Star Astrolabe

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 3D programming puzzle game titled “Star Astrolabe,” presented in a colorful low-poly/isometric-like third-person view. The scene is a warm stylized desert medina/souk under a sunset-to-night gradient sky: sandy ground, terracotta and pale ochre block buildings, turquoise and wood market stalls, rooftop wooden bridges, crates, mosaics, palms, a courtyard fountain, and a distant observatory. Use soft shadows, warm orange sunlight plus cool blue fill light, atmospheric fog, and a dark blue sky with many small hand-placed stars. Keep the camera in a fixed elevated perspective looking down the length of the level toward the observatory, with a broad view of the town and the player in the foreground.

The playable avatar is NOVA-1, a small friendly brass/copper spherical automaton with a slightly flattened body, a glowing mint-turquoise eye on its front, two dark side wheels, and a small gold gear detail. It starts at approximately the near/front end of a grid path, facing forward/north toward decreasing Z. The world is a tile-based route through the souk. Build solid walls and stalls around the route and define blocked grid cells so forward movement into obstacles stops with a “Blocked! Try a different route — crates and stalls are in the way.” message. Include three floating, glowing cyan star-crystal octahedra placed along the route at successive locations: near the first gate, in the middle of the souk, and near the courtyard/observatory approach. Crystals gently rotate and bob until collected, then disappear.

The core interaction is visual command programming rather than direct movement. At the bottom HUD, provide clickable command buttons: FORWARD, TURN LEFT, TURN RIGHT, and REPEAT ×2. Clicking a command appends it to a visible command sequence; clicking a sequence tile removes it before execution. Allow up to 18 sequence entries. REPEAT ×2 expands into two forward commands when played. The PLAY button executes the complete sequence from the starting position, animating NOVA-1 one grid tile at a time and briefly animating turns. Disable command controls while running, then re-enable them afterward. Turns change NOVA-1’s facing by 90 degrees; forward moves one grid tile in the current facing unless that cell is blocked. Collect a crystal automatically when NOVA-1 arrives at its grid coordinate, update progress text such as “Crystal 1/3 collected!”, and count movement commands including expanded repeat steps.

The mission is explicitly shown in the HUD: “Mission: collect 3 star crystals, then reach the observatory.” The player must collect all three crystals and reach the far observatory area (the end condition is reaching the observatory-side depth after all three are collected). At the far end, build an observatory with a pale sandstone body, blue circular base, gold rim, and turquoise half-dome, plus a large brass astrolabe in front consisting of intersecting gold rings and a turquoise center orb. On success, rotate/open the dome, show a full-screen dark-blue victory overlay titled “The stars are awake!”, display a three-star rating, and state how many movement commands were used and that NOVA-1 placed every crystal in the astrolabe. Rate the run with 3 filled stars for 14 or fewer movement commands, 2 for 15–20, and 1 above 20. Include a “Build another program” button that clears the sequence and resets NOVA-1, crystals, and the run.

The HUD should be legible over the 3D scene. At top left show a navy rounded brand panel with a gold border, a star symbol, “NOVA-1” in gold, and “Star Astrolabe Adventure” beneath it. At top right show a dark translucent mission panel with “3 star crystals” highlighted in turquoise. Near the bottom center show a pill-shaped status message initially reading “Build a command sequence, then press PLAY.” Place a white “Show hint” button at lower right. The hint button should load a working example route when the command list is empty (a sequence equivalent to F,F,R,F,F,L,F,F,R,F,F,L,F,F), and otherwise show a planning tip that turns change NOVA-1’s facing. Put the color-coded command tray along the bottom: mint FORWARD, yellow TURN LEFT, coral TURN RIGHT, lavender REPEAT ×2, with a large turquoise ▶ PLAY button. On mobile, stack the tray and play button vertically. Use rounded panels, bold system sans-serif typography, navy/turquoise/gold/coral palette, and polished button shadows. Add subtle ambient/music and click/movement sounds only if available, without making them required for play.