WARD

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 third-person psychological survival-horror game titled WARD, set in a dim, decaying psychiatric hospital. Use a dark, restrained visual style: charcoal/blue-gray concrete floors and walls, black fog, sparse warm amber lights in the Admission Wing and cold blue lights in the Patient Corridors, heavy shadows, occasional floor stains, institutional furniture, and subtle flickering lights. The game should begin with a large centered title/instruction card over the dark hospital background. Show the title WARD and this premise: “The Intern wakes in a decaying hospital where escape and self-recognition pull in opposite directions.” List the immediate objectives: find the keycard in the Admission Wing, cross into the Patient Corridors and survive the Orderly, collect poem fragments and face the Reflection in the mirror room, then reach the exit with low sanity to trigger Ending A. Provide Enter WARD and Clear checkpoint buttons.

Build a compact grid-based hospital with collision walls and two connected zones. Zone 1 is the Admission Wing, a lobby/reception area with a large reception desk, beds, cabinets, chairs, warm safe-room lighting, and an interactable checkpoint door/gate north of the lobby. Zone 2 is the Patient Corridors, darker and more maze-like, with an emergency exit at the far side and a mirror room containing a large wall mirror. Use a fixed authored floor-plan feel: rooms and corridors are bounded by thick square wall segments, with the Admission Wing in the southern half and Patient Corridors in the northern half. Place the Admission Keycard in the Admission Wing near the reception area; place an optional Sedative elsewhere in the Admission Wing; place four separate collectible poem fragments across the hospital, including fragments in both zones. Pickups should be small floating/rotating pale paper-like rectangular objects, while the sedative is a small pale-blue bottle/cylinder. Press E near a pickup to collect it and open a modal note showing its title and writing.

The player is an Intern represented by a simple animated humanoid character, viewed from behind in a controllable over-the-shoulder third-person camera. Movement is WASD or arrow keys, relative to the camera. Clicking locks the mouse and mouse movement rotates the camera; clamp vertical camera pitch and keep the camera collision-aware so it does not pass through walls. The character walks with an animated walk/idle state, casts a shadow, and turns toward movement. The player starts with sanity 78/100, no items, and a six-slot inventory. Press I or Tab to pause and open a six-slot inventory overlay; selecting an item shows its description, and using the Sedative consumes it, restores 24 sanity, and slows movement for 16 seconds. Press M to toggle an explored minimap; reveal nearby cells as the player explores, show the player marker, and in Zone 2 show the Orderly marker. Press E also interacts with doors and closes notes. Escape closes overlays and releases the mouse.

Implement the sanity system prominently. Display a top HUD with the current zone name on the left (Admission Wing or Patient Corridors) and a sanity state pill on the right: Steady at 70+, Frayed below 70, Splintering below 45, and Critical below 20. Sanity drains slowly outside safe rooms, drains faster in the darker Patient Corridors, drops after contact with the Orderly, and can be restored by collecting poem fragments and resting in the warm safe room. As sanity falls, increase a dark vignette, screen noise, camera wobble, shadow flashes, and unsettling visual distortion. At Critical sanity, intermittently show translucent poetic flashback panels/text in the environment and cycle the UI phrases “the walls remember you,” “you signed the quiet form,” and “someone remained inside.” Make low sanity also cause a corridor-loop effect in one northern corridor: if sanity is below 33 and the player enters that area, push them back and display “The corridor folds back into itself.” Include reactive ambient drone/whisper audio and concrete footsteps; footsteps should be quieter while holding breath.

Add a breath mechanic: hold Shift to hold the player’s breath, consuming a breath meter that recharges when released. Holding breath slows movement and reduces the noise made by footsteps, helping avoid the enemy. Show a compact lower HUD hint/instruction bar with “Click to lock camera • WASD move • E interact • Shift hold breath • I inventory • M map,” plus contextual interaction prompts near the bottom center.

Create one patrolling enemy called the Orderly, represented by a pale/blue-gray humanoid soldier-like animated model. It patrols a fixed route through the Patient Corridors, walking between several waypoints. It detects the player by line of sight within roughly 7 units or by hearing noisy footsteps within roughly 9 units; when alerted, it pursues the player faster. If it reaches the player, trigger a strong screen pulse, show a note titled “Orderly Contact” with the text “Cold hands pin you in place. When the shape lets go, your thoughts are no longer in sequence.”, reduce sanity by 24, and teleport the player back to the latest checkpoint. The minimap enemy marker is red when in Zone 2.

Make the checkpoint door require the Admission Keycard. Near it, show “Checkpoint door — keycard required” if the player lacks the card. Pressing E with the card unlocks the checkpoint, changes the zone to Patient Corridors, drains 6 sanity, places the player just beyond the door, and automatically saves progress to local storage including zone, position, sanity, inventory, collected fragments, explored minimap cells, and mirror progress. Show a paused note titled “Checkpoint Updated” explaining that the door unlocks and Zone 2 was saved. The checkpoint should be used after Orderly contact.

Implement the mirror encounter. When the player approaches the mirror room, show a ghostly translucent blue/emissive duplicate of the player near the mirror, with subtle drifting/jittering motion. The Reflection should be visible while near the mirror. The player must aim the camera directly at it and hold its gaze for about 1.4 seconds; then acknowledge success, restore 10 sanity, and open a note titled “The Reflection” with: “You hold the gaze exactly long enough. The duplicate stops arriving late. For a second, both of you breathe at once.” Looking away too early costs 8 sanity, and staring beyond about 3 seconds continuously drains sanity. If the player leaves before acknowledging it, also apply the brief early-look penalty.

At the emergency exit, pressing E with sanity at or below 45 triggers the only implemented ending, Ending A. If sanity is higher, display: “The exit handle turns, but the hospital does not let go of a steady mind. Sink lower, or go deeper.” Ending A pauses the game and shows a centered dark panel titled “Ending A — Escape Without Self” with this text: “The Intern forces the emergency door and steps into the night. The parking lot should be empty, but fluorescent reflections still tile the wet asphalt in straight institutional lines. Behind him, the hospital does not recede — it folds outward, corridor by corridor, carrying his outline inside every pane of glass. He has escaped the building. The ward has escaped with him.” Include a restart option that clears the saved checkpoint.

Use simple realistic low-poly/asset-pack hospital props (beds, bathroom cabinets, reception desk, metal checkpoint rails, chairs), animated humanoid GLB-style characters, physically shaded materials, soft shadows, ACES-like dark tone mapping, fog, and sparse point lights. Keep the mood quiet, oppressive, and literary rather than action-oriented: no weapons, combat, or invented enemies. The core loop is exploration, collecting, managing sanity, avoiding/enduring the Orderly, confronting the mirror duplicate, and reaching the exit in the required mental state.