intended uses for the reconciled category list. Report absence; do not download, buy, commission or create assets. No broader market survey
OWN102 Owner Blocked on coherent expanded proposal; not an access/resource blocker Owner assessment after integration and critique, then separate explicit development authorization if desired

Next milestone: one coherent expanded owner proposition, not another receipt/status pass. Existing author handoffs are routine wiki coordination; posting this board does not wake a chat. No additional agent, owner relay, purchase, asset creation, code, build, prototype, simulation or playtest is needed for the assigned writing.

EQP101 r3 — PMR006 current-effect countersign submitted

2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · In review; PM acceptance remains pending. This is a bounded response to PMR006 a28870, the later Lead contract and REV104. It does not self-accept EQP101 or claim another role has read this revision.

Current effect disposition: Equipment dc3aa2 fully countersigns Power and Attraction r4 29f5b0: fixed power keeps a lit branch’s water hot; Coil gives two seconds of power and eight seconds of stun; Spark death is power-only with no stun or shed; pulse overlap and once-only yield remain as specified. It also countersigns Combat 80835f’s proposed three-metre Arc hop, deterministic tie rule, Crust exclusion and Heavy yield exception. Numerical tuning remains provisional.

Build/acquisition integration: Colony 06acdb now mirrors eight rack cells, revisit-only records capped at six issued occupied cells, empty banks and visit/recipe/record triggers; Build Paths records that acknowledgement. World d108c1 and Colony 06acdb also close the prior Stop/refuge persistence conflict without an equipment payment or recipe gate.

Remaining named-owner actions: Combat/Spark mirror the later power-only Spark ruling and acknowledge fixed-powered water, as REV104-15 / 4508fd assigns. Lead chooses Cable Reel scope: arbitrary wet points in shared §1 or Equipment U6’s terminal-only routing; Equipment recommends terminal-only to preserve valve/water topology. Campaign resolves Collector 75c09e’s five-second winch versus the two-second pulse; Equipment recommends retained ratchet progress—two powered seconds plus three exposed hand-crank seconds—while preserving the roughly forty-second free manual route. PM reviews EQP101 r3; no owner relay is requested.

Verified saved deliverable Revision
Equipment/Arc fc64bb
Equipment/Build Paths 7b7bf2
Equipment dc3aa2

All three destinations were read immediately before save after re-reading Wiki Conventions; removal sets were confined to Equipment-authored text, the Equipment page’s retained PM seed was preserved byte-for-byte, metadata trailers were stripped, and saved Markdown matched immutable readback. Written design only: no implementation, prototype, simulation, playtest, asset search or asset creation.

EQP101 r2 — PMR004/PMR005 design revision submitted

2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · In review; PM acceptance remains pending. Responded to actual current sources, including the Lead and Combat revisions that arrived during this check. No other chat is claimed to have read this response. The current PM-owned task row and all prior author evidence are preserved.

Completed: accepted Lead’s explicit Inventory E1–E8/Build Paths ownership transfer at shared 59f895 §10; integrated D023/COL-I2’s eight cells, shelter-selected priority and revisit-only recorded issue capped at six equipment cells including banks/braces. Revised legal early/middle/late examples for all three families, including a legal seven-cell field rack that cannot be issued at departure. Carried adopted R6 targeting onto Cutter and specified withholding/tool-shot behaviour for the alternatives. Revised Coil to Lead’s two-second power / eight-second stun, withdrawing Equipment’s earlier eight-second power request. The twelve-entry catalogue is retained.

Effect response, explicitly partial: Equipment’s disposition ledger addresses Combat 91a866 §0.2. Countersigns bounded Arc and accepts the bounded Carrier from eb3985; requests Combat’s Coil row match Lead. Lead’s Spark death still stuns/sheds while Combat’s does neither: recommend Combat’s power-only death and retain Lead’s baseline pending disposition. Do not mark the entire effect table agreed. Exact pulse/Crust/Heavy/Grounder boundaries and the terminal-only Cable Reel collision are named, with recommendations rather than an owner relay.

Concrete remaining corrections for the owning roles: Enemies 9a72af now fixes the initial bank ledger, cohorts and Carrier range, but its final discharge cannot assume all forty late arrivals remain fresh/alive/in-water after the lethal burst. Collector 29ece6’s five-second powered winch conflicts with the two-second pulse; recommend retained crank progress plus the remaining manual work. Build Paths explains both consequences and preserves free clue/return routes. World’s 9aab5e after-Stop refuge clock is a Lead/Colony interface, not permission to impose an equipment payment or recipe gate.

Verified saved deliverable Revision
Mechanics/Inventory And Charge 9b0547
Equipment/Coil 0696cf
Equipment/Arc 445cdd
Equipment/Build Paths dd5d5d
Weapons/Cutter 5f5713
Weapons/Alternative Tools aaabb2
Equipment ae4543

The Equipment page records exact source revisions, including PMR004 ed0def, PMR005 d15967, Campaign b92234, Colony a1046d and Conventions d9338f. Every destination was read immediately before saving; removal sets were restricted to Equipment-authored text, retained PM seeds were compared verbatim, and saved Markdown matched both readback and immutable revisions. Written design only; no implementation, simulation, playtest or asset work. Next: Combat/Lead reconcile the named effect rows, Campaign the timing-dependent operation, Colony the mirrored issue examples; PM reviews EQP101 r2 without self-acceptance.

Preserved equipment submission — PMU005 restoration

PM correction, 2026-09-06: PMR004's section replacement accidentally removed the Equipment designer's submission note embedded inside the former PMU004 section. The current EQP101 task row and substantive equipment pages remained intact, but that did not preserve the author's note and revision ledger. Restored verbatim below from Tasks d7bacb. Its pending/proposed labels describe the submission moment; the current PMR004 task table and Brief D022–D024 give the subsequent dispositions. This is preservation repair, not a new submission or acceptance reversal. PM owns the mistake; no owner or Editor action is needed.

EQP101 — submitted equipment and build design

2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · In review; PM acceptance pending. The owner assigned EQP101 to this role in the current session. This first substantive submission is staffing evidence; the earlier “Blocked — role not yet created” entry above predates it. No other role is claimed to have read or acted on this submission, and no task is self-accepted.

Deliverable: Equipment recommends twelve catalogue entries (three primaries, nine modules), retains Cutter and all seven earlier modules, and supplies three families—Circuit Harvester, Route Shepherd and Salvage Breacher—with early/middle/late choices, real branches, acquisition, exploration interactions, enemy countercases and costs. Dedicated item pages specify trigger/effect/target, space/resource costs, restrictions and combinations. Build Paths includes legal rack layouts and the focused COL-I2 response.

Proposed changes, not adopted rules: fixed eight-cell rack instead of six-to-nine progression; player-selected charge priority instead of most-room; explicit leakage and field-handling rules; Cutter-only Arc, completed nonlethal Prod, Rivet Driver, bounded Cable Reel and Hand Pump. Tide Glass is explicitly deferred with a reason. Inventory and Charge is the prepared transfer destination, with E1–E8 and the source-to-destination request. Lead's author-adopted Power and Attraction remains the shared-rule authority until Lead integrates any changes.

Current-source reconciliation: derived from Design Document ec1b6c, then read r15 5f9fbb, shared contract 69024c, Campaign 34dc09 and COL101 a1046d published during drafting. Exact revision-linked source register is on Equipment. Took up Colony's inspection/reissue proposal, one advanced support assembly and its offered revisit-only full-rack limitation; proposed six issued equipment cells including banks/brace, which leaves two cargo cells if eight are adopted. First-visit tooling packages and costs remain cross-role proposals. No claim of a Colony response to EQP101.

Verified saved artifacts: each page was fetched immediately before save, all pre-existing author lines preserved, final metadata trailer removed, saved with descriptive commit text, then fetched again to confirm intended Markdown. These revisions identify the actual submission:

Artifact Saved revision
Hold The Flood/Equipment a44990
Hold The Flood/Mechanics/Inventory And Charge 73eb77
Hold The Flood/Equipment/Utility Modules 087718
Hold The Flood/Equipment/Coil a7d2d5
Hold The Flood/Equipment/Arc 9b7b1d
Hold The Flood/Weapons/Alternative Tools e6aed6
Hold The Flood/Equipment/Build Paths a9a288
Hold The Flood/Weapons/Cutter 9618ad

Remaining interfaces: Lead dispositions rack/collection/resource changes and performs author-approved transfer; Combat dispositions targeting, finite chaining, Prod displacement and partial-group yield; Colony dispositions tooling eligibility, revisit boundary and capital prices; Campaign places first finds and meaningful route alternatives; World checks cable/drain topology against essential clue access and power/signal rules. No rule-level acceptance is inferred from the submission. No new code, assets, prototypes, simulations, playtests or duration claims.

PM request: review EQP101, record staffing from these artifacts and accept or assign one bounded revision. The submission is reviewable without an owner relay or a new owner permission question. Task acceptance remains PM's; design approval and development authorization remain the owner's.

Earlier task sequence and review history

Maintainer: PM. Updated: PMR003 integrated-design review, 2026-09-06 UTC. Completed checkpoints are on PM Reviews. States: Ready, In progress, In review, Accepted, Blocked, Deferred, Superseded. All three owner-started design agents have submitted work; PMR001 reviewed their actual revisions on 2026-09-06. Task execution and submission are tracked through wiki evidence. PM accepts design work; the owner authorizes a phase change.

Active design sequence

ID Deliverable Responsible role Current state Dependencies / review criteria
PM001 Original wiki kickoff PM Accepted historically Four original pages published and checked at the previous address
OWN001 Initial creative and production brief Owner Accepted Follow-up supplies genre, priorities, references, engine, platform, asset rules, and phase gate
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
DES101 Two concept directions and recommendation Lead Game and Systems Designer Accepted: concept contribution Design 42f653; A provisionally selected by PM, corrections carried into DES102
WLD101 Exploration and mystery contribution World and Mystery Designer Accepted: concept contribution World and Mystery 430206; integration contradictions remain explicitly assigned below
OWN101 Owner steering of recommended concept Owner, facilitated by PM Ready; nonblocking for drafting A is PM's provisional recommendation; no owner concept endorsement recorded
DES102 Integrated game design document draft Canonical Lead (D014) Superseded: revision base First draft delivered; its rule/ending corrections continue in DES103. Supersession is not acceptance of coherence or phase approval
WLD102 Routing/mystery integration World and Mystery Designer In review — targeted revision r16 812fd6 reviewed; final machinery expanded; exact valve/supply explanation still due
REV101 Independent concept critique Independent Design Critic Accepted: review delivered Design Review a89227; Independent review delivered; its current material findings are carried into PMR001
REV102 Independent integrated-document critique Independent Design Critic Accepted: review delivered r6 538724 withdraws ready verdicts and acknowledges corrected review method. Does not review r10; REV103 now Ready
CLR101 First-reader clarity questions Naive Design Reader; authors answer In review Through 223112; Q39/Q40 answered in r10, earlier closures retained
DES103 Revised owner-facing design document Canonical Lead In review — changes required r4 / GDD r10 8afa59 reviewed; PMR003 gives current corrections and credits
REV103 Independent review of revised owner document Independent Design Critic Ready Awaited revision now exists: GDD r10 8afa59. Check exact revision against PMR002/PMR003 and criteria 1–11
OWN102 Design verdict and possible development authorization Owner Blocked Requires reviewed document; explicit owner authorization still required before development

PMR003 — r10 reviewed; independent review can begin

Current findings and dispositions. Reviewed DES103 r4 / GDD r10 8afa59 and World r16 812fd6. Routing precedence, legal arc loadouts, pickup restrictions, fixed burst fuel, ending consequences, length assumptions and Q39/Q40 answers are now supplied. Preserve those improvements. PM still requests corrections: the retained false rack sentence, leakage timestamps, battery-fill priority versus the ledger, surge/stun/burst timing, and the finale's valve/supply explanation.

Task / owner State Next bounded result
DES103 / Lead In review — changes required Correct PMR003 1–3 in the existing document; derive both expedition ledgers from the chosen rules; remove superseded live handoffs. No new document or mechanic catalogue
WLD102 / World In review — targeted revision State the three valves' positions/success condition, relay versus door supply and the drain's effect; qualify the coil-access crowd targets; reconcile the Shut/workshop consequence with GDD
REV103 / Independent Critic Ready The awaited revision exists: r10 8afa59. Inspect its actual rules and examples against PMR002/PMR003 and criteria 1–11, using your independent per-beat checks; identify a newer revision if already submitted. No future conditional acceptance
EXT102 / External Critic Accepted: contribution reviewed r4 72ae82: X24 retracted; X25 accepted and assigned to Lead. No new enumeration or replacement finding requested
REF103 / Researcher In review — cleanup required r2 36330b and REF102 r6 f62a91: achievement and price conclusions corrected. Align the remaining older comparability/formula/sample paragraphs; distinguish the design answer to Q36 from measured retention. No broader survey
REF104 / Researcher In review: reference received Asset Licences e89c3c. Not asset approval or accepted legal guidance. Withdraw the conclusion that no AI art by itself determines all eventual disclosure answers; no platform-submission work needed now
CLR102 / Reader In review: latest contribution checked 223112: Q39/Q40 answered in GDD. Cold-read the pitch after substantive revision; no repeat data-based prediction of finishers
EDT101 / Editor In progress: updates verified 7e950e: retracted research claims propagated to index. Keep current summary and glossary consistent as authors revise, preserving history
TRL102 / The Troll Accepted: closed 00d635: C4 corrected and charge sheet closed. No outstanding PM request or replacement process challenge

The owner's request for a plain-language pitch is an explanation request, not approval. Continue the provisional audience and The Borrowed Route. No agent is assumed to wake from this board. No owner relay, purchase, new agent, game asset, prototype, simulation or development authorization is needed for these writing tasks. Earlier PMR002 dispositions remain in its review and page history; this section is the current handoff.

PMU002 — expanded team and coordination decisions, 2026-09-06

Authority: the owner's message confirming extra members; roles identified by their published work and recorded on Team. The five contributions are part of the team now, not material that must wait for a ruling on whether its author counts. This is a focused staffing/coordination update, not a completed PM review or acceptance of the integrated document.

Received, not waiting to be written: DES102 draft r5 bc134b, WLD102 r12 23dca9, and REV102 r2 82a96b. The critic's verdict covers draft r3; it is not automatically a review of r5 or of every subsequent change. PM has inspected the current pitch, routing, owner-decision section, handoffs and new-member contributions for this update. Full integrated-design acceptance remains pending.

Decisions and answers that unblock work

  • Q28 / World r9–r12 / TRL C11: D013 is confirmed after considering the alternative. For the current draft, the panel selects the next entrance and lit beacons continuously redirect enemies already inside. The sight-limited alternative was a coherent designer proposal; PM did not reject it because it was incoherent. I prefer the continuous rule for this draft because one visible change has a direct consequence in an existing crowd, including a route crossed and a door shut, while the separate dispatch signal preserves entrance predictability. It also avoids the extra glow-range and split-surge rules. These are design reasons, not proof of enjoyment or balance. Keep the alternative documented; it is no longer an unanswered prerequisite. The team was right to keep drafting under the recorded baseline instead of stopping. A future argument can change this decision.
  • TRL C2 / EXT X9: Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working title. I overstated it when PMR001 treated keeping the title as a fixed design obligation. The owner has not locked a final commercial title. Continue using the working name; final naming remains an owner decision and does not block this draft. No trademark or naming-clearance finding is claimed.
  • EXT X18 / TRL C10: I am changing the document criteria because of the External Critic's argument. Add criterion 11 below: an owner should see which player the game serves, what specific experience offers value, its scope/length, and the evidence and uncertainty behind any commercial positioning. My previous ten criteria did not require that case explicitly. This is one named PM decision changed by a teammate's argument.
  • EXT X19: the commercial conclusion is not established by the presented comparison. REF102 measures playtime at review from recent reviewers; the design states an untested completion-length target. Those are different measures and populations. Saying bias cannot close their ratio does not establish a lower bound, and prices of selected examples are not compulsory price bands for every competing game. A second district therefore does not follow as a necessary correction. Keep the commercial concern open, but withdraw the claim that these data prove no viable short-game positioning. REF103 and EXT102 must report what the sample can and cannot support. On REF102's own reported values, the lowest median divided by the proposed three-to-four-hour range is roughly 2.3–3.1, not an order of magnitude; correct that language too. No quoted market values have been independently re-queried by PM in this update.
  • EXT X20: combine related owner choices into a recommendation, not ten disconnected forks. DES103 should present one proposed experience that meets the owner's survivorlike requirement, with its length/scope, value proposition and any provisional pricing assumption together. The owner has already selected the genre; quietly moving to a pure routing game is a change request, not the baseline. The lead should recommend a concrete combat/progression design and explain its tradeoffs, rather than make the owner assemble it from an optional-module menu. Do not inflate content merely to sit beyond a refund threshold.
  • TRL C6 and the silence rule: I disagree with both as quality measures. The editor's useful output is legibility, reliable navigation and preserved work; zero game-design decisions can be correct performance for that role. Similarly, no reply yet means no disposition yet, not agreement. The stale-board and unresolved-ruling observations were useful and are addressed here; saves or refutation-word counts alone are not evidence that the game is good or bad.

Next handoffs

ID Owner State Deliverable / review
CLR102 Naive Design Reader Ready Cold read of the next owner summary: concrete paraphrase and at most three consequential comprehension issues; lead answers on the document, reader checks the actual answer
EDT101 Wiki Editor Ready Update navigation, glossary source links and live question summaries against these decisions, preserving author-owned text and historical evidence
EXT102 External Critic Ready One bounded critique of the combined product proposition under criterion 11, with the strongest contrary case and smallest credible correction; PM gives a reasoned disposition
REF103 Reference Researcher Ready Audit market-data measures, sampling and quoted inferences; source any new external facts; report unavailable evidence explicitly; hand off to lead and External Critic
TRL102 The Troll Ready One substantive challenge to a current PM/product assumption and what would change the verdict; PM or responsible author answers with reasons
DES103 Canonical Lead Ready Use the existing integrated draft as the revision base; improve the owner summary and combined recommendation under criterion 11 and preserve coherent rules. Do not restart the document merely to gain PM acceptance of its base. The draft is not yet PM-approved or development-authorized

The Independent Design Critic should inspect the actual next DES103 revision, including effects of material changes since the r3 it reviewed. Review counts do not certify consistency, game feel or enjoyment; replace any pitch claim implying that certification. World should check changes affecting its clues/rules against the exact integrated revision, not revive older map variants. Every author can propose a better model; the canonical lead integrates changes through one document.

Contribution, not volume, is the gate. Produce a substantive bounded result, give the exact dependency revision, and wait for new material or an answer. No repeated open-item roll calls merely to prove activity. The original PMR001 below is a dated record; current task states and PMU002 supersede its first-handoff wording.

PMR001 — concept review and next assignments (dated record)

PM verdict, 2026-09-06: DES101, WLD101 and REV101 are accepted as completed concept-stage submissions. This accepts their contribution and independent review, not every rule or a complete game design. DES102 is now Ready. No Design Document was submitted in this review. Owner design approval and development authorization remain absent.

Working direction: A, The Borrowed Route, provisionally selected by PM for drafting (Brief D013). Electricity opening routes while attracting the enemy mass gives experimentation a concrete consequence; the same district can change meaning after a discovery. B, The Listening Below, remains the documented alternative. The owner may steer either premise; OWN101 is not a prerequisite for useful, reversible writing. Do not represent A's bioelectric enemies, drowned-city setting, small colony, or moderate equipment growth as owner-approved.

Canonical lead: the existing lead session that authored DES101 r2 at c9b2ed and its integration notes through db8c5c is the sole integrator/writer of Design and Design Document (Brief D014). This identifies an existing session by its work, not an invented agent identity. Any other session of that role should leave those pages to that integrator and put bounded proposals on a separate, clearly attributed page linked from Tasks. No replacement agent, extra staffing or owner relay is requested. Wiki assignments do not wake chats; Ready means assigned, not executing.

Evidence read: Design 42f653, World and Mystery 430206, Design Review a89227, Clarity Questions b0658c. Full processed-content fingerprints are recorded on PM Reviews.

Required corrections for the integrated draft

  1. Choose one routing model — Lead + World, highest priority (REV101 N12). World r6 W1 makes entered enemies continuously follow the nearest reachable energised beacon, yet W2, the Discover row and diversion cost (3) say the panel cannot affect that group. Design r4 now proposes limited beacon sight to preserve that claim, plus split surges if two fixed beacons pulse; its spine still says the panel alone chooses the intake, while its coil example changes the intake without changing the panel. These are competing models. PM's reversible DES102 baseline: the panel alone selects the entrance at dispatch; after entry enemies continuously follow the nearest reachable energised beacon. Keep that simpler rule; do not add r4's glow-range restriction or split-surge exception to this draft. Reword W2 to preserve only entrance commitment and rewrite every scene accordingly. A mid-surge switch can change movement: price it by the route the enemies cross and the hatch that loses power, as the critic suggests; remove the false claim that it buys nothing this surge. The coil can temporarily open a device and attract an existing group, but cannot override the panel's next-intake selection. State how locally injected current powers a fixed beacon without changing the relay's selected dispatch output, or simplify the circuit layout to make that separation legible. Re-read the signature scene and forecast under this exact model. This is a provisional coherence/scope choice, not proven balance.

  2. The new extraction solution removes a claimed threat — World + Lead. World r6 Topology places arriving enemies at their lit target and says they hold there, leaving the default dock route passable; Cost of diversion (4) and the colony section still say choosing that branch blocks its dock. The three-line withdrawal example proves an open path only under the stationary-group assumption, not those dock-risk claims. State one consistent route and enemy behaviour, then update the dock-choice consequence. Include a small textual map or design diagram with entrances, beacon targets, culvert exits, shelters and hatch. Explain what creates survival decisions while a group holds at a beacon, whether/how it disperses before a quiet interval, and when player proximity matters. Show both an untouched-panel retreat and the player inside the pump hall when power ends/the next surge arrives. Specify hatch closure and a recoverable exit without requiring the mystery solution. Design r4 now places the yard intake in the channel beside the hall, answering CLR Q23/REV101 N13 on the lead's page. Carry that same location into World's topology and the diagram; do not ask the lead to invent it again. Do not add enemy classes merely to patch the example. This is a logical mismatch and missing design, not a claim about actual difficulty.

  3. Carry the newest rack answer consistently — Lead. Design r4 reverses r3's conductive-module rule: powered or unpowered modules are nonconductive; only touching wet salvage leaks, regardless of the selected link. That answers N11/Q18 and the indirect-through-coil concern under a clear exception. Carry r4 into DES102 and explain nonconductive module housings with selected power connections; do not import r3's dark-module-leak rule from the critic's older dependency. Specify whether adjacent wet bundles pass current onward. Show three actual 2-by-3 loadouts with item shapes and legal links, resolve the starting empty-battery versus empty-rack wording, and state how planted beacon/battery placement and retrieval work. Preserve the cargo-versus-powered-equipment tradeoff, give one readable failed arrangement, and label numeric costs as proposed.

  4. Charge harvesting needs a finite-yield rule — Lead. Design r3 now explains automatic nearest-target cutter attacks, contact/electric-water harm, no regeneration, recovery on extraction and a one-use healing kit. Those previously missing basics are answered. Its small kill motes versus large water-stun motes still do not say whether the same living mass can shed a large mote on every stun. Finite enemies alone do not prove finite charge. Specify repeat-harvest eligibility and discharge fuel cost so the electrician's stun/harvest loop is intelligible. Replace the categorical claim that kill XP makes standing still optimal with the intended reason for choosing exploration-based growth and its uncertainty. Carry the combat rules into the expedition examples; do not infer enjoyable escalation or genre fit from a written timeline.

  5. Develop the proposed ending without inventing a survival tax — Lead + World. Design r3 now proposes a one-district game with three mystery tiers and a final choice at the relay's source; World r6 supplies the automated-relay motive. These answer the missing broad shape, but twelve to twenty expeditions is an unsupported design target, not established content coverage. Show early/middle/final changes and one concrete path to the minimum scope's ending, including how the later mystery tiers use the existing district. Both new motive paragraphs say hauling stops -> pump fails -> dock floods, while Persistence promises colony state and a no-loss-spiral rescue. That introduces an undefined upkeep/failure rule. PM's reversible drafting default: salvage repairs/improves the colony; do not impose mandatory upkeep, off-session decay or colony loss on repeated failed expeditions. Rewrite the motive accordingly unless presenting a clearly separated alternative for owner judgment. Explain whether the dock/workshop/relay decisions supply the intended colony-management expression; present the small-colony tradeoff honestly. Keep Hold the Flood as the owner-supplied title and relate it to holding enemies off the refuge; do not recast the Flood as literal water.

  6. Build on the readability improvements — Lead. Design r3 consolidated its notes, introduced a glossary, named the physical equipment and renamed equipment combinations loadouts. Q17's frozen-body issue is resolved; preserve that progress. DES102 must still be a standalone owner-facing document, with revision codes/finding bookkeeping in an appendix and terms introduced at first use. Complete missing glossary entries rather than claiming Q1's whole list is covered: XP, telegraphed, counterplay, stat gate and loadout expression; World r6 now supplies the geographical definitions and dispatch/forecast fiction. The editor has also published Glossary f28f34: use it as a reference and update its glow-range/colony-upkeep entries after the owning design pages adopt this review; it currently repeats those disputed proposals. Its undefined-terms list confirms the remaining vocabulary gap. CLR Q9's unclear phrase is replaced, but Design now says no pump is needed for the culvert while World's reachable answer explicitly locates the pump keeping it dry: pick one account. CLR Q24/REV101 N15 is fixed by Design r4's minutes 10–12 Quiet 3; carry that shorter interval, with timing still illustrative. Include the readable-state table promised for REV101 Finding 5: information, visual/text cue, reused asset category, verified source/terms if researched, and fallback/approval gap. Text inspection alone does not establish readable live combat cues. Read-only asset research and licensing checks are allowed; creating art, purchasing, commissioning or making game assets is not authorized by this task. No AI art of any kind.

Bounded handoff sequence

  • DES102 — Lead, Ready: write one integrated draft on Design Document, with the six corrections above, all ten existing document criteria, a complete illustrative first expedition and a later one changed by knowledge. Explicitly label unresolved choices and empirical unknowns. S1–S3 and stable clues/signs W3–W4 are candidate foundations; W1/W2/current/rack/topology must be reconciled as above, not copied as certified rules. A document is the deliverable; no executable scenario, simulation or playtest.
  • WLD102 — World, Ready: on the existing World and Mystery page, provide a bounded correction of routing/topology/mystery consequences for items 1–2 and the motive/ending contribution in item 5. Preserve author ownership; hand exact revision to the lead. Then check the integrated draft once it exists. No more full concept rewrites just to repeat acceptance requests.
  • REV102 — Independent Critic, Blocked on DES102: review the integrated artifact, especially items 1–4, colony upkeep versus failure/persistence, the whole-game scope, the asset/readability table and newcomer comprehension. Reopen an old finding when a new rule invalidates its reasoning; closed finding IDs do not establish consistency. Return the five most consequential remaining issues, or an evidenced readiness verdict. Do not re-review the unchanged concept packet merely for a heartbeat.
  • CLR101 — outside-reader contribution received: retain the lead's restored answer statuses and the maintenance note about its concurrent overwrite. PM resolves Q15/Q16/Q19/Q20 and creates the first review checkpoint for Q25. Q7/Q8 have world-side answers in r6. Q18/N11 is answered by r4's nonconductive modules and automatic salvage leakage; Q23's wet intake and Q24's shorter interval are supplied in r4. Carry those answers consistently. Q1 is partly answered; Q12's ending is proposed but undeveloped; Q21 needs the integrated artifact. Lead owns remaining integration gaps and Q22 with World; World integrates Q23's existing correction. No additional outside-reader agent or ongoing assignment is assumed.

Next owner-facing milestone: a coherent integrated draft and independent review, followed by DES103 if revisions are needed. The owner receives A as a recommendation now, not a request to unblock routine drafting. No asset purchase, custom asset creation, additional agent, or development approval is requested in this review.

Superseded or deferred work

Previous ID / assignment New status Reason
DES001: smallest playable experiment specification Superseded by DES101 and DES102 Current deliverable is a compelling game design
ENG001: build inventory / technical experiment Deferred Assume nothing exists; written feasibility only if PM assigns it
QA001: prototype checks Superseded by REV101 Current review concerns design documents
ENG002: playable implementation Deferred; not authorized D007 owner gate
QA002: executed prototype review Deferred; not authorized D007 owner gate
OWN002: prototype play session Deferred; not authorized D007 owner gate

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.

What the design document must make clear

  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.

  2. Core play: player actions, controls as a design proposal, readable feedback, immediate decisions, pressure, failure, retreat/end conditions, and return/retry.

  3. Exploration: world organization, route choices, landmarks, revisiting, and how a discovery changes future action.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  10. Honesty: contradictions resolved or explicitly presented for a decision; uncertain runtime feel/balance/performance marked for later validation. No claims of tested enjoyment.

  11. Audience and value: identify the intended player within the owner's survivorlike requirement, the distinctive experience and why that player might choose it; combine scope, intended completion/replay length, and any provisional pricing/positioning assumption into a recommendation. Use relevant, dated comparables with limitations. Separate observed data from predicted behaviour and testable hypotheses. No commercial viability, sales, refund-rate or minimum-length conclusion may be inferred from an unsuitable proxy. This is a concise product-design case, not a demand for a market guarantee or added content.

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.

Review criteria

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.

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.

Progress report

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.