After Hours

Cinevva's analyzer read this game's design doc and its source, then wrote the brief below. "Make your own" hands it to the game creator as your opening message, so you start from a real spec rather than a one-line idea.

Create a short, replayable first-person 3D horror exploration game titled “After Hours.” The player is trapped after closing inside an abandoned indoor children’s play place called Sunny Smiles Play Place. Use a dark blue-black environment with heavy volumetric-style fog, a strong danger vignette, eerie party-colored lighting, flicker, blackouts, and occasional static/panic flashes. The visual tone should contrast friendly colorful play-place shapes with an ominous horror presentation.

Camera and movement: use a first-person perspective with mouse look and a small center crosshair. On desktop, move with WASD or arrow keys, hold Shift to run, press F to toggle the flashlight, and press E to hide or leave hiding. On touch devices, provide a left virtual joystick for movement, allow dragging elsewhere on the screen to look, and provide circular LIGHT, RUN, and HIDE buttons on the right. Movement should collide with walls and props. The player begins near the southwest/lobby side of a compact roughly 40-by-40 indoor maze, at about (-14, 1.7, 14), with the camera at standing eye height.

Build the play place as a compact maze with a dark floor and ceiling, perimeter walls, several interior partition walls and corridors, and colored party-room zones. Include four solid, brightly colored play tunnels with yellow rings that act as obstacles the player must walk around rather than pass through. Include several round children’s tables in pink, cyan, yellow, and green; tables are hiding spots. Include two banks of gray-blue lockers that are also hiding spots. Add a raised pink-walled ball pit filled with many colorful balls in the southeast area; it is visually bright but unsafe. Hang small glowing star decorations from the ceiling and add subtle floor striping. Use colored point lights around the four corners (pink, blue, yellow, and green) plus a dim purple central light. Place three metal security shutters in the maze that can slam down briefly during scares.

Goal and pickups: place exactly four floating, rotating birthday tokens around the map, one near each outer corner/area. They are small glowing colored discs with a white star-like shape on top. The HUD must show “Tokens 0 / 4” and update as they are collected. Each token pickup makes a message appear, increases the token count, restores a small amount of flashlight battery, alerts and pulls the mascot closer, and triggers a short blackout. The final token should display that the exit is live, trigger a longer blackout, unlock the exit, and begin a faster final chase. Also place exactly three floating battery packs around the play place; collecting one restores flashlight battery. The exit is a glowing gate/door centered along the north wall. It starts locked and dim cyan; after all four tokens, the door unlocks, rises/open-slides downward, glows intensely, and changes to an urgent reddish pink/cyan alarm-like glow. The player wins by reaching the exit gate after all tokens are collected.

Flashlight and hiding: begin with the flashlight on and battery at 100%. Show a HUD panel labeled “Flashlight” with the current percentage. The flashlight should be a narrow cool-white beam attached to the camera, with a small nearby blue halo, and should drain continuously while active (faster during the final chase). It cannot operate during a blackout or while hiding. If the battery reaches zero, show a warning and a scare. Hiding is only possible near a table or locker: lock the player in place, lower the camera viewpoint, turn off the flashlight, reduce the mascot’s alertness, and show a message such as “Under table. Stay still.” Moving leaves the hiding spot and restores the previous flashlight state if battery remains. If the mascot reaches a hiding player, force them out and cause a loss.

Enemy: create one roaming mascot that patrols through the play-place corridors using several waypoints. It should be tall and sketch-inspired: a lanky pale body with blue scribble-like accent lines, a yellow smiling face/head with a blue outline and drawn smile, long uneven arms and legs, pointed claws, and a curled blue tail ending in a glowing orange flame. Give it two clearly visible glowing red eyes. It patrols while unaware, notices the player within a range affected by flashlight, darkness, blackouts, and hiding, then becomes alert and chases directly. The mascot gets faster as tokens are collected; alertness also increases its speed. During the final chase it becomes substantially faster. Contact with the mascot causes an immediate loss, with a frightening jump-scare overlay and an end screen titled “Caught After Closing.”

Horror events and atmosphere: every token can cause the party lights to die temporarily. During blackouts, dim the scene nearly to black, reduce fog visibility, add screen static/flash effects, and make the mascot more threatening. Blackouts may also spawn a brief fake mascot apparition in a nearby hall: a dark translucent humanoid silhouette with dim red eyes that faces the player and fades after a short time. Some blackouts may slam one of the nearby metal shutters with a scare message. Add a danger-sensitive red/black vignette whose intensity increases when the mascot is close, the battery is low, an apparition is present, a blackout is active, or the final chase has begun. Include brief screen-flash/jump-scare effects when the mascot is very close, when the apparition is approached, or when the flashlight dies. Add procedural reactive audio if supported: low heartbeat pulses as fear rises, brief whispers at high fear/blackout/apparition moments, and descending stings for sightings, shutters, blackouts, and the final exit activation.

HUD and menus: use a clean dark translucent UI over the 3D view with three rounded panels across the top: “Tokens” (0 / 4), “Flashlight” (100%), and “Status” (initially “Sneaking”). Status should change contextually to “Running,” “Hunted,” “In the dark,” “Lights off,” “Can hide,” “Hidden,” “Holding breath,” “Final chase,” “Escaped,” or “Caught.” Show temporary rounded message banners near the lower center for pickup, blackout, hiding, danger, and exit announcements. On the start screen, show the title “After Hours,” explain that the player stayed too long in Sunny Smiles Play Place, state the objective to find four birthday tokens, survive blackouts, and reach the glowing EXIT gate before the mascot, and list desktop and phone controls. Provide a prominent “Enter the Play Place” button and a small tip that the ball pit is bright but not safe. On win, show “You Escaped” and explain that the player got out with all four birthday tokens; provide “Play Again” and “Look Around.”

Keep the game focused on one compact survival loop: explore, manage battery and light, collect four tokens, use tables/lockers to break line of sight, survive escalating blackouts and mascot pursuit, then sprint to the north exit during the final chase. Do not add weapons, combat, extra enemies, inventory systems, or unrelated levels.