Rotting City

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 turn-based zombie-survival scavenging and base-building game titled “Rotting City,” presented as a dark low-poly 3D city diorama viewed from a fixed elevated perspective. Use a square-grid-like urban layout on muddy green-brown ground: broad dark asphalt streets crossing the map, cracked road pieces, barricades, scattered blocky buildings, loot crates, a fortified green survivor base with a lookout tower and solar panel, streetlights, an armored pickup truck, animated survivors, a dog, and enemies. Use simple Quaternius-style cube-world/low-poly animated characters and a bleak post-apocalyptic palette. Render with fog, soft shadows, cold sky illumination and a low warm sun; dynamically darken the scene at night, change the background/fog for rain and thunderstorms, and show a translucent snow layer during snow storms. Vehicle and street lights should visibly glow when lights are on or when darkness requires them. Include subtle click and impact sounds.

The main loop is played through a card hand. Start on Day 1 at 08:00 with 4/4 actions, Challenging difficulty, threat 2, four survivors, Ash the loyal tamed dog, an Armored Pickup, three hostile enemies, starting resources, and a generated map of eight named blocks: Clinic, Hardware, Overpass, Apartments, Depot, Diner, School, and Marina. Each map block has a loot amount, danger rating, possible blockage, and possible ambush trap; blocks can be depleted, and selecting a block makes it the target of Scavenge. Display the selected blocks as clickable choices in the HUD with loot, danger, blocked, and trap indicators.

Let the player select one of four survivors by clicking their panels or pressing keyboard keys 1–4: Rook (Scout, knife, 10 HP; better scavenging and stronger hide/escape), Mara (Hunter, rifle, 12 HP; ranged shots deal extra damage), Iris (Medic, bat, 9 HP; heals more and has better diplomacy/taming), and Bolt (Mechanic, wrench, 11 HP; cheaper fortification and weapon tuning synergy). Show each survivor’s role, weapon/skill, HP bar and current HP. The active survivor is highlighted and shown beside the action hand. Ash is a loyal fighter dog in the base; successfully taming another wild animal adds a loyal scavenger animal.

Draw six cards at a time from a survival deck, ensuring a zero-action card appears in each hand. Cards are clickable and disabled when unaffordable or blocked by pacifist mode. Display the action cost as “0 AP” or “1 AP,” a short title, and a description. Implement these cards exactly: Scavenge Block (1 action; loot the selected block, with Scout bonus; darkness without lights reduces loot), Melee Push (1; quiet attack with knife/bat/wrench), Ranged Shot (1; consumes ammo, high damage, Hunter bonus), Fortify Base (1; spends parts and a base item to add walls and morale, with Mechanic discount), Drive Scout (1; consumes fuel unless daylight solar helps, switches vehicle lights on, lowers threat and clears a blockage), Set Trap (1; spends parts, adds a base trap and reduces threat), Hide / Escape (1; reduces threat, with a larger reduction for Scout), Tame Animal (1; Scout/Medic or sufficient food turns a hostile Animal friendly and adds a scavenger animal), Negotiate (1; can turn a hostile Human friendly when morale/Medic conditions are met, otherwise threat rises), First Aid (0; consumes meds and heals 3 HP or 5 for Medic), Solar Patch (0; spends parts, increases solar and power, and makes daylight reduce fuel/power pressure), and Weapon Tune (0; gives the active survivor a tuned buff for the turn). Playing a card removes it from hand and redraws when fewer than three remain; include a Draw Cards button to replace the hand manually.

Combat should target the first living hostile enemy. Hostiles include a Zombie with 6 HP and food/clothing/base loot, a Human with 8 HP and weapon/ammo/meds loot, and an Animal with 5 HP and food loot. Melee does 3 damage; ranged does 5 and consumes ammo; Hunter ranged attacks do +3, Mechanic’s tuned weapon does +2, and the loyal fighter dog adds +1. Enemies counterattack after surviving, with walls and traps mitigating damage. Killing an enemy reduces threat, hides its model, and grants its loot while creating a lootable corpse. Pacifist mode must prevent lethal melee and ranged cards and display its on/off state.

At the end of a turn, advance the configurable time step (30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, or 12 hours), restore actions to 4, clear temporary buffs, consume one food per living survivor and recover 1 HP, run weather, resolve enemy pressure, increase the slow difficulty meter when the stockpile is strong, draw a new hand, and update the scene. Roll weather based on time/day: Clear skies, Rainy, Thunderstorms, and Snow storm during the winter cycle (winter begins on days whose day number modulo 7 is 5 or higher). Thunderstorms and snow increase threat. Darkness is before 06:00 or from 19:00 onward; it reduces scavenging unless lights are enabled. At night, lights consume power and switch off if power reaches zero. Enemy pressure is calculated from threat and the difficulty meter, damages living survivors, can consume base traps, can add new map ambushes on harder settings, and may kill survivors.

When a survivor reaches 0 HP, mark them dead and resurrect them as a hostile “Zombie Survivor” while leaving their weapon/backpack as loot on the zombie; show the survivor panel as resurrected zombie and prevent that zombie survivor from using cards. Include difficulty selector options Easy, Challenging, Hard, Very Hard, and Nightmare. Difficulty changes loot multiplier, incoming damage and enemy pressure, and the current HUD should show difficulty and threat.

Build a readable HUD over the 3D scene. Along the top show the Rotting City title, Actions 4/4, Day and time, weather with a “dark” indicator at night, difficulty/threat, difficulty and time-step selectors, a Lights toggle, and a Pacifist toggle. Place a translucent dark panel at lower left titled “Survivor cell” with the instruction “Pick a survivor, then play cards. Healing and enhancement cards cost 0 actions,” survivor selection cards, a Resources + base section, resource counters for Food, Meds, Fuel, Parts, Ammo, Power, Base plus Walls, Solar and Traps, an End turn button, a Draw cards button, and the eight map block choices. Place a larger translucent panel at lower right titled “Action hand,” with the active survivor badge and a 3-column desktop/smaller responsive card grid. Put a “Street radio” event log in the upper-right listing recent messages such as scavenging, attacks, weather, and resource failures. Use rounded panels, thin muted gold borders, cream/yellow headings, pale blue AP labels, red primary End turn button, compact system font, and responsive mobile layout where the panels stack and the action cards become two columns. Support pointer/touch clicking and keyboard controls Space to end turn and 1–4 to select survivors. There is no separate combat screen: all choices are made from the persistent HUD while the low-poly city remains visible behind it.