Hometown Year

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 mobile-friendly Japanese hometown life/visual-novel simulator titled “Hometown Year.” The player returns to the old coastal town of Kisaragi on April 1 and has one year, divided into 12 months and four daily time slots (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night), to rebuild relationships and decide how to spend time. Prioritize a full-screen visual-novel presentation rather than active 3D gameplay: use a soft, atmospheric location background that changes with the selected place, a large faint Japanese location label, and stylized portrait-like character cards at the bottom. The underlying concept may include a simple soft-green town with roads, school, shrine torii, river, home, trees, and blocky characters, but the visible game should be the visual-novel UI with the background canvas hidden or visually subordinate.

Start at “April 1 • Spring,” with the subtitle “Morning at Home.” Show a dark translucent, glassy HUD over the scene. At the upper left display the date and current time/location; at the upper right show the starting resources: ¥1200, Energy 80, Charm 1, Courage 1, Insight 1, and Year 1/12. On desktop, show a relationship panel on the right with five names, roles, numeric bond values, and pink-to-yellow bond bars. On portrait/mobile layouts, simplify this into compact top stats and rounded location buttons, hiding the relationship panel and explanatory mode panel.

The five relationship routes are: Aoi Tachibana, class president/childhood friend at Kisaragi High; Ren Kurosawa, a sarcastic but loyal music-club runaway at Shopping Street; Mei Hoshino, a strange and kind shrine keeper/occult-club member at Hill Shrine; Haru Mizuno, a soft-spoken riverbank artist at Riverbank; and Yumi Sato, the player’s mother at the Old Family Home. Give each character a distinct stylized portrait card with a head/face area, colored hair/clothing blocks, name label, subdued inactive appearance, and a brighter enlarged active appearance. Only characters belonging to the current location are shown as scene portraits, with the selected speaker emphasized. Use location-specific illustrated gradients: cool school blues, warm/pink shopping street colors, red/purple shrine colors, blue riverbank colors, and warm ochre home colors. Include evocative but grounded dialogue about returning home, ambition, music, old town secrets, art, family history, and rebuilding trust.

Provide five prominent location buttons: Kisaragi High/School, Shopping Street, Hill Shrine/Shrine, Riverbank, and Old Family Home/Home. Selecting a location changes the scene label, current location, local character, and dialogue. The opening Home scene should offer the core activity choices visible as large dark buttons: “Study at school,” “Work at kissaten,” “Train courage at shrine,” and “Rest at home.” Location scenes should also let the player talk to the local character and perform the relevant activity; Riverbank offers “Sketch quietly.” Every activity consumes one time slot and produces a short narrative result:
- Study: Insight +2 and Energy -10.
- Work at the kissaten: Money +¥900, Charm +1, Energy -18.
- Train courage at the shrine: Courage +2, Energy -14.
- Rest at home: Energy +35, Energy capped at 100.
- Sketch quietly at the riverbank: Insight +1, Charm +1.

Talking to a character offers exactly the meaningful interaction choices “Listen closely,” “Say something bold,” and, for anyone except Yumi, “Create romantic tension,” plus a way back to town. Each interaction advances one slot, increases that character’s bond by 8 plus half the relevant stat rounded down, raises trust by 5 when listening or 3 for the other approaches, and decreases Energy by 12. Listening increases Insight by 1; boldness increases Courage by 1; romantic tension increases Charm by 1 and romance by 8, but never for Yumi. Display the character’s Bond/100, relationship category, and Romance in their introduction dialogue. Categorize bonds as distant below 25, close at 25, confidant at 55, and fate at 85.

Each route begins with its own bond/trust values and has three milestone story events at bond thresholds 25, 55, and 85. Trigger each event once when the threshold is reached, then return to that character’s interaction choices. The route writing should be specific: Aoi has a scholarship and questions whether ambition means leaving; Ren has a cassette demo, family conflict, and a possible farewell show; Mei discovers a family surname in a sealed summer-festival record and considers reopening a forgotten festival; Haru struggles between staying to draw Kisaragi and applying to art school; Yumi reveals why the family left, gives the player the late father’s train pass, and works toward an honest new family. Explicitly make Yumi a family/trust route, never a romance route.

Advance time from Morning to Afternoon to Evening to Night; after Night, advance to the next day. Days run 1 through 30. At the start of a new day, restore 36 Energy, capped at 100. After day 30, roll into the next month and show a short calendar/story-pulse dialogue. The month sequence is April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, with seasons Spring for April-June, Summer for July-September, Autumn for October-December, and Winter for January-March. Change ambient colors/lighting by time slot: bright blue morning, pale afternoon, warm orange evening, and deep navy night. The HUD must always update the date, season, slot, location, money, energy, stats, year count, and relationship bars.

At the end of March, show a full-screen “Year’s End” overlay with the top relationship bonds. Determine the ending by the highest combined bond and romance: if Yumi is highest, show that the family is repaired and home can be rebuilt without lies; if a non-Yumi character has romance at least 45 and bond at least 70, show a chosen relationship under the first spring rain; otherwise show that the strongest bond ends as a promise rather than a confession. Include a “Start a new year” button that reloads/restarts the game.

Use a dark navy/purple translucent panel style with thin light borders, blur, soft shadows, white text, and pale yellow speaker/title accents. Use large, high-contrast buttons suitable for touch, with two-column choices on portrait screens. Support desktop keyboard shortcuts conceptually (WASD/arrows for optional underlying town movement and E/Space to talk) and pointer/touch interaction; the main visible interaction is tapping location and dialogue buttons. Keep the tone reflective, bittersweet, and intimate: one hometown, four seasons, five major bonds, and a town full of secrets waiting through a single year.