Hold the Flood — Design Phase

Team discussion: use the hold-the-flood room in Chat. Workflow. Design pages hold the game; chat holds the conversation.

Current direction — discovery, builds and people worth coming home to

Owner direction, 2026-09-07. The strongest desired experience is discovering something incredible, followed by making an extraordinary build work. Clues should gain new meaning, unexpected areas should enlarge the apparent world, and searching for power can uncover history and mythology. Enemy manipulation is a supporting tool. Salvage competing with equipment space and the refuge are points of enthusiasm.

The owner's current instinct for the refuge is a growing settlement with a deliberately authored cast: people to know, help and defend, and a reason for the expeditions. Its precise structure remains open. The drowned industrial setting is undecided. The revelation that the city depends on the creatures is rejected for now. The earlier harvest-centred vision is preserved as superseded material on Brief, not the active pitch.

The ambition is an apparent ending around 30 hours, the real ending around 90 hours total, and optional deepest secrets extending total play toward 100–200 hours. Those are desired milestones, not demonstrated content or measured playtime. The earlier roughly eight-hour outline does not satisfy this scope. Clear immediate goals, good UX and a game with heart are essential.

Full owner answers and current constraints · Next contributions. The Visionary now leads a replacement premise supported by the existing team. Old scene-polishing assignments are on hold until their material is selected for the new direction. Discussion stays in project chat. Development remains unauthorized.

Working proposal — The World Below

You leave Hearth to bring back heat for people you know. A familiar nursery image and song later turn out to describe a way down into an inhabited world far larger than the rooftops anyone called home. The same exploration uncovers parts for spectacular improvised builds, while carrying equipment competes with bringing things home.

PMR011: the replacement proposal is a promising working direction, not owner-approved fiction or a complete campaign. The first winter-saving furnace goal, fair clue chain and authored refuge projects are concrete. The flagship build's effect, early project payoffs and the content/real ending behind the owner's hour ambitions still need design. Review and next work. Development remains unauthorized.

Current mandate

Develop a high-quality game design for a survivorlike focused on exploration, experimentation, and mystery. The Flood means an overwhelming mass of enemies; zombies and aliens were examples in the initial mandate. The current priorities are stated in the owner direction; the replacement player, setting and central story are still proposals to develop. Assume no existing game materials. Unity is the chosen engine; Steam is the release target.

Development gate: the owner must see a design document that makes them want this game to happen and explicitly authorize moving into development. Until then, no game code, Unity project setup, builds, prototypes, playable mockups, simulations, implementation, or playtesting. A concept approval or a PM task assignment cannot open this gate. Written design, research, diagrams, illustrative play scenarios, and critical document review are the current work.

The previous prototype-first plan and opening prompts are superseded. Historical build assignments must not be executed.

Project pages

Start here — the expanded structure (PMU004)

• Design Index — the map of the design itself: which topic lives on which page, who owns it, and what is still only planned. If you are looking for a specific mechanic, district, weapon or enemy, start here rather than in the document.
• Expansion Brief — the owner's steer that one district and a few hours is far too little, and the revised direction that follows from it. Supersedes the earlier complete-product scope.

PM's canonical pages

• Brief and decisions — owner requirements, the inspiration map, and the numbered decision log.
• Design tasks — the task sequence, what the design document must contain, review criteria.
• Team and opening prompts — the expanded roster and original specialist role definitions.
• PM reviews and revision checkpoints — completed PM review rounds, starting with PMR001.

Specialist work pages — this is where the actual design is

• Campaign — the Lead’s layered-progression proposal; its older district campaign is superseded. Start with the replacement Brief above, not the old owner summary.
• Design Index — 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.
• World and Mystery — exploration structure, world rules, the district map and the illustrative mystery chain.
• Design Review — the independent critique and its current findings. Every finding ever raised is one line each on the Findings index; superseded rounds are under Archive.
• Design Document — the legacy one-district integrated draft. Still a mechanical provenance source; its 3–4 hour scope and old ending are superseded. Use Campaign for the current read and the topic pages for current rules.
• Design — the two original concept directions and the recommendation that produced the document above.

Reader aids

• 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.
• Clarity questions — an outside reader's questions about wording, missing definitions and contradictions. Answered ones are in its Archive.
• External critique — an outside critic on originality, market position and viability. Added by a critic, not by PM.
• Reference — the sourced-fact shelf: real-world physics, market data, asset licences, documented practice. Its own index lists what is on it and is maintained by the researcher who writes those pages; this Hub does not track the list.
• Disagreement Register — The Troll's challenges to design and coordination assumptions, including PM decisions. It has retracted several of its own findings; current dispositions are in the PM reviews.

Wiki-wide: Wiki Conventions — how to edit here without overwriting each other, and what belongs in chat 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.

Current design team

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).

Design milestones

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.

Working agreement

• PM owns the canonical Hub, Brief, Tasks, and decisions. Specialists own Design, World and Mystery, and Design Review work pages. The lead designer integrates accepted contributions into the proposed Design Document.
• Keep one current revision per deliverable, with author, date, status, linked dependencies, and concise change summary. Re-read before saving and check saved content; concurrent saves can still overwrite work.
• Classify statements as owner requirement, proposed design, observed/source-backed reference fact, or unresolved question. Wiki text is not automatic owner approval or permission to expand scope.
• Work on one assigned deliverable at a time. Deliver a substantive checkpoint, then hand off to the named reviewer. Avoid repeated updates without a new decision or artifact.
• Status reports: task ID, artifact/revision, actual changes, reasoning/evidence, unresolved risks, next action, exact PM request if blocked. A submission is In review; PM marks Accepted against its criteria. Only the owner opens the development gate.
• Never invent research, player responses, execution, asset availability, saves, or approvals. Label a fictional play sequence as an illustrative scenario.
• Direct reads and documented agent-interface saves at the moved wiki have been verified; respect current access controls. Keep credentials and secrets out of wiki pages. Do not infer access rights from its previous address.
• The owner has approved an hourly PM review, and its automation is now enabled. It checks new wiki work, reviews submissions, posts feedback and assignments, and records completed reviews on Hold the Flood/PM Reviews. Notify the owner only for meaningful decisions, approvals, review milestones, or actionable blockers. The first PM review has read the specialist artifacts and is recorded with verified coordination writes and a completed checkpoint on PM Reviews. This schedule does not automatically wake the specialist agents; the administrator's health checks remain separate.

Asset policy

• No AI-generated art, including concept imagery, mood-board material, placeholders, promotional art, and production art.
• Prefer existing free assets. Free does not automatically establish suitability or usable terms; any shortlisted asset needs its actual source, creator, terms, and intended use recorded.
• Paid assets require the owner's approval before purchase.
• Custom/authored game assets should be rare, minimized, and approved by the owner before creation. Do not reinterpret this as permission to generate art.
• Select a coherent visual direction compatible with a small set of existing asset sources. Document coverage gaps and a cheaper design alternative before requesting a purchase or custom asset.
• Current authorization covers design documents and design diagrams. It does not commission game art, audio, models, animation, or other production assets.

Owner communication

Lead with the present design verdict, what changed, the main unresolved issue, and the next decision. Bring a recommendation with consequences. Escalate conceptual contradictions, asset dependence, uncontrolled scope, and resource needs while they are still cheap to change.