Decisions

Rules that win today#

When an older document disagrees with these, these win.

• Story. Stress-associated neuroinflammation drives the main story. Acute injury and demyelination are optional contrasts. The game plan v0.5 and its companion dossier in .GAME_PLAN/ are the plot authority. See Arborwake: The Long Wake.
• Encounters are turn-based. Turn-based encounters replace real-time room clocks and real-time defence. Walking in the overworld stays continuous. The Threadway is a 3D place with flat 2D cell sprites; this replaces the older “everything is 2D” rule for that one environment.
• Recruitment happens only through quests. Mote joins at quest step mote:M5, Fen at fen:F5a and Pip at pip:PIP7. A menu, button or shop never recruits anybody. The first real recruit unlocks the Coordinator class. One companion per outing.
• Imprints are keepsakes. An Imprint is earned from a side story, equipped only at home, and gives a passive bonus. It never creates a helper or adds a button.
• Loadout is chosen at home. Rest moved to the Apothecary: 2 Supply for +2 endurance, up to 4, once per outing. Calming lowers stress and strain by 2; it does not reset them.
• Home duties are automatic. Residents cover home duties by themselves; the podium only arranges companions you already won.
• Return order. After an outing the game runs the start of the cycle, then strain on return, then the calming arrival, then the Ready and disturbance facts.
• Memory Meadow is the practice place and the Act V refuge. It replaces the old name Practice Grove and the old Hearth refuge.
• Neuron loss is failure. Losing any neuron or tract segment fails the room at once. It is never a grading cost.
• Do not bring back the larger or recoloured Ranger, Pip and Mote; the rejected slime runtime; hairline tendrils; a free generic helper; or Imprints that act as helpers.

Your decisions, newest first#

2 November#

• Recruitment goes through quests, whatever the plot calls it.
• The board grid is a real grid: thin continuous lines and a heavier border around the playable area and holes, 24×20 ground squares, placed in 3D at the room’s camera tilt, never drawn in black. See Board grid.
• Home disturbances become turn-based, with many different boards. The real-time defence of doc 30 is retired. See Hearth boards.
• A shuffle engine comes first: generated runs must never build impossible or too-easy rooms. Claude A owns it.
• Round obstacles stay round; they do not need to match the tiles.
• An E keycap floats above the nearest thing you can use. There are no hover corners in the overworld.
• The podium’s Companions board keeps only Next outing and Companions. Nobody assigns duties by hand.
• Named-cast identities accepted: Fen A, Bram B, Mote B, Pip A, Rill A, Cress B. Their turned views and the animation study are approved. Bram’s turned views must be redrawn, because they read as suggestive.
• Size-up withdrawn: the Ranger, generic Pip and generic Mote keep their original size and colours.
• Approved art: all VFX turn groups, every Run HUD piece, the redrawn monocyte, the Quiet Tracts repair art with the real oligodendrocyte rope, and all 16 turn-based room shells.

1 November#

• Turn-based encounters, in the style of Into the Breach and Baldur’s Gate 3. You answered “Yes to everything” on Claude B’s seven rules: a grid, side-based rounds, king’s moves, free move-undo plus one rewind per room, signal tuning 0–3, companion stress from play only, and supported ground as recovery. You accepted the prototype without a playtest.
• Rooms are hand-made sections, stitched by a very strict assembler. Hard encounters stay fully hand-made. The three traversal rooms have no fights. Each run location has its own main mechanic.
• Tiles are 24 px. The grid stays visible during play.
• Tutorials use naturalised ASD-STE100 and real explanatory text. Where they live is deferred to a later talk.
• The Apothecary deals in signalling, with nothing bottled. Field gear moves to the Workshop. The calming visit is an astrocyte process that comes up through an opening in the ground, with sparkles.
• Stop asking about small things. Sessions decide small calls and use a blind reviewer when unsure. Only art looks, reversals and big changes come to you.
• Home choices sit on the Hearth podium: three world squares (Imprint, Invitation, Run records), never a shop window.

31 October#

• The game is Arborwake. The old project name is retired everywhere except historical evidence. Old saves move across through one compatibility module. See Arborwake rename.
• Practice Grove is renamed Memory Meadow, and the Act V refuge moves there.
• Coordinator stays locked until the first helper is recruited.
• Codex owns main-game movement, collision, paths, transitions and placement. Claude A keeps expedition room geometry and content.
• Game plan v0.5 and the companion dossier are the plot authority, with the side plot and Nell, Rill and Cress approved.

29 and 30 October#

• The original opening is an unapproved prototype. Keep its code and evidence, but do not build the main game around its script, its H/G/P sequence, its Continue bridge or its saves.
• Stress is the centre of the story. The Breach-first plan is withdrawn.
• Parallel systems work is allowed: overworld NPC behaviour, skills, items, power-ups, keepsakes, quest rewards and economy, behind lead-owned adapters.

Waiting for you#

Retired decisions#