Joyfield Afterhours

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 psychological mascot-horror exploration game titled “Joyfield Afterhours,” set in a silent abandoned family entertainment complex at night. Use a dark, liminal, low-poly Three.js-like presentation: near-black background and fog, dim failing warm bulbs in the earlier rooms, colder blue light in the Biodome/Archive, pale blue-gray walls with thin yellow trim, dark ceilings, purple carpet in the Lobby and Indoor Playground, plain dark flooring in the Theater and Archive, and green flooring in the Biodome Classroom. The player begins in the Lobby of Smiles at the end of a linear connected complex and looks down a sequence of five locations: Lobby of Smiles, Indoor Playground, Moon Theater, Biodome Classroom, and Server Archive, linked by narrow employee tunnels. Include sparse environmental storytelling signs reading “JOYFIELD AFTERHOURS,” “The children drew what cameras missed,” “If a clue changes, who changed first?,” “CLASSROOM 0: The trees were not planted here,” and “SERVER ARCHIVE / SAVE POINT UNTRUSTED.” Model simple geometric architecture with room walls, ceilings, corridors, yellow trim, a locked employee exit door at the far end, a false door in the Theater, play tunnels in the Indoor Playground, and dark artificial trees in the Biodome. There are lockers near the Lobby, Theater, and Archive that can be used as hiding places.

The core objective is shown in the HUD: find three children’s drawings, reroute two power switches, then reach the employee exit beyond the Server Archive. Put one creepy smiling child drawing in each of the relevant areas: a red drawing near the Indoor Playground, a blue drawing near the Moon Theater, and a green drawing near the Biodome Classroom. When the player presses E or the mobile Hide / Use button close to a drawing, collect it, hide it, increment the drawing count, and display its clue. The clues should be: “It smiles from behind because it cannot stand being remembered from the front.”, “The big one only walks when the eyes are open. That is not a typo.”, and “The classroom window showed a forest. Yesterday there was no window.” Place red power switches near the Moon Theater and Server Archive; interacting with each turns it green, increments the power count, and increases the exit lighting. The exit only completes the game after all three drawings and both switches are collected and the player is beyond the Archive. On completion, show an ending message such as “ENDING: Afterhours Exit. The exit opens to the lobby you started in, except your footsteps are already there.” The ending title varies based on behavior: extensive hiding gives “The Building Learned You,” while frequent rear-checking gives “Behind Is a Place.”

Implement a player with WASD or arrow-key movement, mouse drag or pointer-lock first-person look, Shift to run, F to toggle the flashlight, and E to hide/use objects. Provide on-screen mobile directional buttons plus Flashlight and Hide / Use buttons. Use collision against room walls while allowing passage through centered room door gaps. The player walks at a moderate speed and runs faster; footsteps differ between carpet and concrete. The flashlight is a forward spotlight with a limited battery: it drains while on, slowly recharges while off, and automatically shuts off when empty. Darkness in the Biodome, Server Archive, and exit area raises dread when the flashlight is off. Display a glassy HUD at the top with the game title, objective, Dread meter, Flashlight meter, and a learning-status line. Include a center reticle, contextual interaction hint, and centered transient narrative messages.

Create three adaptive horror presences. First, Pardon is a small floating/simple smiling mascot head with a fixed curved smile and eyes. It never chases: every update it relocates to a position behind the player. It becomes closer after the player repeatedly looks back, and looking directly behind at it raises dread and teaches its behavior. It should usually only be visible when the player turns to see it, or when dread is high. Second, The Stillthing is a tall dark gray mascot figure with a pale circular face and tiny eyes, initially in the central route around the Biodome area. It only advances toward the player while it is in the center of the player’s view, within a limited distance, and not while the player is hiding; otherwise it remains still. Watching it raises dread. If it gets very close, show a disturbing message and reset it farther away rather than using a conventional attack. Running for long enough makes it advance more directly and unlocks the HUD flavor “It is predicting exits.” Third, The Intercom Kid has no visible body; represent it through unsettling text/audio events that rewrite clues and the building’s meaning. Periodically trigger a low-frequency random event: a single clap behind a wall, a room mutation, or rewritten clue text. Mutations should progressively add a red door to a wall that was blank, add a wall suggesting the tunnel has changed length, and subtly scale/warp the building. Rewrites should include messages such as “The intercom uses your voice: ‘Do not trust drawings number two and three.’”, a sign changing from EXIT to STILL HERE while the flashlight flickers, and an archive save message under a name the player did not type.

Hiding should be behavioral rather than a combat system: interacting near a locker toggles the player hidden state, prevents movement while hidden, reduces dread over time, and displays messages about holding breath or stepping out. Repeated locker use teaches the AI; after at least two hides, show “It has learned lockers.” and alter hiding messages to say that the locker is being checked. Prolonged running raises dread slightly and, after enough running, marks that the creature predicts routes. Frequent looking back raises dread and eventually marks that it avoids the player’s gaze. Dread should gradually fall in ordinary safe movement or while hiding, rise from darkness, running, watching The Stillthing, and seeing Pardon, and be clamped to a visible 0–100% meter. Include a quiet synthesized low hum that grows louder with dread and occasional concrete/carpet footstep sounds after the first user gesture. Keep the horror anticipatory and environmental: no guns, combat, score, or jump-scare attack system.