TheLastGarden/.planning/season-7-end-state.md

Season 7 End-State Design (Principle-Level)

Phase 1 deliverable per PIPE-05 + CONTEXT D-08. Principle-level only — treatment text is authored in Phase 7.

This document answers the question that ends ROADMAP.md Phase 7's success criterion #4:

"the finite Roothold ceiling from Phase 4 has held the line, and the game has ended the way A Dark Room and Universal Paperclips ended."

Per .planning/research/PITFALLS.md #1, "the story ends but the idle loop doesn't" is the single most dangerous structural pitfall for this project. This document is the canonical answer the project has before any economy code lands in Phase 2.

Per CONTEXT D-08: this is principle-level, not treatment-level. It defines the contract Phase 7's authoring obeys, not the text of any final scene.

What does rest state mean?

The rest state is the post-credits configuration the player can return to indefinitely without grinding. Concretely:

• No new fragments are added to the pool. All authored content has been delivered. Harvests after the final binary choice yield re-readable previously-collected fragments — nothing new.
• No new currency tiers unlock. Roothold has reached its finite ceiling (see below) and stays there. There is no "Season 8" hidden behind a number.
• The garden continues to render and respond to clicks. Plants can still be planted. Seasons (now in Return register) continue to crossfade. The world is not frozen — it is finished.
• The Pale has receded. The Heartsoil expands beyond the garden walls. Lura's arc has resolved. The Archivist's question has been answered (in the player's Season 7 binary choice — STRY-08).
• The cello and ambient layers continue. The audio is quiet, finite, understood — never crescendos again, never hard-cuts.

This is not "endgame content." It is rest. Lineage: A Dark Room fades to its ending screen and the player returns to it for the same reason they return to a finished album — not because there is more, but because there was enough.

What is the finite Roothold ceiling tied to?

Roothold's ceiling is anchored in the count of authored fragments and the count of Seasons — not in an arbitrary number, not in a designer's intuition.

The principle:

One cannot accumulate more Roothold than the player has actually understood, and what the player can understand is bounded by what the writer has actually written.

Concrete tie:

• Roothold gain per Season is gated to a hard cap proportional to the fragment count of that Season + a small contribution from Roothold-relevant story beats (Lura conversations, the Nameless Man's arc, the Archivist's question, etc.).
• Total Roothold ceiling = Σ(per-Season caps).
• Phase 4 enforces this cap when it implements migrate_v1_to_v2 and the prestige state machine (SEAS-04). Phase 7 verifies the ceiling holds through full play.
• When Roothold reaches the ceiling, the UI displays "Roothold (full)" — never a hidden multiplier or "go again to overflow."

Implication for designers: when adding fragments in Phase 5+, the Roothold ceiling moves — adding 5 new Season-3 fragments adds proportional headroom. This is intentional. Roothold is bounded by content; content is bounded by the writer.

What tonal register does the coda live in?

• Warm, not pyrrhic. The garden persists because you tended it; this is earned redemption, not survival. Lineage: the closing minutes of Spiritfarer, not the closing minutes of A Dark Room (which earned its bitterness; we earn our warmth).
• Quiet, not climactic. The cello does not crescendo at the binary choice. It rests. The chosen ending paragraph displays softly; "The garden persists." lands without underscore.
• Specific, not abstract. The final visible state is a real garden — the one this player built, with their actual planted ecosystems, their actual Roothold value, their actual collected fragments — viewed in soft dawn-silver light per AEST-06's Season-7 palette anchor.
• Final, not infinite. There is no Season 8. There is no New Game+. The Pale receded here, in this garden. Future patches may add cosmetic items or additional fragments per CONT-01 (post-launch additive content), but they slot between authored beats; they never extend the arc.

What this document is NOT

This document defines principles. It does not define:

• The text of the Season 7 binary-choice scene — authored Phase 7.
• The text of either ending paragraph ("They help us remember" / "They help us grow") — authored Phase 7.
• The exact line "The garden persists." appears in both endings, but its surrounding paragraph and Lura's final line are authored Phase 7, not Phase 1.
• The credits / coda screen visual treatment — designed Phase 7.
• The exact tonal register or shape of individual final-Season fragments — authored Phase 7.
• The numeric value of the Roothold ceiling — computed Phase 4 from the content count at that point + ROADMAP-locked principle.

This document is the principle the economy obeys, the writer obeys, and the Phase 7 designer obeys — not the implementation of any of those.

Source Documents

This doctrine consolidates constraints already locked in:

• PROJECT.md § "Core Value" — "every idle mechanic must function as a metaphor"; "what survives is what you understood"
• REQUIREMENTS.md SEAS-04 (finite Roothold ceiling), SEAS-09 (Season 7 late-game shape), SEAS-10 (rest state, not infinite prestige tiers), STRY-08 (binary choice + "The garden persists.")
• ROADMAP.md § "Phase 7: Season 7 (Return) & Final Choice" — the 4 success criteria
• .planning/research/PITFALLS.md § "Pitfall 1: The Story Ends but the Idle Loop Doesn't" — the rationale this document directly addresses

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Authored: Phase 1 deliverable. Phase 4 enforces the Roothold ceiling. Phase 7 authors the treatment-level final scenes against the principles above.