Sofia Mendez
ok that hallway getting almost totally eaten by the dark is nasty in the best way haha. are you doing any audio cue before the ghost gets line of sight, or is it dead quiet till you see it?
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Arcade › House Below
House Below
About House Below
Search a grim house by candlelight, collecting keys and notes while barricaded windows and dark-stained walls close in. Open the basement door, descend the stairs, and find what’s waiting below.
How to play
Click the game above and it runs right here in your browser. No download, no installer, no account needed. Oleg Sidorkin built it with Cinevva, so it works on a phone or a tablet too.
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Make your own game
House Below was built by Oleg Sidorkin with the Cinevva game creator: describe the game you want in chat, watch it get built, and play it in your browser minutes later.
Remix House Below opens the real game in the creator and forks its actual files, chat and design doc, so you start from the code rather than from a description.
Read the build brief for House Below
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 first-person 3D horror exploration game set in a dark abandoned house. The player starts at the south end of a long central hallway, looking north toward the basement door. **Camera & Perspective:** First-person camera with pointer-lock mouse look and head-bob. Eye height at 1.62 units. The view is extremely dark with dense fog (fog density 0.105, background nearly black at #030404). **Player Avatar:** Invisible first-person controller with a handheld flashlight that casts a focused spotlight beam (4.4 intensity, 13 unit range, cone angle π/8.5). Player has a visible crosshair and can see candles, furniture, and pickup items in the beam. Stamina bar shown as 10 blocks in the HUD. **House Layout:** A grid-based house interior made from modular 3D building assets with dark wood textures (all tinted to 50% brightness). The layout includes: - Long central hallway running north-south (10 cells) - West side has a living room (2x2 cells) and bedroom (2x2 cells) - East side has a study (2x2 cells) and kitchen (2x2 cells) - Rooms connect to the hall through rounded doorway arches - Exterior walls have round windows with wooden barricades (planks across them) - North end has a locked rounded basement door with stairs behind it - Walls have dark wood panel texture with stains **Furnishing & Atmosphere:** - Each room contains dark furniture: beds, bookcases, tables, chairs (all heavily shadowed) - Floor decorated with barrels, scattered bones, skulls, and books - Flickering lantern-candles placed throughout (orange glow, intensity oscillates 0.55-1.4) - Candle clusters at ritual spots (near basement, in rooms) - Study contains a ticking wall clock (circular face with hands) that produces spatial audio ticks - Everything rendered with dark, grim colors and rough materials **Core Mechanic:** Survival horror exploration. Player must: 1. Collect 3 golden ritual keys scattered in the kitchen, bedroom, and study 2. Avoid/evade a roaming ghost enemy 3. Manage flashlight battery (drains at 3%/sec when on, dies at 0%) 4. Return to the basement door once all 3 keys are collected 5. Open the basement door and descend the stairs to escape **Controls:** - WASD: move (forward relative to camera direction, strafe relative to camera right) - Mouse: look (yaw and pitch) - E: interact (pick up keys/batteries, read notes, open door, descend stairs) - Shift: sprint (3.35 speed vs 1.72 normal, drains stamina 22%/sec, increases monster aggression) - F: toggle flashlight on/off - M: debug map mode (toggles overhead view showing entire level lit up with colored labels) **HUD Elements (top-left corner):** - "Keys: X/3" count - "Battery: X% ON/OFF" status - "Stamina: ▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯▯▯" (filled/empty blocks) - Bottom center interaction prompt: "Press E to take [item]" / "Press E to read note" / "Press E to open basement door" / "Press E to descend stairs" - Top center message area for story text and warnings - Crosshair (thin cross) at screen center **Collectibles:** - 3 ritual keys: golden key models floating and rotating at waist height, glowing with yellow-white tint (1.55, 1.35, 0.65 RGB). Names: "kitchen iron tooth", "bedroom bone tag", "study brass eye" - 3 batteries: lantern models on the floor that restore 42% battery when picked up - 3 readable notes: book stacks on tables/floor. When pressed E, displays full-screen parchment/journal image with overlaid text. Notes contain story hints: "basement door needs three keys", "don't sprint in halls", "light keeps it away but dies", "mother had no face". Close with E or Escape. **Enemy - The Ghost:** - Translucent white ghost character model (tinted 0.7, 0.85, 0.9 with 72% brightness) - Floats slightly off ground with slow bobbing (sin wave) - Two AI modes: 1. **Wander mode**: slowly walks random paths between rooms (0.28 speed), pauses 1-3 seconds at waypoints 2. **Seek mode**: triggered by line-of-sight to player OR player sprinting within 5.5 units. Uses A* pathfinding through doorways to chase player. Speed scales with aggro (0.52 base * 0.2-1.35 aggro multiplier). Returns to wander after losing sight for 6 seconds. - Pathfinding: navigates through doorway arches and around interior walls, blocked by locked basement door - Flashlight slows it by -0.32 speed when shined directly at it in seek mode - Caught condition: if ghost reaches within 0.72 units of player → game over with red vignette, sound burst, message "The thing found you" - Audio cues: whisper when it notices player, distant footsteps when far, heartbeat sound increases as it gets closer (bass oscillator) **Objectives & Win Condition:** - Collect all 3 keys from different rooms while avoiding the ghost - Navigate back to the north end basement door - Interact with door (shows "Basement locked: X/3 keys" if insufficient) - When 3/3 keys: door groans open with creak sound, swings 58° - Interact again to descend stairs → win screen "You descend the basement stairs and escape before dawn" **Lighting:** - Scene is extremely dark: hemisphere light (0.28 intensity), dim directional "moon" light (0.16 intensity) - Player flashlight is primary light source, essential for navigation - 6 flickering orange lantern point lights scattered through house (intensity 0.4-0.8, randomized flicker) - Candle clusters add small yellow-orange glows (0.2-0.35 intensity, radius 2.45) - Battery warning: flashlight flickers rapidly when battery drops below 25% **Audio:** - Low drone ambience (48 Hz sine wave with slow tremolo) - Footsteps: triangle wave tone (70-95 Hz) on player movement, faster when sprinting - Heartbeat bass when near monster (triangle wave 72 Hz, volume scales with proximity) - Clock ticking: spatial audio positioned at study wall clock (1650 Hz square wave, 0.92 sec interval, stereo pan and volume based on distance) - Random environmental cues every 7-12 seconds: door creaks, whispers, ghost footsteps, floorboard bends - Interaction tones: rising tones for key pickup (660 + 990 Hz), single tone for battery (320 Hz) - Monster events: whisper on detection, jumpscare noise burst when close - Basement door: creak sound on open, victory tones (220 + 330 Hz sustained) on escape **Lose Conditions:** - Ghost catches player (within 0.72 units) → "CAUGHT" screen, red damage overlay, restart option - Jumpscares: random red flash with burst sound if ghost is in seek mode within 5.5 units **Debug Mode (M key):** - Camera lifts to overhead orthographic view at Y=24, looking down at level - Fog disabled, scene brightens significantly - Colored sprite labels appear: "YOU" (cyan), "MONSTER" (red), "EXIT" (blue), "KEY" (yellow), "BATTERY" (green), "NOTE" (tan) - HUD shows "DEBUG MAP" with full state - Monster AI and battery drain paused - Shows prompt "Press M to return to first-person horror view" **Art Style:** - Low-poly modular 3D assets (Kenney building kit aesthetic) - Dark, desaturated color palette (browns, grays, blacks) - Heavy shadows and fog creating claustrophobic atmosphere - Wood textures on walls, floors, and furniture heavily darkened - Barricaded windows suggest entrapment - Scattered bones, skulls, and ritual candles imply occult horror - Generated parchment/journal images for notes with aged, stained appearance **Special Details:** - Collision system prevents walking through walls and closed doors using line segment tests - Basement door physical model has hinge offset so it swings correctly when opened - All pickup items gently rotate and bob up/down - Player controller resolves collisions with walls in a 0.28 unit radius - Interior partition walls between hallway and rooms block both player and monster pathfinding - Barricade props mounted on specific window walls facing outward - Study clock has visible circular face with minute and hour hands at frozen time
