House of Addenda

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 investigation/exploration game titled “House of Addenda,” set in and around an eccentric Victorian mansion that has been expanded room-by-room by multiple generations instead of renovated. The player begins outside on a nighttime estate approach and enters through the grand front door; crossing the threshold should use a brief dark/fade transition and allow returning outside through the same threshold.

Use a Three.js-like real-time 3D presentation with a perspective first-person camera, centered pale crosshair reticle, mouse-look with pointer lock, and collision-based walking. On desktop, WASD or arrow keys move, the mouse looks, and E or click examines the object currently under the reticle. On mobile, show two translucent circular virtual joysticks at the bottom corners: the left moves and the right looks; tapping an interactable examines it. Keep the mansion readable but absurdly maze-like, with awkward overlaps and additions.

Exterior: show a dark, eccentric rich-family Victorian facade on a lawn and pale gravel drive, approached by broad front steps and hedges. The facade should visibly include multiple towers and turrets, steep pointed roofs, balconies/porch railings, chimneys, many windows, a small observation tower/water-tank-like upper structure, and warm porch lights. Use moonlit blue-gray ambient fog, warm amber lamps, deep brown/black shadows, stone/plaster walls, dark wood, and an eerie but readable atmosphere. Include simplified low-poly trees around the estate and small ornamental lion-like forms by the steps. The player starts facing the mansion from the drive.

Interior layout: construct a connected collection of Victorian rooms with wood floors, patterned wallpaper or plaster, trim, baseboards, rugs, doorframes, paper piles, dusty clutter, and floating dust motes. Include a foyer/front hall with crooked little stairs and beams; an archive hall with bookcases, boxes, papers, blue lighting, and records; a parlor with sofa, evidence table, tall lamp, portraits and a safe; a bedroom containing Mara’s bed and diary; a garage-shaped interior room containing an entire sedan; an indoor boat room containing a large rowboat and cold blue light; a kitchen annex with cabinets and an annotated recipe card; a downstairs bathroom containing an absurd bathtub; a hidden green-lit orchid conservatory with greenhouse log; a record annex behind an iron gate with archive material and servants’ ledger; and an attic-ramp/expanded area. The rooms should feel like bizarre historical additions to one another rather than a clean conventional floor plan.

The core loop is to explore, aim at highlighted/targeted objects, and examine them to open a readable document panel. Lore is tracked as examined objects, and an inventory panel at the bottom-left lists collected keys/codes. The top-left objective panel tells the player to approach the estate, enter, and build family lore by examining portraits, records, objects, and locked rooms. When an interactable is within range and centered under the reticle, show a bottom-center prompt such as “Examine: ...,” “Inspect portrait: ...,” “Enter: Front Door,” or “Exit: Front Door.”

Populate the mansion with clickable lore objects and readable evidence. Include: Mara Addenda’s diary, mentioning orchids, radio static, a locked east wing, the house repeating itself, and an unfinished room; Silas Addenda’s immigration record revealing that Silas Adan became Silas Addenda in 1892 and describing him as a carpenter/amateur spiritualist; Elspeth Addenda’s marriage/divorce packet revealing her 1931 marriage to Vernon Pike, 1934 divorce, and an annex built around the old parlor; an autopsy record explaining that Ambrose died in 1966 after falling through a deck built over an indoor rowboat; a chipped frog mug labeled “World’s Okayest Medium” with a personal/grief-related inscription; a newspaper clipping about Mara’s 1999 disappearance and messages from a pantry wall; an annotated funeral casserole recipe that has become mostly architecture; a disappearance packet in the record annex with conflicting floor plans; a servants’ ledger explaining that rooms were renamed to hide inconvenient family stories; a bathtub note explaining that the old bathroom accidentally became a hallway; and a greenhouse log stating that an orchid bloomed in a room nobody built.

Add four clickable framed family portraits as realistic photographic images rather than plain text cards: Silas Addenda, Elspeth Addenda, Mara Addenda, and Ambrose Addenda. Each should be mounted in an ornate/dark wooden frame with a small name plate and provide separate lore when inspected. The Silas portrait should connect a brass scratch on its frame to the record-annex key; Elspeth’s should show the earlier parlor; Mara’s should show the orchid and mismatched hallway wallpaper; Ambrose’s should show him beside the indoor boat and a later note about a sealed door.

Add a boxy beige CRT family computer on a desk in the foyer, with a green screen. Examining it opens a separate black, green-text “ADDENDA-NET 3.0” terminal panel styled like an old AOL-era computer. Provide a keyword search box and results for Mara, Silas, boat, autopsy, divorce, and Orchid. The searches should reveal messages and records, including Mara saying she found an unfinished room; information about Silas; the absurd origin of the rowboat; Ambrose’s indoor maritime accident; the repeated 1934 divorce date; and Aunt Jo’s message that Mara’s orchid was moved below the rowboat and that the conservatory is south of the bedroom.

Implement the actual lock-and-key progression: a brass record key can be collected near the foyer computer and opens the iron gate to the record annex; the rusted boat key is collected in the record annex; the rusted key opens Ambrose’s damp lockbox in the indoor boat room; opening the lockbox grants an orchid-room key and displays a water-stained photograph/clue about a wet green door; the orchid key opens the conservatory door. The divorce packet automatically provides the Pike safe code, 1934, in the inventory; use it to open the Pike family safe in the parlor and show an adoption-file clue about a child listed as both Pike and Addenda. Locked gates must physically block passage until unlocked and disappear/become nonblocking after the correct key is used. Display short notification messages for found keys, locked explanations, and successful unlocks.

Lighting should combine a cool moon/blue ambient fill and fog with localized warm lamps in the foyer, parlor, kitchen, porch, and record annex, plus cold blue light in the boat room, garage-like light in the sedan room, and wet green light in the orchid conservatory. Use canvas-generated subtle textures for wallpaper, wood, plaster, rugs, and stone; Victorian trim; realistic framed portrait textures; low-poly furniture, sedan, rowboat, trees, boxes, bookcases, bed, cabinets, sofa, lamps, and bathtub. Preserve the restrained palette of cream document panels, dark brown wood, muted blue fog, amber lamps, green CRT text, and deep near-black surroundings.

Readable evidence should appear in cream paper-style modal panels with a Close button, dark border, headings, paragraphs, and occasional red “CLUE” or “ARCHIVED” stamps. The computer should use a separate black terminal modal. Pressing Escape or the Close buttons dismisses open panels. Include a start overlay with the title, a short description of the overbuilt estate, and an “Approach the estate” button; after starting, hide the overlay and enable movement. Ensure the game is playable on both desktop and touch screens, with no combat, timers, enemies, or weapons—the goal is to explore, collect keys/codes, unlock the strange rooms, and piece together the Addenda family’s secrets through the clickable objects and documents.