House of Pages

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 exploration horror game titled "House of Pages". The player explores a dark, silent two-floor house at night, using a first-person camera with mouse/touch drag or pointer lock to look around. The visual style is atmospheric low-light Three.js-like 3D: warm brown wood walls and floors, deep shadows, dark red and blue rugs, sparse warm lamps, cool moonlight through windows, volumetric-looking fog, and a strong cream-colored flashlight beam. The opening screen should be a nearly black/brown background with a centered dark translucent panel outlined in muted gold, a large serif cream title "House of Pages," the subtitle "Roam a silent house in first person. Each room hides decorations, shadows, stairs, and books that reveal why no one comes home after dusk.", control hints for W forward, S back, Touchpad/Mouse look, and E interact, plus a gold "Enter the House" button. During play, show a compact rounded dark HUD box at the top-left reading "Books found: 0/6" (updating as books are collected), contextual interaction prompts, and danger/status messages.

Build a connected house layout with collision walls and a traversable staircase between floors. The ground floor includes a foyer with a dark front door, two unsettling portraits, a red rug, and stairs; a living room with a blue rug, sofa, fireplace with orange glow, plant, table, and a dark sofa-shadow hiding spot; a kitchen/dining area with wood counter, porcelain sink, refrigerator, dining table, chairs, and hanging/warm lamp; a rear study with bookshelves, desk, chair, typewriter, and lamp; and a back storage area with crates, covered mirror, and an old trunk hiding spot. The upper floor includes a master bedroom with bed, mattress, pillow, dresser, moonlit window, painting, warm lamp, and wardrobe hiding spot; an upstairs bathroom with bathtub, toilet, and mirror; and a guest bedroom/attic-like rear room with bed, pillow, wardrobe hiding spot, boxes, broken chair, and shelf. Use dark wood furniture, muted cloth, brass/warm light fixtures, glass windows, red/blue/green/brown rugs, and detailed simple geometric props.

Place exactly six small dark-red glowing books that gently pulse in the darkness and can be read when approached and the player presses E. Place them at: the foyer, the study desk, the kitchen counter/sink, on the staircase, under/near the master bedroom pillow, and in the upper rear attic-like room. Each book opens a centered story panel, pauses movement and threats, changes the book to a dull found state, increments the HUD counter, and displays its own chapter and text. Use these exact story entries: "I. The Guest Ledger" — "The first page lists our family name six times, though only five of us ever lived here. The sixth line is written in a hand too small and careful, like a child practicing inside a locked room."; "II. Father's Study" — "Father told us the walls only settled at night. Then I heard the study shelves whisper my name in Mother's voice. One book was warmer than skin."; "III. Supper for Six" — "The kitchen table was set again this morning. Six plates. Six knives. Five chairs. The empty place always faces the stairs."; "IV. The Stair That Counts" — "I counted twelve steps climbing up and thirteen coming down. On the thirteenth, someone below me breathed out, relieved, as if I had finally returned something borrowed."; "V. Under the Pillow" — "Mother said my brother had run away. But his shoes waited under the bed, full of dust on the outside and fresh mud within."; and "VI. The Last Room" — "If you find this, leave before the house learns your footsteps. It collects families slowly: a voice, a shadow, a chair at the table. Tonight it has started counting you." After all six are found, append "The front door has unlatched somewhere below you." to the story panel.

The primary goal is to find and read all six books while surviving the house. Movement uses W to walk forward and S backward at a slow walking speed; there is no strafing control. Mouse/touch drag or pointer lock rotates yaw and pitch, with pitch clamped so the player cannot look fully upside down. F toggles a forward-facing flashlight on and off; it should illuminate dark rooms with a warm cream spotlight and show a brief status message. Support mobile controls with W/S buttons, an E interact button, an F flashlight button, and a right-side drag look zone.

Implement the danger mechanics exactly: lingering inside either upstairs bedroom starts a bedroom timer; after 4.5 seconds the bedroom ceiling/alarm lights snap on and two black searcher creatures enter, one patrolling the ground-floor route and one patrolling the upper-floor route. Display a countdown-style warning while inside a bedroom. Continuous walking increases footstep noise; noise gradually falls when stationary, and if it exceeds the threshold after prolonged movement, activate the searchers with the warning "Too loud — your footsteps woke the searchers." Show an intermediate warning when footsteps are echoing. Searchers are dark humanoid/capsule-like figures with glowing red horizontal eyes and a faint transparent red cone/spotlight in front of them. They patrol looping waypoint routes across their assigned floor, rotate toward movement, and use line-of-sight checks constrained by distance, facing direction, and walls. If a searcher sees the player it switches to chase mode and displays "SPOTTED — run. If they touch you, it's over." Contact with a chasing searcher triggers a game-over panel reading that the player was caught and offers restart.

The player can hide by approaching the sofa shadow, old trunk, master wardrobe, or guest wardrobe and pressing E. While hidden, reposition the player into the hiding spot, stop movement, break normal searcher line of sight, and show "Hidden in [spot]. Press E to come out." Press E again to leave at the spot's exit position. Hiding is temporary: after about 6.5 seconds warn that the searchers are becoming suspicious, and after about 10.5 seconds aggravate the searchers, activate them if necessary, allow them to sense the player inside the hiding spot, and show a warning that hiding too long was detected. Searchers that were chasing should lose the trail when the player first hides, unless hiding has become aggravated. Use wall/AABB collision so the player cannot walk through the house walls or furniture boundaries, while stairs smoothly raise the player's floor height from ground to upper level. Keep the atmosphere dark and ominous, with warm pools of lamplight, cool upper-floor moonlight, subtle fog, red glowing books, minimal HUD, and no crosshair-heavy shooter interface: this is a tense exploration and reading game.