Jack: The Missing Road

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 landscape-only first-person 3D horror exploration adventure titled “Jack: The Missing Road.” The game takes place at night in a dark, foggy forest rendered in a restrained low-poly/primitive style: an almost-black blue-green sky/background, dense exponential fog, moonlike cool directional lighting, soft shadows, dark green forest floor, sparse blocky/cylindrical trees with brown trunks and dark green crowns, and a radial black vignette around the camera. Use a crosshair at screen center. The player character is Jack, represented by the first-person camera, starting on a long north-south road near the southern end of the map. The road is a narrow dark-gray strip with regularly spaced pale rectangular lane markers, surrounded by forest. Movement is FPS-style: on Android landscape, a left virtual joystick moves and dragging the right side looks; also support keyboard/mouse where appropriate. Include jump, gravity, crouch, interaction, flashlight toggle, notebook, and pause controls. The visible HUD should show the current act and objective at top left, clue count and flashlight state at top right (for example “☼ OFF · ◈ 0 clues”), a centered crosshair, temporary contextual hint messages near the bottom center, and bottom-right buttons labeled INTERACT, FLASHLIGHT, CROUCH, NOTEBOOK, and PAUSE. The game should have a dark title menu with the title, the description “A field notebook, a dead road, and a forest that remembers every person who entered it,” New Game, Continue, and Settings buttons, plus a landscape-play instruction. Settings only needs to show a message that quality is tuned for Android with dynamic fog and capped pixel ratio. In portrait orientation, cover the game with a message asking the player to rotate to landscape.

Build a continuous explorable world around the road. Place an abandoned red car on the west side near the southern area, around road position z=-50, with a boxy red body, roof, and dark window. Place three simple buildings: a small house east of the road around (9,-28), a larger house west around (-12,10), and a farmhouse east around (11,36). Each should be a primitive gray wall block with a dark roof and a wooden front door that can be targeted and opened/rotated through INTERACT, producing the hint “The door moves with a tired groan.” Place a large warehouse west/north around (-13,50), with gray walls, dark roof, multiple wooden-looking door panels and a barrel prop. Include a lake east of the road around (22,5), with dark teal semi-transparent water and reeds, and a narrow wooden plank bridge across/near it around z=16. Add a dark rocky waterfall/cliff landmark near (35,35), a basement entrance/wooden shaft near the large house at (-12,5), and a black secret underground tunnel below it. Scatter a few fallen log and rock props in the forest. Use a continuous collision/solid world for the ground, road, structures, car, bridge, cliff, and tunnel entrance as appropriate.

The core mechanic is linear environmental investigation. Seven collectible paper-like clue markers appear at fixed locations and are collected by aiming at them and pressing INTERACT. They should be subtle small pale cubes/paper blocks. The exact clue sequence and progression is: (1) “Photo_Car” at the abandoned car: text “A photograph of the road. The same bend appears in every missing-person file.” and act “ACT I · THE ROAD”; initial objective “Find the abandoned car.” After collecting it, objective becomes “Reach the small abandoned house.” (2) “Note_SmallHouse” in the small house: “The house was locked from the inside. Someone wrote: DO NOT FOLLOW THE LIGHTS.”, then objective “Cross the lake bridge and find the photograph.” (3) “Photo_Lake” by the lake/bridge: “A blurred silhouette stands on the bridge. The photographer is not in the frame.”, then objective “Search the farmhouse for the missing ledger.” (4) “Ledger_Farmhouse” in the farmhouse: “Names, dates, and a final entry: JACK — arrival expected.”, then objective “Enter the warehouse and find the audio log.” (5) “Tape_Warehouse” in the warehouse: “Audio log: the road moves when nobody is watching.”, then objective “Explore the larger house. Something is watching.” (6) “Mirror_Mansion” in the larger house: “Your reflection is delayed by one second.”, then objective “Find a way into the underground passage.” (7) “Truth_Tunnel” at the underground tunnel: “The missing people were not taken. They were persuaded to leave.”, then objective “Return to the car. The road is changing.” Once all seven are found, reaching the southern car area (player z less than -46 and x less than -5) changes progress to the final act and objective “Start the car and escape the missing road.” Moving farther south by the car (z less than -55 and x less than -5) completes the escape, changes the objective to “You escaped. Or did you?”, briefly reduces the fog, and displays the unsettling hint “The headlights cut through the trees. A second set of footprints appears in the back seat.”

Include a collectible notebook opened from the NOTEBOOK button or N key. It is a parchment-colored full-screen panel titled “Jack’s Field Notebook,” with a CLOSE button, listing clue notes in collection order or “No entries yet.” Save progress, objective, collected clue IDs, notebook notes, and player position to local storage and make Continue restore them. New Game starts the investigation. Track acts as ACT I · THE ROAD, ACT II · THE FIRST HOUSE, ACT III · THE LAKE, ACT IV · THE FARMHOUSE, ACT V · THE WAREHOUSE, ACT VI · THE HOUSE, ACT VII · THE TRUTH, and FINAL ACT · ESCAPE according to progress.

Add two imported low-poly zombie enemies if the asset is available, positioned initially near (-4,-10) and (16,30), named “The Watcher” and “The Searcher.” They use an idle animation and simple patrol routes between their starting point and a nearby offset. Each enemy detects Jack within 10 world units and roughly 3 vertical units, then chases him at about 1.8 units/second while facing him. After losing sight for about four seconds it searches/stops behaving as a chase. If within about 1.7 units, show the hint “A presence is too close.” and nudge the player slightly, while changing the objective to “Hide. The road has noticed you.” Do not add combat, weapons, health, ammo, or invented enemy abilities. The flashlight is a simple on/off state reflected in the HUD; it does not need a weapon or battery system. Crouch visibly lowers the player camera/avatar scale and toggles with C or the button. Interact also starts the ambient audio on first use: a very quiet low sine-like ominous drone. Keep the overall tone slow, mysterious, and unsettling, with no combat and no features beyond the described investigation, environmental landmarks, enemy chase behavior, saving, and escape ending.