Holdfast

This page is the design draft for the game Holdfast is building toward. The Holdfast page describes the game as it plays today, and the build order at the end says what comes first.

The pitch

Hold the fire until dawn. One to four wardens defend a circle of standing stones against a night of monsters. Each wave moves the night on; at wave 15 the last colossus falls, dawn breaks, and you win. A run takes 15 to 18 minutes, plays on a phone with one thumb for aim, and ends in a screen of lightning, fire and ice your team made together.

Holdfast is a flagship of the store, not a tech demo: every detail, from the animations and the UI to the map, the monsters and the feel, is finished to the standard of a game hundreds of thousands of players love.

The four pillars

Hold together. Shared coins, one shared win, revives that matter, and reactions that take two players. Friends never compete.
A build you can see. Every pick changes what happens on screen, never only a number.
A night with an ending. Calm, build-up, a boss, a finish line, then the next run.
Easy to start, deep to master. A new player moves, fires and picks a color; an expert plans an element, a gun and a partner.

How the pieces fit

Your element is the effect; your gun is the shape.

	What it decides	Where it comes from
Your element	What your hits do: shock a crowd, burn one target, or freeze	Picked before wave 1, raised by cards
Your gun	Where your hits land: one target, a cone, or a line	Coins, at the fire’s rack

Every element works through every gun at the same strength per second: a rail shot applies a whole dose, a scattergun pellet a fifth. No pairing is stronger by the numbers; each plays differently. A Frost player with the scattergun freezes the pack rushing her; with the rail she freezes a line of brutes from across the circle.

The run

Before wave 1, each warden picks her element: Storm, Ember or Frost. It is her role, and the first card screen a new player sees, so each card shows its job in a picture and a word: crowds, bosses and brutes, freeze them.
15 waves. A colossus at waves 5 and 10, a larger final colossus with its escort at 15. The sky moves from dusk to sunrise. A win opens Endless in that room.
Named waves, about one in three, the first never a Horde before wave 4, announced a breather ahead (“Next: Brutes”): Swarm (skitters), Brutes, Spitter rain, Horde (a flood of weak husks, up to one fixed cap for the room, measured on a phone; a phone draws less, never simulates less).
The breather, up to 20 s. The card screen opens by itself on a cleared wave. One card is free, at whatever rarity it lands; more cards from the same offer cost coins, and Reroll deals three new ones. An unmade free pick is made for you, and never spends coins. Healing at the fire is automatic. It ends when every warden is ready: stand in the ring, or tap Ready.
After the wave-10 colossus, the night deepens: each warden picks a second element. Solo wardens pick theirs after wave 5. No warden ever holds more than two, Endless included.
Losing happens only when every warden is down.

Elements

Each element has one job, one color, one sound and one plain name, used on cards, hits, the screen and every popup.

Storm (yellow): crowds. A hit arcs to nearby monsters. The only element that spreads.
Ember (orange-red): one big target. A hit adds burn that stacks on that monster and ticks harder the more it holds.
Frost (ice-blue): control. A hit chills; enough chill freezes the monster in place.

Levels and a capstone. Each element has three levels, and picking it is level 1. Element cards come at every rarity and add points to that element’s line: a common 1, a rare 2, an epic 4. The line reaches level 2 at 4 points and level 3 at 10, and a bar for each element a warden holds shows how close the next level is. Free picks alone reach a capstone around wave 12, and coins spent on cards bring it to about wave 8. The offer deals element cards only for the elements a warden holds. Level 3 is the capstone:

Storm III, Thunderhead: while you fire, a bolt falls from the sky every 3 seconds.
Ember III, Meltdown: a monster at full burn erupts for a share of its health, and its burn resets to zero. The colossus killer.
Frost III, Shatter: a frozen monster that dies bursts and freezes its neighbors.

Marks and reactions. Ember and Frost build a mark on a monster over several hits: blazing at full burn, frozen at full chill. A marked monster glows in its element’s color. A reaction fires when a different element hits a marked monster: it spends the mark, and that monster cannot react again for a few seconds, which it shows by losing its glow. Spending a mark ends its glow and its reaction, not its effect: a frozen monster stays frozen for its full time, and a blazing one keeps burning.

Storm on frozen, Chain Shock: lightning leaps through every frozen monster near the one struck.
Storm on blazing, Blast: an explosion that hits everything around the monster; knockback arrives with the grenade launcher.
Ember on frozen, or Frost on blazing, Steam Cloud: a cloud that burns and slows everything inside it for a few seconds.

Until wave 10 each warden holds one element, so every reaction takes two players: the glow says “that one’s frozen, hit it with lightning”. After wave 10 a warden’s own two elements react too, the late power the finale needs. Reactions are tuned to be moments, a handful per wave for each pair of players, not a flicker. A reaction shows a big word where it happened with both players’ names, and repeats count up (“Chain Shock x12”). Your own effects draw at full brightness and teammates’ dimmer; reactions and capstones always at full.

Other cards make any gun stronger and never change its shape: damage, fire rate, weak-spot damage, element strength, survival (health, regeneration, revive speed, a shield after a revive, move speed), and Midas Touch, a rare card that makes a warden’s own coins worth 25% more, at most twice, and says it pays off over time. Pierce and pellets are the guns’ own, bought as upgrades at the rack. Rarity (common, rare, epic) sets how big a card’s step is and what it costs.

The cards are the heart of the breather. The offer is dealt center screen with the world dimmed, one card after another with a beat before the best, and then settles at its full size into the lower third of the screen, with one bar under it that holds her coins, the reroll, the clock and Ready, so everything the choice needs sits where she looks, and a warden can still walk to the rack while choosing. Rarity escalates: a common flips clean, a rare shimmers blue with a chime, an epic lands like a win, with a pause, a gold burst, light and a deep hit. Each card catches the light, as Balatro’s and Marvel Snap’s do. The hand is a shop she can leave, as Risk of Rain 2’s Command menu and Roboquest’s co-op perks are: one key folds it to a small chip and opens it again until the wave starts, readying folds it, and once her free card is taken it folds by itself when her coins meet nothing left in it. The chip lifts once when coins arrive that buy something, never opens by itself, and counts the breather’s last five seconds. A card taken flies into its element’s bar or the stat it raises, and reaching a capstone is its own ceremony. When a teammate pulls an epic, her row on the scoreboard flashes. Each card shows its number large and what makes its rarity bigger, and every animation can be skipped by picking.

Coins and the fire

Everyone earns every coin, and each spends her own. A monster’s coins pop from it and fly to every warden’s wallet as it dies. Each drop is divided by the crowd factor 1 + 0.6(n − 1), so each warden earns about what a solo player would.
Coins buy five things, “a better card, a better gun, or a bigger fire”. Prices are set against W, what one warden earns in an average wave:
1. More cards, on the card screen: after the free one, any card in the offer at its rarity’s price, a common 0.5W, a rare 1W, an epic 2W. A run is many small cards rather than a few big ones, as in Marvel Rivals’ Marvel Zombies: steps are sized for a warden who buys one or two extra cards a breather by mid-run, thirty or more in a night, while the free card keeps a warden who ignores coins on pace.
2. Reroll the card offer: 0.25W, rising by 0.25W each time within a breather, and back to 0.25W the next.
3. A gun from the rack at the fire, by choice, at its price. You hold one gun; a new gun keeps your upgrade tier minus one, so switching for next wave’s Brutes costs something without erasing what you built.
4. Upgrade your gun, three tiers that change how it shoots, never only its damage: the scattergun gains pellets, then ricocheting pellets; the rail pierces more monsters, then more again, then its own perk that rewards weak-spot hits along its line; the blaster fires faster, then gains its own perk.
5. Feed the fire, the team’s sink with no ceiling: any warden adds coins, and each level widens the fire’s ring, which heals every warden inside it during waves too, and the fire visibly grows.
The rack and the upgrades are open from wave 1, and their prices do the gating: the blaster’s first upgrade costs about 1W, and the scattergun and the rail about 2W, within reach by waves 3 to 5 for a warden who skips extra cards.
Weak spots. Every monster has one, a head or the colossus’s glowing core, and a hit there deals twice the gun’s damage, with its own gold mark, ding and number. A body hit stays worth taking, so a new player loses nothing, and an expert’s aim pays. The element’s dose is never doubled, so every element stays as strong through every gun.
Guns: the blaster (the rapid-fire gun you start with: one target at a time), the scattergun (a shotgun: close, a wide cone of pellets) and the rail (slow and heavy: one shot pierces a whole line). Later, the grenade launcher (arcs, splashes, knocks back) and the disc launcher (discs that bounce off the stones).

Fairness

Monster count grows +60% for each warden past the first, 2.2 times for three and 2.8 for four, except that a pair faces 1.4 times rather than 1.6, as below. The colossus’s health grows +75% for each extra warden. A late joiner tops up the part of the wave not yet spawned.
Solo gets one self-revive per boss cycle, a slightly smaller wave, and its second element at wave 5.
A pair faces 1.4 times a wave rather than 1.6: with no self-revive and one teammate to get her up, the last one standing faces the whole wave.
The targets, measured with room bots calibrated to a decent player: alone, dawn about half the time; four wardens pressed, with downs and revives, but winning most runs; a plain wave’s fight 30 to 60 s; a colossus 30 to 45 s at the expected power; reactions a handful per wave for each pair.
Downed wardens keep shooting at half rate where they lie; the room enforces it.
A late joiner appears at the fire protected, picks her element and the cards she missed, and earns every coin from then on.

Co-op feel

End-of-run awards: best duo (most reactions together), most revives, top damage, last one standing, and the team’s top reaction with its count and who made it.
A ping on one key or tap marks a monster or a spot for everyone.
A downed warden shows a beacon, and her reviver sees the ring fill.

Phone

One thumb moves, one aims; the gun fires while the crosshair rests on a monster, with aim assist on touch only. The fire’s rack has a Use button that shows when you are near it.

Between runs

A warden’s career is kept between runs: her XP, the runs she played and the nights she won, with a level worked out from the XP, which both end screens show (the game page has the numbers). The rest comes later:

The warden level shows beside your name, and each level unlocks something you can see.
Sunshards, earned every run and more at harder Nights, buy small, capped permanent upgrades (health, fire rate, coin gain, about +10% in all; refundable, as Vampire Survivors’ are; every number is tuned with none), new guns and cards for your pools, and cosmetics (skins, kill effects, the fire’s color, emotes).
Nights are difficulty levels: winning a Night opens the next, and each pays more. The host picks the Night, so a veteran with a new friend plays a low one and both earn.
Daily challenges, a collection of every reaction and capstone found, and a bonus for playing with friends.
Unlocks belong to each warden, settings to the room, and the room grants every reward, never the page.

Not building

Turrets or free building, a random weapon crate (maybe later, for rare guns), a second way to lose, classes (elements are the roles), friendly fire, a shop menu, card locks.

Build order

The engine work each step needs is its own issue first.

The night. On top of Holdfast’s room flow: 15 waves and dawn with Endless, named waves announced ahead, Horde at a measured cap with the room’s bytes per second read, the 20 s breather that ends on ready, downed wardens shooting, the solo self-revive, and a card offer shaped for rarity.
Engine: a hit carries who, what, which gun and how much element, and a mark remembers who built it, the layer after one-step events, so elements, reactions and awards see every hit.
Frost and Storm, the element pick, marks and Chain Shock, rarity, with finished effects measured at Horde. The riskiest part lands first.
Ember, Steam Cloud and Blast (without knockback), the second element after wave 10, and the three capstones.
The fire: shared coins, reroll, cards bought from the offer, the rack with scattergun and rail from wave 1, gun upgrades, feeding the fire, and awards. Needs the engine to read a gun’s base times a shared stat.
Element lines: element cards at every rarity fill a line toward level 2 and the capstone, with a bar on the screen, in place of level cards.
Later phases: the grenade launcher and Blast’s knockback (after engine arcs, splash and knockback), the disc launcher, ping, a fourth element (Dawn, support: it shields teammates and makes monsters take more damage; reactions stay a table of pairs, and Dawn’s place in it is decided when it is designed), more maps, the lobby server, and everything between runs.