One Button Lab

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.

Rebuild a browser-based 3D low-poly puzzle exploration game titled “One Button Lab.” Use a dark navy/purple background and a compact bright laboratory made of simple blocky and primitive geometry, with soft shadows, fog, and cyan/yellow/green/purple accent materials. Start the player in a small square starting room. The camera is a third-person elevated over-the-shoulder camera that follows a cyan capsule-shaped player pawn with a tiny dark face marker; it should look toward the player and the path ahead. The world contains connected floor platforms and rooms: a starting room at the front, a main hall beyond a low wall, a dark pit splitting two narrow bridges, a left-side secret/time area, a right-side puzzle area, and a gravity chamber. Include a yellow circular floor button in the starting room, a factory-style door at the far end of the hall, a crate in the left puzzle area, a green pressure pad, a blue clock column with a ring clock face, a purple perspective portal, a gold gravity lever and a glowing ceiling gem, plus a small floating/hidden icy gem in the starting room and a blocky NPC near the clock. Use Kenney-style low-poly assets for the floor button, crate, factory door, and blocky NPC when available, with primitive fallbacks if assets fail.

The game’s central concept is that the player begins with almost no agency and progressively discovers endings. At first the only meaningful interaction is a large centered start button in the HTML UI, labeled as the only button. Pressing it records the “001 Reset” ending permanently in localStorage and unlocks movement, then hides the center start button. Movement uses WASD or arrow keys, with a touch joystick on mobile. The player can freely explore bounded connected floor areas, with a low wall blocking the main hall until jumping is unlocked. Reaching the factory door records “002 Win” and unlocks jumping. Falling into the central black pit records “003 Fell” and unlocks carrying. Once carrying is unlocked, press E/ACT near the crate to pick it up, and press E again to drop it; a carried crate follows just ahead and above the player. Place it on the green pressure pad to record “013 Heavy Thinking,” carry it to the factory exit for “010 Doorstop,” or fall into the pit while carrying it for “011 Luggage Claim.”

After jumping is unlocked, show the NPC and allow E near it to record “004 Talk.” Talking while carrying the crate records “012 Show and Tell,” and talking while upside down later records “021 Upside-down Conversation.” Jump near/on the original starting button to record “009 Button Bounce.” The player’s vertical physics should include gravity, jumping with Space or mobile JUMP, grounded detection, and respawn at the last safe location after a pit fall. The player has simple world boundaries; walking behind/back beyond the starting room records “020 Wrong Way.”

After Talk, E near the clock column records “005 Clock / Time Flies,” unlocking Q rewind and R fast-forward. Keep a short history of player positions; Q rewinds to an earlier recorded position and, if it rewinds the player into the pit area, records “014 Time Accident.” Holding R (or an equivalent fast-forward input) increases simulation/movement time, and reaching the door while fast-forwarding records “019 Fastest Win.” Carrying the crate to the clock records “022 Boxed Seconds.” Animate the clock face continuously, faster when time is fast-forwarded.

After Time Flies, reaching the purple portal records “006 Perspective,” unlocking C or mobile VIEW. C switches between normal 3D third-person perspective and a top-down narrow 2D view: in 2D, use a much narrower camera field of view, position the camera above the player, flatten depth movement nearly completely, and display the same lab from a flat overhead perspective. Entering the pit area in 2D records “015 Paper Thin,” and pressing the original button while in 2D records “024 Flat Button.” Return to normal view with C.

After Perspective, E near the gold lever records “007 Gravity,” unlocking G or mobile GRAV. G flips the gravity sign: the player falls upward to a ceiling height, the capsule rotates upside down, and the same basic movement continues on the ceiling. Touch the high ceiling gem in the gravity chamber while gravity is inverted to record “016 Sky Is Floor.” Reach the hidden top/back secret of the starting room while gravity is available to record “018 Old Room, New Trick.”

P toggles pause, and the top-right Pause button does the same. The first pause interaction records “008 Pause.” Before that ending’s rule is unlocked, pausing freezes simulation and prevents movement/action; after the Pause ending, the player can move and act even while the world is frozen, though at a slower speed. While paused, interact with the special icy gem in the starting room to record “017 Frozen Press” (and allow the first button to record “017 Frozen Press” when pressed while paused after the pause-play rule is available), and enter the pit while paused to record “023 Frozen Fall.” Preserve every discovered ending and its associated unlock permanently in localStorage. The implemented ending list should visibly include the first 24 named endings above, followed by locked placeholder slots up to 112 total; show a codex panel opened by an “Endings” button, with found rows displaying title/description and “FOUND,” and undiscovered rows displaying locked status.

Build a polished HUD over the canvas. At the top-left, show a rounded translucent panel with cyan title “One Button Lab,” text such as “Pause is no longer a menu. Move while frozen and touch what should be unreachable.” and a counter like “3 / 112 endings found — every real ending permanently changes the rules.” At the top-right provide rounded buttons labeled “Endings,” “Pause,” and “Wipe save.” The Wipe save button asks for confirmation, clears persistent progress, and reloads. At the bottom-left show contextual controls, initially only the single center button, then dynamically list unlocked controls: movement, jump, Act E, time Q/R, view C, gravity G, and Pause P. Include touch controls: joystick, JUMP, ACT, VIEW, and GRAV buttons as relevant. Show temporary toast messages whenever an ending is discovered or a mode changes, such as “Movement unlocked,” “Gravity flipped. Look up by falling up,” or “Paused. But you can still move.”

Use smooth camera following, fog, ambient hemisphere light and directional key light, shadows, simple emissive materials, subtle object animation, and a clean uncluttered dark-lab presentation. The goal is not combat or collecting; it is experimenting with movement, jumping, falling, carrying, talking, time, perspective, gravity, and pausing to discover permanent rule-changing endings and revisit old rooms with newly unlocked abilities.