The Lost Time Laboratory

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.

Recreate “The Lost Time Laboratory” as a dark, atmospheric first-person 3D escape-room game called “The Lost Time Laboratory.” The player is a test subject trapped in Professor Orion’s industrial time laboratory, and must solve measurement-based puzzles, stabilize the Measurement Core, enter a door override code, and choose whether to escape or free Orion.

Use a Three.js-like first-person perspective with mouse-look/pointer lock and keyboard movement, approximately 70-degree perspective FOV. The player is an invisible capsule character starting near the entrance at one end of a long rectangular laboratory, roughly 14 units wide and 30 units deep, with gravity and jump movement. Movement speed is about 3.5, with standard FPS controls. Aim the center crosshair at nearby objects and press E or click/tap to interact. Interactions work within about 4 units. When an interactable is targeted, show a blue-highlighted circular crosshair and a prompt such as “[E] / Tap READ ORION JOURNAL.”

The environment should be very dark and industrial: a long metal/concrete laboratory room with charcoal floor, textured gray metal walls, dark ceiling, heavy fog, cold blue ambient/hemisphere lighting, overhead pale fluorescent illumination, and strong shadows. Add a flickering red emergency light near the rear/door area, particularly when the timer is low. The screenshot-like visual mood is nearly black with only faint blue-gray surfaces, sparse red emergency illumination, and small colored light sources. Use a cold blue/cyan sci-fi palette with occasional warm brown wood, green machinery, red lasers, and purple ending accents. Include an animated cyan Measurement Core at the far end: a dark cylindrical pedestal/base around z=-11, a glowing cyan torus/ring hovering above it, a pulsing point light, and a factory machine nearby. Add industrial props and atmosphere: a terminal screen panel on the left near the core, factory machine on the right, a rod shelf on the left wall, a workbench with a journal page on the right, a jug station with three colored translucent containers, desks/chair, large pipe valves, a table lamp, crates, wall pipes, and two frozen clocks on the far wall. The clocks only give a “time-repair puzzle under construction” toast when inspected; they are not a real puzzle.

Room layout: the entrance/start is at the positive-z end. A divider wall across the room around z=-4 has two wall sections leaving a central doorway, with a heavy locked exit door in the gap. A red horizontal laser beam spans the doorway at about head height and flickers until the rod puzzle is solved. Beyond the divider is the reactor/core zone. On the right side around z=-3, place a green translucent rectangular force field around a machine, with a nearby green-lit console. The rectangular field has long sides of 2.5 m and short sides of 1.0 m, so its perimeter is 7 m.

The HUD should be a restrained retro-terminal interface. At the top center show a countdown timer initially reading 15:00, with a blue safe style at first and red style once 10 minutes or less remain. The timer counts down once the Start button is pressed and causes a sealed/time-out ending at zero. At top right show an OBJECTIVES panel with progress/checkmarks and active objective highlighting. Show a HINT (3 left) button below it; each click consumes one of three hints and displays progressively more explicit hints for the current puzzle. At screen center show the circular crosshair. Show interaction prompts below center. At bottom center show an inventory bar with dark rounded slots; solved puzzles add icons such as a measuring ruler, coolant droplet, and field emitter. Show short terminal/AI/toast messages near the bottom, including the opening AI message about the unstable Measurement Core and the hint to inspect the left shelf. Play subtle background music and click sounds if audio is available.

Add a start screen overlay with the title, subtitle/story text, warning about the unstable core/countdown, a Start button, and a compact controls explanation. Starting the game hides this screen, initializes FPS controls, starts the timer and background audio, and displays introductory toast messages. Do not add combat, enemies, weapons, health, or arbitrary collectibles: this is an exploration and UI-puzzle escape room.

Implement these interactables and puzzles exactly:

1. Orion’s Journal on the workbench. Interacting opens a parchment-like note overlay. It explains that the player entered after lockdown, the laser relay requires rods totaling exactly 180 cm, the cooling system requires exactly 6 litres using 2/5/8 L containers, each puzzle contributes a digit, and the terminal contains the master pattern. Mark “Read Orion journal” complete after viewing it.

2. Rod shelf on the left wall. Interacting opens a modal “Laser Relay Calibration” puzzle. Present six selectable rod buttons labeled 20 cm, 30 cm, 40 cm, 50 cm, 60 cm, and 70 cm. The player can toggle selections and sees a live total. Accept only the exact 180 cm selection of 30 + 40 + 50 + 60, four rods. On success mark the laser relay calibrated, remove the red beam and its light from the doorway, add a measuring-rod inventory item, and set the first code digit to 4. On incorrect totals, show a sparking/wrong-total message. The modal has Confirm Selection and Close buttons.

3. Terminal screen near the Time Core. Interacting opens a dark sci-fi terminal overlay titled “>> ORION LAB SYSTEM <<” or similar. Display system status for the Measurement Core and whether the laser relay, cooling system, and force field are locked/online/dropped. Explicitly explain the override format: digit 1 is number of rods used, digit 2 is force-field perimeter in meters, digit 3 is litres delivered, digit 4 is 0 from the lamp clue. Tell the player to find the door keypad and enter the four-digit code.

4. Cooling/reactor puzzle. The reactor machine initially reports “COOLING SYSTEM OFFLINE — TARGET: 6 L” and directs the player to solve the laser relay first. After the rod puzzle, interacting opens “Cooling System Calibration.” Show three visual jug panels labeled capacity 2 L, 5 L, and 8 L, with animated fill levels, current quantities, and Fill, Empty, and Pour-to buttons. Initialize quantities as 0, 0, and 8. Allow standard fill, empty, and pour operations. The success condition is exactly 6 L in the 8 L container; on success mark cooling online, add a coolant 6L inventory item, and set code digit 3 to 6. Keep the puzzle UI-driven while the physical jugs remain visible in the scene. The 2/5/8 system must permit the player to empty/refill and solve it legitimately.

5. Force-field note and console. A note beside the green field says the field is a rectangle with long side 2.5 m and short side 1.0 m, and asks for all four sides. The console opens a keypad-style “FORCE FIELD CONSOLE” modal with numeric buttons, delete, and GO. Accept 7 only. On success hide the translucent force-field walls, reduce the machine’s green light, add a field-emitter/shield inventory icon, and mark the perimeter objective complete. Incorrect entries show “INCORRECT PERIMETER.” This puzzle can be solved independently of the cooling puzzle.

6. Additional flavor interactions: the final note near the Core opens “Orion’s Final Note.” It reveals that Orion sealed himself inside the Time Core to stop collapse and that entering the override and choosing to free him releases the Core, while simply escaping leaves the Core holding for now. Mark the final-note objective complete when read. A desk can show a note repeating the 180 cm and 6 L clues. A cold valve says cooling pipes need exactly 6 L; a hot valve says coolant is required; a table lamp says a scrap taped to its base contains the number “0,” which is the fourth code digit. These are flavor interactions, not additional puzzles.

7. Door keypad. Once the laser beam is gone, interacting with the central exit door opens a four-digit keypad modal labeled “DOOR OVERRIDE — ENTER 4-DIGIT CODE.” Provide digits 0–9, delete, go, and close. The actual final code is 4760: 4 rods, 7-meter perimeter, 6 litres, and lamp digit 0. Reject incorrect codes with “INVALID CODE.” The door interaction should still explain that the laser blocks the door if the rod puzzle is not complete.

8. Successful keypad entry opens an ending overlay titled “OVERRIDE COMPLETE.” Explain that the Core is stable, the exit is open, but Orion remains trapped inside. Offer two large choices: “ESCAPE THE LAB” and “FREE ORION.” Escape displays a three-star ending in which the player leaves, the door seals, the Core holds for now, and Orion remains alone. Free Orion displays a five-star ending in which the player releases the Core’s energy, Orion emerges alive, and they leave together while the laboratory settles. If the player did not read the final note, add a subdued message that they did not know the full cost of the choice. If no hints were used, add a “No Hints Used: Perfect Escape bonus.”

If the 15-minute timer reaches zero, stop the timer and show a “ENDING: SEALED” overlay: time ran out, the door locked permanently, red lights covered the lab, and the Core faded to silence, with a suggestion to try again faster. At 10, 5, and 1 minute remaining, show escalating AI urgency toast messages. Animate the cyan Core pulse and rotation continuously, flicker the laser while active, and intensify the red emergency flicker in the final five minutes. Keep all modal overlays pausing interaction while open and allow Escape/Close to dismiss them. The overall result should feel like a sparse, ominous, low-light first-person sci-fi measurement escape room rather than an action game.