Pocket Critters

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 lightweight original 3D monster-catching exploration game titled “Pocket Critters.” Use a low-poly, colorful Three.js-style presentation with a fixed third-person, slightly elevated camera following the player across a small square grassy field. The world should have a dark navy background and subtle fog, soft hemisphere and directional lighting with shadows, a large deep-green ground plane, and an invisible boundary about 22 world units from the center. Ring the field with simple low-poly trees made from brown cylinders and faceted green crowns; scatter a few gray faceted rocks around the outer area. Fill the central roughly 30-by-30 area with about 220 scattered tall-grass patches, each made from two crossed, translucent bright-green square planes, so the grass reads as a brighter green region against the ground.

The player is a small stylized capsule/cylinder character in pale sky blue with a white glossy visor or face sphere on the front. Start the player near the southern side of the field. Move with WASD or arrow keys, normalize diagonal movement, and clamp movement to the field. Hold Shift to sprint (faster than normal movement). Smoothly follow the player with the camera, and rotate the avatar toward movement direction. Show a bottom-right control hint strip: “WASD move,” “Shift sprint,” “E interact,” and “Esc collection.”

The main loop is endless exploration and critter capture, with no hard win or lose state. When the player enters the central tall-grass square, use a random encounter chance while moving; enforce a short cooldown between encounters. On an encounter, freeze exploration and display a centered dark translucent “Encounter!” panel while keeping the 3D scene visible. Show a wild critter in front of the player: a colorful floating low-poly sphere with two small cone ears and a soft circular ground shadow. Make the critter bob gently and rotate slowly. Randomly choose one of these original critters and stats: Sproutle (blue, max HP 10, base catch 32%), Emberkit (coral/pink, max HP 12, base catch 28%), Pebblit (gray, max HP 14, base catch 24%), Buzzorb (yellow, max HP 9, base catch 35%), or Glumple (lavender, max HP 11, base catch 30%).

The encounter panel must show the critter name, current HP/max HP, turns left, and capture chance, plus a battle log. Start each encounter at full HP and 4 turns. Controls are keyboard-only: Space throws a capture orb, F zaps the critter, and E runs away. A Zap deals random damage of 2–4, lowers the remaining turn count, and increases capture probability based on how much HP has been removed: capture chance equals base chance plus up to 12 percentage points at zero HP, clamped between 5% and 92%. After zap, if the creature reaches zero HP, log that it is too weak and it slips away into the grass. Otherwise log a short flavor response such as it watching closely or darting around. Throw Orb consumes a turn and randomly succeeds according to the displayed chance; on success, log that it was captured, add it to the collection, and award score equal to 10 plus 1.5 points per HP damage dealt (rounded down). On failure, log that it broke free, then give the same flavor response; if turns run out, the critter flees. E logs that the player ran away and returns to exploration. Return to exploration after a brief delay for capture/flee outcomes.

During exploration, the top-left HUD contains two dark, rounded pill counters labeled “Score” and “Captured,” both starting at 0. Beneath them, show a rounded dark translucent message box with guidance such as “Walk into tall grass to find critters. (Click once to enable sound.)”; periodically update it to tell the player to keep moving in tall grass or seek the brighter green area. In an encounter, update the message to “Encounter! Space = throw orb, F = zap, E = run.” Pressing Escape during exploration toggles a centered “Collection” overlay; Escape does nothing during encounters. The collection panel lists captured critters newest first, each card showing its name, “Max HP,” and a colored swatch matching the critter; initially show “No critters yet — walk into tall grass!” and include “Press Esc to close.”

Use clean dark translucent UI styling with pale blue-white text, thin low-opacity borders, rounded corners, and subtle shadows. The encounter and collection overlays should dim the world behind them. Add minimal synthesized audio after the first click or key press: a short tone when entering grass, a zap tone plus noise for F, a throw tone for Space, paired success tones on capture, and a lower tone on flee. Keep the game original and genre-inspired only; do not use Pokémon names, assets, or IP.