Paper Trail

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 playable 2D side-view block sandbox game titled “Paper Trail,” rendered on an HTML5 Canvas in a crisp, original flat pixel-art style. The camera follows a tall, small Steve-like pixel character from the side, with a visible head, blue-gray shirt/body, legs, and the currently selected item held in hand. Use a 32-pixel tile grid, no image smoothing, and a broad horizontally scrolling procedural world.

The main screen should open on a Paper-Minecraft-inspired title menu with buttons for Survival and Creative. Survival starts a new deterministic-noise-generated overworld with an empty inventory at a random safe surface location; Creative starts with building materials/tools available, instant mining, no damage or item consumption, and free flight. The visible overworld should match the supplied screenshot: a bright blue sky with a simple yellow sun, occasional pixel clouds and distant soft hills, grassy dirt terraces over gray stone, exposed caves and void-like openings, and blocky trees made from vertical brown wood trunks and chunky green leaf canopies. The terrain is made from square tiles and should be substantially wider than the viewport, with underground caves and ores.

Core gameplay is a Minecraft-like gather/build loop. Move with A/D or Left/Right; jump with W, Up, or Space; in Creative, use these directions to fly, with S/Down flying downward. The player collides with solid tiles and can swim through water. Aim with the mouse cursor in the world: left-click and hold to mine the targeted block within roughly 5.4 tiles, showing mining progress; mining speed depends on the block and the selected compatible pickaxe/axe, while Creative breaks blocks instantly. Left-clicking a mob attacks it. Right-click, or Shift-click, places the selected hotbar item at the cursor location if it is in reach and the location is empty; do not allow solid blocks to be placed inside the player. Picked-up block drops attract toward and enter the player automatically when nearby.

Include a nine-slot bottom hotbar with number labels 1–9, a clearly highlighted selected slot, pixel-art item icons, stack counts, and selected-item text. Above it show hearts for health, armor indicators, hunger icons, an air/breath readout, and a small XP-style bar/level readout. Also show a compact status readout for Survival/Creative, current dimension, day/night and time, air, and selected item. The world should visibly transition between day and night: a daytime blue/cyan sky and yellow sun, darker navy sky and stars at night, with darkness in caves and simple torch light openings. Use lightweight square/cached lighting suitable for low-power hardware rather than expensive effects.

Implement a block catalog including air, grass, dirt, stone, wood, leaves, water, planks, coal ore, torches, crafting tables, netherrack, lava, quartz ore, sand, gravel, glass, clay, bricks, iron/gold/diamond/redstone ores, obsidian, bedrock, snow, ice, cactus, wool, bookshelf, furnace, chest, ladder, door, farmland, crops, and Nether portals. Give tiles distinct pixel textures: grass tops over mottled brown dirt, gray stone with marks, vertically patterned wood, mottled green leaves, blue translucent water, red/orange lava, red netherrack, colored ore flecks, translucent glass/ice, brick patterns, and purple portal interiors. The generated overworld should contain grass/dirt/stone layers, occasional sand patches, water, trees, caves, and deeper ores. Bedrock is unbreakable. Ladders allow climbing, ice reduces friction/slides, cactus hurts on contact, and crops/food can be eaten.

Press E to open/close the inventory and crafting interface. The ordinary inventory has simple item stack counts and supports shortcut assignment to the hotbar. Clicking an item selects it as a shortcut; right-clicking or Shift-clicking splits roughly half a stack onto a cursor item, and clicking a craft slot places one item at a time. Hotbar entries are unique shortcuts to real inventory stacks: the same item cannot appear in multiple slots, and removing the inventory stack clears its shortcut. Show a 2×2 crafting grid normally, expanding to a 3×3 grid while the player is near a placed crafting table. Support shaped recipes for planks from wood, sticks from planks, crafting tables, chests, furnaces, torches, wood and stone pickaxes, a wood axe, and wood/stone swords. Include clear recipe output and crafting feedback.

Placeable utility stations should work when nearby. A furnace interface can smelt sand into glass, clay into bricks, iron ore into iron ingots, or gold ore into gold ingots, consuming one coal per operation. A chest interface provides shared storage with Store 1, Store All, Take 1, and Take All controls. Press R to eat a crop/food item from the selected hotbar slot and restore hunger. Hunger gradually drains from movement and jumping; high hunger regenerates health, zero hunger causes starvation damage, and Creative keeps full hunger and health.

Survival hazards must include softened fall damage after a sufficiently high fall, drowning while submerged when air reaches zero, lava burn damage, cactus contact damage, and hostile mobs at night. Night mobs are simple approaching crawler-like enemies that spawn near the player at night and burn away during daytime. Left-click mobs to damage them; a sword deals more damage than an ordinary attack, and defeated mobs drop items. On death, empty the inventory into a recoverable pile at the death location, display a death/respawn message, and respawn the player at the original starting point with restored health and air. Walking back to the pile recovers all dropped inventory.

Include dimension travel. Press N to switch directly between Overworld and Nether for testing. Also let Survival players build a portal by placing a torch inside a valid 4×5 obsidian frame with a 2×3 empty center; the center becomes a purple portal, and standing in it for a short time transports the player. Preserve each dimension separately and place the player on a safe arrival platform. The Nether should be a red cave-like side-view dimension with netherrack terrain, open caverns, lava pools, quartz ore, and a safe platform. Nether mobs should include floating ghast-like enemies that fire slow projectiles, zombie-piglin-like melee mobs, hopping magma cubes, and strider-like lava walkers. Ghast fireballs damage the player and disappear on solid impact; Nether enemies drop simple Nether materials.

Add F to toggle fullscreen, or provide a visible fullscreen ⛶ button. Add Save/Load controls and P/L keyboard shortcuts to save/load local game state and settings. Include lightweight particle effects when mining and impacts, but keep the art consistently pixelated and avoid invented UI or mechanics. Make movement collision robust using swept substeps so fast falls and lag spikes cannot pass through tiles. The overall experience should feel like a compact, playable paper/pixel sandbox: explore, mine, collect, craft, build, survive, and travel between the bright grassy overworld and dangerous red Nether.