Shoreline Pipes

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 portrait-oriented 2D top-down casual puzzle game titled “Shoreline Pipes.” Use an orthographic, flat board view that fills the screen. The setting is a soft, hand-painted pastel sandy shoreline: a warm beige/sand background with subtle grain, crossed by a tall, winding vertical turquoise-blue water channel with pale cream banks and small white wave strokes. Frame the playable area with two fixed dark terracotta rope rails at the left and right, each decorated with regularly spaced round knots.

In the center, place a translucent cream rounded-rectangle puzzle board containing a 5-column by 6-row rope-framed grid. Show faint dashed grid lines. The board sits over the water channel, so the blue water remains visible through the center. Grid cells are rounded cream tiles with soft shadows. The visual style should be friendly, tactile, pastel, and slightly painted rather than sharp or technical.

The core mechanic is pipe routing. The player must create one continuous leak-free route from a green circular start marker just outside the left side of the route to a gold/yellow circular end marker just outside the right side. Pipe segments are terracotta/orange with darker brown outer edging, lighter orange interior, subtle cream highlights, rounded ends, and small center joints. Support three segment types: straight pipes, elbows, and T-junctions. A straight can be horizontal or vertical, an elbow can face any of four directions, and a T-junction can have any of its four orientations. Pipe pieces already in the grid and spare pieces parked beside the left or right rope rails can be rearranged.

Implement pointer/touch interaction: dragging a pipe moves it, and releasing near an empty grid cell snaps it into that cell; a piece cannot be placed over an occupied cell. Pieces released away from a valid cell return to their side-rail home position. A short tap/click on a pipe rotates it 90 degrees clockwise instead of moving it. Also support keyboard R or Space to rotate the currently selected pipe. Highlight the selected piece with a pale cream tile and cyan outline. Count rotations and successful moves as moves for the level; show the current moves against the level’s par.

A route is valid only when pipe openings match at neighboring pieces with no leaks, the connected route begins at the green start’s required opening, reaches the gold end’s required opening, and every level-specific glowing shell-anchor cell is included in the connected path. Mark required cells with a pale glowing ring and a small gold/orange center dot. Use the connected state to add a soft cyan water-flow highlight along the openings of connected pipe pieces. Animate the completion/progress value smoothly rather than changing it abruptly. Do not treat merely connecting the endpoints as sufficient if required shell anchors are skipped.

Include eight handcrafted levels in increasing complexity, cycling to the first or continuing as a harder loop after the final level. Name and configure them as follows: “Tide Gate” (par 3), a mostly straight route; “Foam Bend” (par 6), requiring bends; “Three-Way Dock” (par 8), using T-junctions and required route cells; “Sandbar S” (par 10), an S-shaped route; “Double Back” (par 12), a longer route that doubles back; “Tide Fork” (par 11), a fork/branch arrangement; “Crab Crawl” (par 13), a winding crawl; and “Lagoon Loop” (par 14), using T-junctions and a lower loop-like route. Use the concrete 5x6 grid layout and a mixture of pre-placed and side-rail pieces so later puzzles require dragging spare segments into the board, not only rotating pieces. Each level should have its own start/end positions and required shell-anchor cells, with the route becoming harder and longer over the eight levels.

HUD overlay: at top left show a rounded cream pill reading “LEVEL N · LEVEL NAME” in dark brown, with stacked rounded stat pills beneath for “moves / par,” star forecast/best-star status, and collected shells plus the perfect-streak indicator. At top center show a circular cream flow meter with a cyan progress arc, large percentage text from 0% to 100%, and the word “FLOW.” At top right show three heart icons; the game displays lives but does not need to invent a damage/enemy system. Along the bottom center show a rounded cream hint card telling the player to drag pipes into the rope-framed grid and tap a pipe to rotate it, plus the rule that every glowing shell anchor must be connected and shortcuts do not clear.

On successful completion, show a centered rounded cream completion dialog with a star result (three stars if moves are at or under par, two if within three moves over par, otherwise one), the level name, moves/par information, and a button labeled “Next puzzle” (or an equivalent shoreline-next label). At the final level use a “Lagoon Mastered!”-style completion title and a button that loops to a harder/next cycle. Save each level’s best star result in local storage, award shell collectibles only when improving a previous best, and increment a perfect streak for three-star clears, displaying those values in the HUD. Use soft shadows, rounded UI, warm brown text, cyan flow accents, subtle pipe click sounds, and gentle animated bubbles rising in the water channel. Keep the game playable with touch and mouse in a single responsive portrait canvas.