Stars Hollow

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 3D small-town life-simulation sandbox called “Maple Hollow” (the title shown in the game, despite the requested project title “Stars Hollow”). Use an elevated, slightly angled top-down third-person camera over a large open neighborhood: broad green grass terrain, a dark gray north/south and east/west road crossing, pale sidewalks, fog, soft shadows, and a muted stylized low-poly/cartoon visual style. Buildings should be simple blocky structures with colored walls, dark flat roofs, and floating cream name labels. Place these named locations around the cross-shaped streets: Family Home in the southwest, School in the southeast, Cafe in the northwest, Market in the northeast, and Hospital to the west. The player begins at the Hospital nursery area, represented by a simple stylized character with a floating turquoise diamond/plumbob.

Begin with a birth overlay/card titled “Maple Hollow.” Explain that the player begins in a real nursery as a newborn, cannot choose an age, and that caregivers and the household act autonomously. Let the player enter a name (default “Jamie,” limited to 18 characters) and press “Be born.” Once started, hide the overlay and run a continuously advancing life simulation. The player starts as a Newborn at age zero, with hunger, energy, social, and fun needs. Needs visibly drain over time. Age automatically advances through these stages and unlocks movement in later life: Newborn, Baby, Toddler, Child, Teen, Adult, and Older Adult. Before the Toddler stage, the player is dependent and cannot freely walk; if hunger, energy, or social gets low, the mother autonomously travels to the player and physically cares for the newborn/baby, restoring the relevant need. Newborns and babies can press X to cry, lowering hunger and social while notifying nearby caregivers. When the Toddler stage is reached, unlock click-to-walk and keyboard movement using WASD/arrow keys; use a top-down character controller with the camera following/targeting the player. Include a plumbob above the player at all stages.

Make the world feel alive through autonomous household routines. Include the Family Home household with Mara (mother, age 38), Jon (father, 40), Lily (sibling, 8), Noah (12), Mia (16), Eli (19), and Rose (22), plus Sam the 24-year-old barista at the Cafe. Give them simple colored stylized character models with idle animation when available, or low-poly humanoid forms. Each NPC has hunger, energy, and social values that change over time, a goal, and a relationship value. Their routines should physically move them: school-aged NPCs travel to School during the daytime and return home; adult household members generally remain home, go to a central park-like area in the evening, and return; Sam works at the Cafe during daytime and returns home afterward. Display or preserve goals such as caring for the baby, making breakfast, getting ready for school, texting friends, working at the café, reading at the library, and serving customers as the characters’ flavor text, while their visible behavior remains grounded in those routes.

Use direct physical interaction: the player clicks a person or object in the 3D scene, then automatically walks to it and performs the interaction when close. Clicking an NPC initiates a conversation, raises social need, increases that NPC’s relationship by 2 up to 100, stores a memory that the player met them in person, and reports the updated relationship. Add usable Family Home furniture: a bed that restores energy to full and advances the clock by 420 minutes while the household continues; and a table that restores hunger by 35. Clicking School initiates attending school: for a Child or Teen report that class was attended physically and their grade improved, while other ages are told they are too young. Clicking Cafe attempts to buy and eat food: charge $8 if the player has enough money and restore hunger by 45; otherwise report that the food cannot be afforded. Other building surfaces can respond that nothing useful happens yet. Do not invent a working Market, crib, jobs, grades system, or money-earning system beyond these implemented interactions; money is displayed and starts at $0.

Advance the clock continuously while unpaused, show the current day and time in a compact top-left status card, and use a day/night lighting cycle with changing sun intensity, sky color, and fog. Start around Day 1, 8:00 AM, with Sunny weather and Spring season; display location, age/life stage and years, money, weather, and a status/action message. Show four horizontal need meters labeled Hunger, Energy, Social, and Fun, with distinct food, energy, social, and fun colors. Include a bottom-center instruction/action card saying that clicking a person or object makes the player walk there and do something physical, and that WASD/arrows work after walking is unlocked. Show transient toast notifications for life-stage changes, remembered conversations, crying/caregiving, pause/resume, and other outcomes. Press Space to pause or resume the simulation. Use warm, restrained UI cards with rounded corners, dark blue-gray text, pale cream surfaces, subtle borders/shadows, and compact pill tags. The overall experience should emphasize an observable, autonomous neighborhood and aging from a helpless newborn into a controllable older character, with interactions requiring the player avatar to physically travel to the selected person or place.