Red Meridian

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-playable top-down arcade strategy game titled "Red Meridian". The player controls a fictional microbe on a stylized living world map, with the goal of infecting essentially the entire map before the cure reaches 100%. This is an abstract game about fictional microbes, not a realistic biology guide.

Use a dark navy ocean/world backdrop and a fixed top-down orthographic camera. Render a large painted rectangular world map with latitude/longitude grid lines, blue-green ocean, several irregular muted green landmass blobs, subtle terrain speckles, pale coast/route-like markings, and a cool blue atmospheric glow. Place 28 glowing city markers around the map, connected by faint cyan city-to-city route lines. Each city marker should have a pale blue spherical/core light, a cyan circular ring, and an infection halo that is initially invisible. When infected, the core turns hot red/pink, the ring becomes orange-red, and the halo grows and brightens in proportion to infection; infected cities can emit expanding red pulse rings. A selected city gets a gold/yellow ring and a selection pulse.

Cities should have varied names, populations, biomes, and medicine/detection values, including: Northport, Cascadia, Sun Basin, Isthmus Gate, Andes Ring, Southreach, Polar Quay, Atlantic Hub, Sahara Sprawl, Gold Delta, Cape Terminal, Nordholm, Europlex, Silk Junction, Steppe Array, Pearl Coast, Himal Gate, Monsoon Arc, Island Loop, East Crown, Snow Harbor, Outback Relay, Tasman Gate, Pacific Spire, Caribbean Net, Arctic Station, Gulf Exchange, and River Crown. Give cities biomes such as coast, rain, dry, mountain, cold, urban, rural, water, and varying populations. Cities are connected primarily to their nearest several neighbors, forming visible spread routes.

At launch show a full-screen dark translucent start overlay with the title Red Meridian, the explanation: the player is a fictional microbe on a living strategy map and must infect every region before the world completes its cure; mutations can improve spread, defense, and lethality, but killing too fast reduces transmission. Include a prominent red Begin Outbreak button and a small disclaimer that this is arcade strategy, not a real biology guide. The game starts with DNA 9, Day 1, Cure 0%, no infected cities, and no selected city. After starting, show a message instructing the player to choose a city and seed the first outbreak.

Core interaction: click/tap a city marker to select it and inspect it in the bottom-right city card. The card shows the city name, uppercase biome, compact population, infected count, dead count, and awareness percentage. A Seed Outbreak button seeds the selected uninfected city: the first seed is free, while additional manually seeded cities cost 6 DNA. A seeded city begins with a small infection amount. Do not allow seeding an already infected city. Infection then grows continuously in each infected city based on susceptible population, population density, biome, spread upgrades, and lethality. Cities can die from the infection; dead hosts no longer contribute to active infection. Spread periodically travels along connected routes to previously uninfected cities, with water/coastal restrictions modified by water upgrades and occasional distant seeding from Spore Bursts. Show a red pulse and message such as "[city] has been infected by spread routes" when route spread occurs. The player wins when every city has at least 98.5% of its population infected or dead. The player loses when the cure reaches 100%. Show an end message for either outcome.

DNA is earned over time from new infections, long infections, and deaths, with relevant upgrade levels improving DNA from persistent infection or deaths. The top HUD is a translucent glassy dark panel containing five compact stats: DNA, Infected, Cities (infected or heavily affected city count out of 28), Cure percentage, and Day. Put a translucent message panel beside it for event/instruction text. The simulation advances automatically while unpaused, and Day increases continuously.

Include a bottom-left Upgrades button with a red gradient. Clicking it opens a dark glass Biological Upgrades panel with Close button and three tabs: Infection, Symptoms, and Defence. Each tab displays upgrade cards with name, current stage/max stages, DNA cost, description, and disabled/locked state. Upgrade costs increase by 7 DNA per purchased stage. Infection upgrades: Water Transferring, max 3, enabling coastal routes, short sea jumps, then full ocean movement; Air Transmission, max 2, improving air-current and long-range spread; Vector Hosts, max 3, improving animal/insect and rural spread; Spore Bursts, max 3, allowing random distant city spread. Symptoms upgrades: Coughing max 2 for local transmission but faster awareness; Cysts max 2 for DNA from long infections; Rash max 2 for spread and awareness; Severe Fever max 3 requiring Coughing, adding lethality and DNA but reducing spread as hosts die; Heart Palpitations max 2 requiring Severe Fever and Rash; Internal Hemorrhaging max 2 requiring Heart Palpitations and Cysts; Organ Failure max 1 requiring Internal Hemorrhaging. Defence upgrades: Drug Resistance max 3 to slow cure in high-medicine cities; Shock Capsid max 2 requiring Drug Resistance to disrupt cure surges; Armored Capsid max 3 to slow global cure research; Quiet Incubation max 2 to reduce detection/awareness. Only show prerequisite-locked upgrades as unavailable with their requirement text.

Cure progress should rise from baseline over time, plus city awareness/detection and number of active cities, and should be reduced by defensive upgrades. Awareness rises from infection proportion and city medicine, modified by Quiet Incubation and increased by visible symptoms. Make the strategic tradeoff clear: higher lethality creates deaths and DNA but reduces ongoing transmission through a lethal penalty; spread-focused upgrades and symptoms help infection reach more cities. Display infected/dead values in compact forms such as K, M, or B.

Controls: mouse/touch click or tap city markers; drag the map to pan; mouse wheel to zoom between a close and far map view; WASD and arrow keys pan; Space toggles pause. Include a Pause button beside the Seed Outbreak button in the selected-city card, changing to Resume while paused. Camera panning is clamped to the world bounds. Use responsive glassmorphism UI: on narrow screens stack the bottom panels, make the upgrade button full width, and make the upgrade panel a fixed scrollable sheet. Keep all UI readable over the map with rounded translucent navy panels, cyan borders, white/light-blue text, and red/pink accents for outbreak actions and infected states.