Hollow Pines

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 playable third-person 3D forest mystery-survival game titled “Hollow Pines.” Use a slightly elevated over-the-shoulder camera that follows the player from behind, with smooth camera lag and a muted, stylized low-poly/Quaternius-like look. The world is a bounded circular slice of forest roughly 86 units across: a mossy dark-green ground, a brown north-south mud road through town, another angled road toward the cabin, dense scattered pine clusters around the outskirts, fog, boundary stones, and a quiet brown town square. Lighting starts as soft blue-green daylight/evening and gradually transitions through a long real-time story arc into dark blue night with heavier fog, dim sun, and brighter cold moonlight.

The player character is Mara Wren, a young girl in casual clothing, represented by an animated low-poly humanoid. Start her near the town well at approximately the town center. Support idle, walk, run, jump, duck, and slide animations; reinforce ducking/sliding visually by scaling the character shorter if an animation is unavailable. Movement is camera-relative. On desktop use WASD or arrow keys to move, Shift to run, Space to jump, C or Ctrl to duck, V to slide, E to interact, N to open/close the clue notebook, and M to toggle map pins. On touch devices provide a left virtual joystick, RUN, JUMP, DUCK, SLIDE, and E buttons, plus a Notebook button. Running drains stamina and stamina regenerates when not running. Jumping is a brief physical hop; ducking slows movement; sliding is a short fast ground action.

Build the town with four low-poly houses: a new house, a closed general store, an empty blue house, and an abandoned post office. Add an old stone well in the square with a circular gray stone ring, dark opening, wooden posts, and a small roof. Place an old woman beside the well, plus a boarded-up storekeeper and nervous mailman as rare remaining townspeople. Interacting with the old woman reveals that Mara is a new Wren girl, that the missing posters are “receipts,” that Lena Bell, Tom Vale, and Nora Wren were taken after someone opened the cabin after sundown, and that the pale hunters only hunt when the sun gives up. The storekeeper and mailman each provide their specific rumors: Lena was sold candles before vanishing and the posters may change; the missing posters were mailed from the forbidden cabin and the last envelope was addressed to Mara Wren. Store each conversation in Mara’s notebook and show it in a temporary dialogue box and event log.

Place three large mounted missing-person posters around the town. Each should look like a weathered cream paper poster on a wooden backing/stake, with a bold “MISSING” heading, a crude crossed-out portrait, the missing person’s name and details, and pencilled clue text on the back/front representation. The posters are: LENA BELL, last seen walking toward the cabin road at dusk, pointing to a red scarf tied to a black pine east of town; TOM VALE, the well keeper who vanished repairing the well rope, pointing to counting stones on the old creek; and NORA WREN, Mara’s aunt, removed from town records, pointing to a Wren key hidden by the north trail stump. Reading each poster opens its text, adds a poster entry to the notebook, increments poster clue progress, and creates a red glowing map pin at the related forest location. After all three are read, unlock the poster trail and update the objective.

Place four collectible forest evidence objects at fixed locations: a torn paper note near the east black pine/red scarf location, a child’s scratch map near the old creek/counting stones location, a cold iron key tagged “WREN HOUSE CELLAR” at the north trail stump, and a damp ledger near/behind the cabin. Papers can be represented by small paper models lying on the ground and the key by a visibly modeled key. Interacting with each displays its exact clue text, hides the object, adds a notebook entry, increments a 4-item clue counter, and adds a glowing map pin; collecting the key sets the Wren-key flag. The clue texts should establish that the cabin door opens only when the town bells stop at night, that a child’s map circles the well, cabin, and a black tree with too many eyes, that the key opens the Wren house cellar, and that the town fed the pale ones names so they would forget faces.

At the southwest edge of the map, create the forbidden cabin as a larger low-poly house with a boarded front door, using three dark wooden planks and a foreboding warning presentation. Add an interaction radius at the door. The cabin must not open until the story timer reaches exactly one real-time hour (60 minutes), and it also requires the Wren key plus enough evidence: either at least three forest clues or all three poster clues. Before the hour, interacting with the door says it will not open until the final bell and reports the approximate minutes remaining. With insufficient evidence after the hour, explain that the player needs the Wren key and enough forest or poster evidence.

After night falls, activate three tall pale hunters around the outer forest. They are stylized humanoid creatures with elongated pale bodies, long arms and legs, pale heads, and nine small glowing cream-colored eyes arranged in a 3-by-3 grid. They are invisible/asleep in daytime and become visible at night. Outside town or cover, if Mara is within about 27 units and not hidden, a hunter chases her; otherwise hunters slowly prowl with wandering motion. Mara counts as hidden when near the town, under distant tree cover, ducking, or sliding. Hunters should stay out of the town and map boundary. If one reaches Mara at night, drain health over time; at zero health, restore health and return her beside the well with a short warning that the hunters remember her face. Include a subtle footstep sound while moving, quieter at night.

The HUD should be readable over the world and match a dark translucent survival-mystery interface. At top left show the HOLLOW PINES title, a changing objective panel, and three horizontal bars: health with a green/yellow/red gradient, stamina with a blue gradient, and a story/night progress bar with a warm-gold-to-blue gradient. The progress bar fills across the one-hour story timer. Show temporary interaction text centered near the bottom such as “Press E: Old Woman,” dialogue cards with speaker and text, and a small event log on the right/top area. Include a Notebook button at top right; opening it pauses player movement and hides the normal objective/log/dialogue/interaction overlay, and displays a dark panel titled “Mara’s Clue Notebook” with tabs/labels for Posters, Clues, People, and Endings and all discovered entries. Include a mobile-friendly translucent joystick and circular action buttons styled like the shown screenshot.

When Mara finally enters/interacts with the cabin door after the hour and evidence requirements, trigger one of exactly three ending states and record it in the notebook and objective. If all four forest clues and all three poster clues are found, show “Ending 1: Break the Pact”: Mara matches every poster to every forest clue and speaks the missing names, the pale hunters forget the town, and Hollow Pines wakes with every bell ringing. If all three poster clues and the Wren key are present but not all forest clues, show “Ending 2: The Town Remembers”: the posters prove the town lied, the remaining people gather at the well, name the missing, and force the old woman into the forest. Otherwise, when the key and enough forest evidence are present without the full poster trail, show “Ending 3: The New Keeper”: Mara opens the cellar with too few names, is offered the bargain of feeding the pale ones or becoming one, and by morning a new missing poster carries her face. Keep the experience exploratory and open-ended until the door ending; allow continued exploration or reloading to discover other endings. Do not add combat, weapons, lanterns, stealth tools, interiors, or extra areas beyond these mechanics and locations.