Shekel of Ash

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 dark-fantasy top-down adventure demo titled “Shekel of Ash.” Use an orthographic Three.js-style camera looking down at a slight angle over a roughly 22-by-22 square ancient-walled field. Keep the camera centered/following the player, with a dark teal-black background, exponential fog, cool moonlight, warm orange altar light, soft shadows, and a gritty low-poly/procedural aesthetic. The world should feel like a night-time enclosed field: dark green grass, scattered ochre hay patches, a transparent dark-blue pond in the southwest with small visible fish, autumn tree clusters around the perimeter, glowing turquoise mushrooms, cobblestone/stone walls around all four sides, drifting autumn leaves overhead, translucent cloud/fog planes above the field, and a central stone smoke altar with animated rising smoke.

The player is a small original low-poly humanoid hero starting near the south side of the field. Give the hero a yellow/gold tunic, warm skin, red hair, a dark cap, bright green eyes, blue fringe/tassel-like details, sandals, and a wooden staff held at the side. Animate walking limbs and the blue fringes. The hero can move with WASD or arrow keys, or a touch virtual joystick. Movement speed is about 4.2 units per second, direction should face the movement direction, and keep the player constrained inside the walls. The player has five hearts. Enemies damage one heart on contact; the boss damages two. When health reaches zero, show a fall message, restore full health, and respawn the player at the southern starting position.

The core loop is to clear the monsters inside the walls, collect drops, use the altar, buy relics, and defeat the final boss. Place four Shamir worms (small dark brown segmented/capsule-like ground creatures with a dark jaw) and two Nephilim skeleton knights (larger bone-colored skeletons with dark armor/helmets and swords) around the field. Enemies notice and chase the player when within about seven units, have simple contact attack cooldowns, and visibly react when hurt. Worms bob/emerge slightly. A Nephilim skeleton has three health and one shekel value. When a skeleton dies, do not immediately finish the encounter: hide its body and spawn a separate pale cyan translucent Rephaim ghost at the same location with two health; display a message explaining that the ghost tore free. Ghosts also chase and attack the player. Worms have one health and half a shekel value. Defeated enemies create bobbing collectible gold coin/shekel drops; automatically collect nearby drops and update the counter.

Add wandering animals in the field that can be struck by the staff: two wild rams, gray-brown with curled horns, each producing one meat when killed, and one red heifer producing two meat. Animals wander slowly. Meat appears as a small reddish drop and is automatically collected when approached. The altar is a central low-poly gray stone pedestal emitting animated smoke, with the priest Yo’ezar standing just beside it: an old robed figure with a beard and staff. When the player is within about 2.2 units of the altar, pressing Enter or the Item button interacts. If the player has meat, consume all meat and fully refill all five hearts, with a message such as Yo’ezar’s “Life for life” offering line; otherwise explain that ram or red-heifer meat is needed.

Place a north merchant tent: a small dark red four-sided conical tent with a dark entrance flap and an old woman merchant standing nearby. Within about 2.7 units, pressing Enter or the Item button opens a merchant panel. The panel should offer: Reshef’s sling for 10 shekels, Evil Eye shield for 20 shekels, and a cave scroll for 30 shekels, plus a Leave button. The sling can only be bought once and equips as the Item action; it fires a bright electric cyan projectile in the player’s current facing direction. The projectile travels quickly, lasts briefly, and can damage enemies. The Evil Eye purchase activates/provides a shield charge as implemented, and using a shield creates a rotating cyan ring around the player and protects from damage for ten seconds. The scroll is purchasable once and displays its cave/sword-of-fire flavor text, but it need not add another combat mechanic. If the player lacks funds, show the merchant’s “purse is too light” response.

The player’s staff attack is performed with Space or the large mobile “Slice” button. Make it a short timed swing animation, with a forward melee reach of about 0.95 units and a forward-facing hit check. It damages ordinary enemies, ghosts, animals, and the boss only when the boss is vulnerable. The Item button or E uses the equipped item; when near the merchant or altar it doubles as interaction/talk/offer. If no item is equipped, explain that the player must buy Reshef’s sling or an Evil Eye from the merchant. Add simple synthesized ambient audio and attack, pickup, purchase, damage, and victory sounds if supported, but do not let audio block play.

After every non-boss enemy and its resulting ghost has been defeated, spawn the Ash Rephaim boss in the northern-central area. Make it a larger floating pale-cyan translucent ghost with a cylindrical robe-like body, large head, glowing cyan crown ring, and a small cyan light. It has six health, floats/bobs, chases the player, and inflicts two hearts per contact hit. It cannot be damaged by the staff while not stunned. The player must buy and equip Reshef’s sling, fire a projectile into the boss to stun it for about 2.3 seconds, then get close and land staff hits during that window; repeat until its six health is gone. Update the objective to “Boss: stun with the sling, then strike with staff.” On defeat, hide the boss, set the objective to “You have won the demo,” and show the prominent victory message exactly: “You have won the demo”.

Build the UI to match the dark parchment/gold fantasy presentation. At the top-left show five red heart symbols for health and skull symbols for missing hearts. Beside them show a dark bordered shekel counter beginning at “₪ 0.” Below, show a translucent dark objective/status strip with a gold left border, including the current objective plus “Meat: [count] • Item: [none or Reshef sling]” and any Evil Eye count. Show centered translucent dark message banners with thin gold borders for story, interaction, combat, and victory messages. Start with a full-screen dark translucent title card reading “SHEKEL OF ASH,” describing the dark top-down fantasy demo and an “Enter the Walls” button; hide it after activation. On desktop show a bottom hint: “WASD/Arrows move • Space attacks • E uses item • Enter talks.” On mobile, show a large translucent circular joystick at bottom-left with a gold inner knob, a large red/brown gold-bordered circular “Slice” button at bottom-right, and a smaller blue “Item” button just to its left. Make touch controls pointer-events-safe and prevent accidental page scrolling. Include the merchant panel on the right with dark background, gold border, flavor text, purchase buttons, and Leave.

Use original/procedural low-poly models for the hero, altar, priest, tent, merchant, enemies, animals, drops, UI, smoke, leaves, and fish. If external low-poly assets are available, stone wall, tree-cluster, mushroom, and ghost assets may be used, with fallback simple geometry so the complete game remains playable. Preserve the oppressive visual mood: near-black teal environment, blue fog and moonlight, warm altar ember glow, gold UI accents, red health/attack accents, transparent cyan ghosts and mushrooms, and airborne autumn debris.