Deadlight Alley

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.

Recreate “Deadlight Alley” as a dark, minimalist 3D top-down survival shooter viewed from a high, slightly angled third-person camera. The camera should follow a player character over a square asphalt-like arena, looking down from roughly y=18 with a perspective view, and keep the player near the center as they move. Use a nearly black blue-gray environment with fog, a subtle glowing moon/ambient fill, and a faint square grid across the ground. The playable ground is a bounded 42-by-42 plane, while the player is clamped to approximately a 26-by-26 central area. Place a handful of scattered barrels around the arena (roughly at left/right and near the center), and place a blood decal/puddle where enemies die. Use low-poly zombie-apocalypse 3D character assets: a survivor/player holding a gun and basic zombies. Characters should cast/receive shadows where possible.

Core loop: the player survives successive waves of zombies. Start at wave 1 with score 0, 18 rounds of ammunition, and a 100% flashlight battery. Spawn 4 + 2*wave zombies, capped at 16, around the four edges of the arena: left and right sides, and the near/far edges. Each zombie has 2 hit points, moves toward the player at about 0.75–0.97 world units per second, and attacks when within about 1.25 units, dealing 8 health damage every 0.7 seconds. The player starts with 100 health, though health is not displayed in the normal HUD. When health reaches zero, pause gameplay and show a dark translucent game-over overlay titled “Overrun,” with text reporting the score and wave survived and a “PLAY AGAIN” button. Killing a zombie makes it invisible, adds 100 score, updates the remaining-enemy count internally, and leaves a blood mark. When all zombies in a wave are dead, immediately increment the wave, grant up to 6 additional rounds (ammo is capped at 24), and spawn the next wave.

Aiming and shooting should be simple and arcade-like. On desktop, point the mouse over the arena; project the cursor ray onto the ground to define the aim point, show a small pale circular crosshair at the cursor, and fire on mouse click or Space. A shot consumes one round and has a short roughly 170 ms firing cooldown. Draw a brief warm yellow tracer cylinder from the player toward the aim point. Resolve hits only against a zombie within 15 units and a narrow aim cone (roughly dot product greater than .975), prioritizing the closest eligible zombie within about 2.2 units of the intended hit position; each successful shot removes one hit point. Do not allow firing with empty ammo, while game over, or during the short firing lockout.

The player can move with WASD or the arrow keys, with optional Shift sprinting: normal speed about 3.4 and sprint speed about 5.4. Also support a mobile control layout: a large translucent circular virtual joystick in the lower-left for movement, plus circular LIGHT and red/orange FIRE buttons in the lower-right. The mobile layout should appear for coarse pointers; hide the desktop hint and crosshair there. The LIGHT button and keyboard F toggle the flashlight. On desktop show a bottom hint reading “WASD / arrows to move · mouse to aim · click to fire · F flashlight · R restart”; R should restart after game over.

The flashlight is a strong cool cyan-white spotlight attached above the player, aimed toward the current ground aim direction. It should visibly illuminate a limited cone (roughly 15-unit range), be on initially, and drain battery at about 3.1 percentage points per second while on. When off, recharge at about 1.4 points per second up to 100%; automatically turn it off when empty. Display the current battery as LIGHT percentage in the HUD. The code’s survival pressure comes from keeping mobile and managing the light, ammunition, and approaching enemies; do not add extra weapons, pickups, enemy types, levels, or story scenes.

Use a restrained neon-night visual style: background #070b10, dark blue-gray ground, faint teal grid lines, cool moonlight and cyan flashlight, pale blue-white interface text, translucent charcoal HUD panels with thin blue-gray borders and rounded corners, and a red/orange FIRE control. The fixed HUD should occupy the top edge: a left translucent panel with uppercase, letter-spaced title “DEADLIGHT ALLEY” and the subtitle “Stay in the beam. Save your rounds.”; a right translucent stats panel showing WAVE, SCORE, AMMO, and LIGHT with prominent bright values. On mobile, keep the large joystick and LIGHT/FIRE circles along the bottom. Render responsive full-screen canvas with no scrolling.