Forgotten Decks started with a hidden population defending its home in the lower levels of a generation ship. An early pitch could have become a familiar sequence of stealth, weapons, and upgrades. I pushed on the constraint that made the setting different: the resistance and security forces share one enclosed, irreplaceable habitat. Fighting has a cost even when the player wins a room.
That changed what close-quarters combat, repairs, and level design needed to express. A ruptured system might hurt everyone nearby. A rescue or escape route could cross infrastructure the player would need later. I worked through a small defense scenario, art direction, and a staged Godot learning path while testing whether the idea could be taught in playable pieces. The documented work reaches planning and tutorial checkpoints, not a completed first level.
Fighting without destroying the battlefield
That rule changed more than the equipment list. The ship was also everyone’s air supply, food system, shelter, and future. A victory that destroyed shared infrastructure could be a loss for both sides.
The assistant’s revised design emphasized spacing, stamina, guard breaks, shoves, disarming, shield pressure, and maintenance tools used at close range. Security became a force of baton officers, shield units, and heavy breachers rather than riflemen. The proposed protagonist tool was an arc-spanner that could connect the repair fantasy with a blunt melee weapon.
Those were design proposals rather than completed combat systems. Their purpose was clear, though: the player should feel like someone who knows this damaged place and can use its confined spaces, doors, pipes, and access routes better than an invading force.
Humor came from the same constraint. Two assistant-written examples were:
“Hit them with the pipe, not the pipe.”
“Unauthorized civil war detected. Hull integrity remains appreciated.”
The joke depends on everyone knowing the ship must survive the fight. It could appear in announcements, signs, and short barks without turning the setting into a comedy.
A small defense scenario
One proposed prototype, Home Sweet Home, narrowed the idea to a shelter, an enemy breach point, a combat corridor, and an oxygen leak that needed repair. Baton, shield, and breacher enemies would create different pressures. The player would have to decide when to fight, reposition, or stop to protect the life-support system.
The proposal kept larger systems out of that first test: no full hub, branching campaign, complex crafting, faction simulation, or extensive inventory. The intended question was whether defending a home inside fragile infrastructure could be interesting with a small set of close-range actions.
Later design material explored other mission framing, including recovering evidence and helping civilians escape. I would treat those as alternatives in the evolving design, rather than silently combine every proposed feature into a finished specification.
Learning the level in Godot
I asked for a Godot build tutorial using the game design and documentation, then made the teaching format explicit: start at the beginning, work in phases, and wait for my approval before proceeding.
The recorded tutorial progressed through a greybox named Service Spine. Its planned route was:
Home Alcove → Maintenance Catwalk → Broken Lift Shaft
→ Security Sensor Hall → Power Junction
→ First Patrol Corridor → Emergency Bulkhead ExitThe later instructions were still careful about what existed. The patrol corridor was space for a future enemy, not an enemy implementation. The emergency bulkhead area marked where a future door and exit trigger would go, leaving the path open for traversal testing.
That is why the approvals in the conversation should not be read as proof of a completed first level. They show progression through the tutorial. A phase could be approved while its purpose was only floor, ceiling, collision, or layout.
Art as a separate working thread
Asset planning ran alongside the tutorial: protagonist sprites, maintenance props, security props, floor tiles, parallax backgrounds, and HUD pieces. I specified 32×32 pixels per prop on a transparent background, and requested main parallax strips at 3840×1080. The health-bar brief called for a worn, riveted metal container with a red fill.
Those concrete dimensions made the requests usable as asset briefs. They do not establish that every requested sheet or image became a verified, game-ready file.
The shared ship gave the combat a problem I wanted the player to feel: winning a fight could damage the only home either side had. The defense scenario, Godot lessons, and art planning were attempts to make that constraint playable. A finished first level had not yet come out of them.