DELVE/HOLD is a cooperative persistent-world game about living inside the consequences of magical industrialization. DELVE is an expedition RPG about carrying material promises into living dungeons. HOLD is a cozy workshop game about turning manual magical practice into shared production, civic capacity, and infrastructure.
The two names describe projections of one world. A workshop contract becomes an expedition. A returned object becomes material, evidence, debt, or political pressure. A foreign crisis changes workshop demand and the conditions under which a party enters the Deep World. Neither mode is a lobby or resource feeder for the other.
Audience and experience
The game is for players who enjoy cooperative PvE, expressive preparation, automation, persistent consequences, social economies, and political questions without a sovereign strategy-game view. It supports short useful visits and deeper sessions. Participation in one mode must not be compulsory for progress in the other.
Product shape
- One Godot C# client projects both embodied dungeon expeditions and workshop, Hold, contract, news, and civic play.
- One central C# world host owns the canonical Delvehold simulation. Changing modes changes presentation and available interaction, not world authority.
- CultMesh carries typed state and capabilities from their owning world organs.
- One canonical world history survives player absence. There are no seasonal wipes used to repair inflation or erase consequence.
The public GDD defines behavior, ownership, and acceptance. Exact combat arithmetic, recipe quantities, item catalogues, progression rates, and economic tuning remain implementation and playtest work until evidence earns a stable rule.
Non-goals
DELVE/HOLD is not hostile-player extraction by default, a global auction-house simulator, a sovereign nation game, two games joined by account synchronization, or an LLM improvisation layer permitted to invent canonical consequences. Mystery comes from bounded knowledge, not false state.