Pulse Garden

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 browser-based game titled “Pulse Garden,” a beat-synchronized vascular connection puzzle rendered on a full-screen HTML canvas with a responsive HUD overlay. Use a dark midnight-blue radial-gradient background that fades toward near-black at the edges, with a subtle blue-violet glow/halo centered behind the board. In the center, display an 11-by-11 square grid inside a rounded, translucent dark board frame with a faint pale-blue border and soft shadow. Grid cells alternate between very dark blue shades and have extremely subtle blue outlines.

The game begins on a title/start state with the HUD visible and a centered purple gradient button labeled “START THE PULSE.” The top-left HUD reads “PULSE GARDEN” in spaced uppercase lettering, with the subtitle “a beat-synced vascular puzzle.” At top-right show three rounded translucent stat pills: SCORE (starting at 0), COMBO (starting at x1), and BEAT (starting at 0). At bottom-left show a rounded help panel reading: “Arrow keys / WASD slide · Z / X rotate · one action per beat” and “Blocks lock after four beats. Connect matching inlet → outlet.” At bottom-right provide two purple rounded buttons labeled with rotate-left and rotate-right icons (↺ and ↻), usable as touch/pointer controls. Show short rounded toast messages near the upper center for events such as “Find the pulse,” delivery notifications, or invalid pivot moves.

Once started, establish a repeating beat every 0.72 seconds, incrementing the beat counter and updating the HUD. Play a very soft synthesized triangle-wave pulse rhythm: tones cycle around 110, 165, and 220 Hz, with a stronger low tone every fourth beat. On each beat, read the currently held movement key and perform at most one action: Arrow keys or WASD slide the currently active block in the chosen direction; Z rotates left and X rotates right. A directional slide should continue in that direction until the active block reaches the last available open cell, leaving a brief glowing trail. Touch rotate buttons trigger the corresponding rotation action. The player is not moving an avatar; they are positioning one falling/active connection tile at a time.

At the beginning of each run, clear the board and randomly place two matching inlet/outlet pairs on distinct non-corner edge cells of the 11-by-11 grid: one nutrient pair and one water pair. Inlets and outlets must be on different edges for their own pair. Render each port as a glowing circular marker on its edge cell: nutrient is mint green, water is cyan-blue; inlets are filled and show a small inward arrow-like mark, while outlets are darker inside with a bright outline and a sparkle/star-like mark.

For every new active tile, randomly choose one of six connection patterns and initially place it at the central cell (grid coordinate 5,5), with zero rotation and an age of zero beats. The six patterns are: a straight nutrient/phloem path, a straight water/xylem path, a curved nutrient/phloem path, a curved water/xylem path, a two-path crossing with straight nutrient and water paths, and a two-path crossing with right-angle nutrient and water paths. Each tile is a rounded dark-blue square with a fine border and a soft glow. Draw nutrient conduits in bright mint green and water conduits in bright cyan, with thick rounded strokes from the tile center toward connection ends. Straight paths connect opposite sides; curved paths connect adjacent sides with a rounded bend; crossing tiles contain both colored paths. Rotate the connection geometry in 90-degree increments.

Rotation is constrained to the board/occupied-cell walls: the active tile must be touching a board edge or an occupied neighbor. Rotate 90 degrees around the contacted wall and advance one cell along the wall surface, if that destination is open. If not touching a wall, show “Rotate while touching a wall”; if there is no room, show “No room to pivot.” The active tile may not occupy an already locked cell. Each beat with an active tile increments its age; after four beats it locks into its current cell, emits a colored burst, and a fresh random tile appears at the center. If the center is occupied when spawning, show “The garden is full — pulse reset” and reset the grid/run state.

After locking tiles, repeatedly test connections from every nutrient and water inlet. Follow the matching colored conduit from the inlet through contiguous locked tiles, respecting each tile’s rotated entry and exit ends and stopping on empty cells, mismatched paths, or broken routes. A connection succeeds only when it reaches the matching outlet of the same type and contains at least one tile. When a route succeeds, draw a temporary glowing line/path from inlet through the tiles to outlet and animate a small bright colored pulse traveling along it. Award score equal to 100 plus 12 points per tile in the route, multiplied by the current combo; increase combo by one up to x9. Show a toast such as “NUTRIENT DELIVERED +…” or “WATER DELIVERED +…”, emit a bright burst at the outlet, and briefly shake the presentation. Avoid awarding the same inlet-to-outlet route repeatedly while its visual flow is active. Check routes again on alternating beats as well as after tile locks.

Use polished neon arcade-puzzle presentation: mint and cyan conduits, violet accents, translucent glass-like HUD panels, soft bloom/shadows, small glowing particles on movement/locking/delivery, and short luminous movement trails. The board should remain centered and scale responsively: use the available viewport while reserving room for HUD, with cells roughly 24–58 pixels where possible. Keep the interface playable with keyboard, pointer, and touch controls. There are no lives, enemies, timer countdown, or separate levels; the ongoing objective is to build and complete as many matching vascular routes as possible while the beat advances and the board fills.