From the Games shelf · No. 0004
Todos para Casa
A cooperative forest board game on the tablet for my six-year-old twins, so nobody loses against her sister.
Worked example (simulated interview)
The brief
This is a worked example. Askmill wrote this prompt from a simulated client interview, in which a model answered the questions for an invented client. The line under the title is the opening request the interview started from; everything else came out of the answers.
The prompt
The complete text, exactly as it is handed to an AI builder.
A cooperative wooden board game laid flat on a tablet: a winding path of ten round discs through an autumn wood, four little toy animals to bring home to a burrow under a chestnut tree, and a mother badger walking ahead with a lantern. Two six-year-olds sit side by side and play as one team; one reads a few short words, the other none yet, so every state is told in pictures. Concept: nobody beats her sister; the only opponent is the evening, and it plays fair. Rules: Castanha the hedgehog, Avelã the squirrel, Trevo the bunny and Pinhão the mouse start on a log (position 0); the path has 11 positions, discs 1-10 plus the burrow door as position 11. Seats alternate, left first. A turn is one roll of a six-faced die: one dot, one dot, two dots, two dots, three dots, sun. On dots the team taps any animal not yet home and it hops that many positions; reaching or passing 11 is home, surplus dots are dropped, animals may share a disc. On the sun nobody moves and the sun drops one stop along an arc of seven stops; the seventh sun face sets it. All four home before that is a win. The die is uniform (crypto.getRandomValues) and never adjusted. The one easing is visible: in the first two games ever played the arc has eight stops. Expect about 30 rolls, 8-10 minutes, roughly 7 wins in 10. Amora the badger is not a playing piece: she stands one position ahead of the leading animal (never past the door) and turns her head toward the one furthest behind, a wordless hint with no rule effect. Mood: unhurried, snug, honest; a kitchen table at five on an October afternoon in Porto, low light, a box of painted wooden pieces tipped out. Light page, even at dusk. Palette: oat cream #FBF3E4 (board ground); bark brown #3B2A20 (all lettering, dots, outlines; about 12:1 on oat cream, about 7:1 on beech); beech wood #D9B88F (discs, die, sign, trays); maple orange #E08A3C (foliage, fallen leaves); raspberry #C2416B (left seat); blueberry #4A6FA5 (right seat); honey yellow #F2C14E, reserved for light itself: the sun, the die's sun face, lit windows, the lantern flame, nothing else uses it. Allowed tints: animal coats mixed from bark, beech and a soft grey #A8A29A; a sky stepping with each sun stop from pale blue #DCE9EC through peach #F6D2B0 to dusk rose #D9A7A0, never darker. Materials: everything is inline SVG drawn as painted wood: flat colour, 3 px bark outlines, rounded corners, faint grain. Animals are chunky pegs with dot eyes and a small smile; Amora is a head taller with a cream face stripe. The scene holds only the path curving left to right, six lollipop trees, five glossy chestnuts beside the path, the burrow at the right with a round door and four round windows, the sun arc with pale pegs as stops, a hanging sign with the title, and a die tray in each bottom corner: the left raspberry with a leaf emblem, the right blueberry with an acorn emblem, so seats differ by side, colour and shape. No menu, no start screen, no score panel. Controls are objects: the die (120 px) is the roll button; a wooden bell (64 px, top left, aria-label "Som") switches sound; a knot in the sign, held 2 s, opens a grown-ups panel with language (Português / English), calm mode and "recomeçar". Typography: ui-rounded, 'SF Pro Rounded', 'Trebuchet MS', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, weight 700, letter-spacing 0.02em; title 32 px, labels 24-26 px, nothing below 20 px. Words are few, in European Portuguese: "Todos para Casa" on the sign, "casa" over the door, "outra vez" on the replay button, "continuar" on the resume card; English set: "Everyone Home", "home", "again", "carry on". The voice is a kind aunt, never scolding, spoken only with sound on (speechSynthesis pt-PT, rate 0.9; skipped if no such voice exists): "É a tua vez.", "O sol desce um bocadinho.", "Todos em casa!", and at nightfall "Hoje o sol foi mais rápido. A Amora leva-os a casa. Amanhã tentamos outra vez." Entrance: at 0 s the whole board is drawn, sun on its top stop. From 200 ms the four animals walk onto the log from the left, 400 ms apart, 500 ms each, cubic-bezier(.2,.8,.2,1), each waving twice; at 2000 ms Amora walks past them to disc 1; at 3000 ms the die drops into the left tray and wiggles, again every 4 s until tapped. Left alone, at most 6 leaves drift down and Amora glances back. If an unfinished game is saved, two picture cards appear instead: first and larger (60% width) a miniature of the saved board, "continuar"; second, the animals on the log, "outra vez". Interaction: a tap tumbles the die for 900 ms. On dots, movable animals lift 6 px with a ring in the seat colour; a tap sends one hopping (220 ms per position), chestnuts wobbling as it passes; then the die slides to the other tray (450 ms) and takes its colour. On the sun, it glides one stop down (700 ms) and the sky steps. A tap on the empty tray, or on an animal before the roll, makes the die wobble twice and stay while Amora looks toward the seat whose turn it is; no turn is lost. Extra fingers during a roll or hop are ignored. Touch areas: animals 88 px, buttons 64 px. Keyboard: Tab order bell, die, animals, replay, knot; Space or Enter rolls and picks; Left/Right move between movable animals; M toggles sound; Escape closes the panel or skips an ending. Landscape is the main layout; in portrait or on a phone the path folds into an S from top to bottom with trays in the bottom corners; wide screens cap the board at 1280 px, centred. Signature moment: the win. 0-600 ms the last animal hops through the door, which shuts with a small bounce; 600-2200 ms the four windows light honey yellow one by one, 400 ms apart; 2200-3600 ms the burrow front swings open like a dolls' house; 3600-5600 ms the four sit with Amora at a round table as she sets down a pan of roasted chestnuts and steam curls; at 6000 ms "outra vez" appears and the scene rests, steam looping, the sun still above the hill. Hidden detail: Pinhão slips one chestnut under the table. A tap skips to the resting state. If the sun sets first, the ending is honest and kind: the sun slides behind the hill (800 ms), the sky turns dusk rose, Amora lights her lantern and leads each remaining animal to the door; four medallions then show each animal with a sun mark (home by daylight) or a lantern mark (walked home), and "outra vez" appears. No supper, no lit windows, no sad faces, no minor-key sound: the supper belongs to a true win only. Sound is off at every load; the bell creates Web Audio on that tap: wooden tocks for hops, a soft clack for the die, one low chime per sun stop, the spoken lines; master gain at most 0.2, attacks of at least 30 ms, no music; muting acts within 100 ms and every sound has its picture. Tapping a chestnut spins it once (600 ms), for nothing. Reduced motion (system setting or calm mode): pieces in place at load, the die cross-fades to its face in 150 ms, animals and sun change place without travel, no leaves or wobble, endings as still pictures. Performance: transform and opacity only, at most 6 leaves and 12 steam puffs, loops paused when the tab is hidden, first paint under 1 s, file under 300 KB. Accessibility: every piece is a labelled button ("Castanha, o ouriço, posição 4 de 11"), a polite live region reports each roll, focus is a 4 px bark ring. Persistence: localStorage key "todosParaCasa.v1" stores positions, sun stop, arc length, seat, games played, language and calm mode after every roll; without storage the game plays with no resume. Never: adverts, purchases, accounts, outbound links, analytics, per-player points or stars (the only count is animals home, shared), timers, loud or sudden sound. Deliver as a single self-contained HTML file with no external files, fonts, images or network requests, so it works without internet. Done when: (1) a child who cannot read plays a whole game from pictures alone; (2) a sunset ending shows the true daylight count, the lantern walk and no sad cue; (3) 10,000 simulated games with random legal picks on seven stops win between 68% and 78%, and each die face lands within 1% of one in six over 60,000 rolls; (4) "outra vez" starts a new game in under 3 s, and a closed game reopens on the two cards with exact positions. DESCRIPTION A painted wooden toy of a game on a cream board: a path of ten round beech discs curls through six lollipop trees in maple orange towards a burrow under a chestnut tree, with five glossy chestnuts lying beside it. A hedgehog, a squirrel, a bunny and a mouse walk in and wave, then Amora the badger passes them with her unlit lantern and looks back at whoever is last. A fat wooden die wiggles in the raspberry tray on the left; after each roll it slides to the blueberry tray on the right. Dots send one chosen animal hopping; the sun face lowers a honey-yellow sun one peg down its arc while the sky warms from pale blue to peach. Get all four through the round door in daylight and the windows light one by one, the burrow opens like a dolls' house and everyone sits down to roasted chestnuts. If the sun is quicker, the sky turns rose, Amora lights the lantern and walks the rest home, and the board says plainly who made it by daylight. Then "outra vez". VISUAL TECHNIQUES - Inline SVG in a painted-wood style: flat fills, 3 px bark outlines, rounded corners, two faint grain strokes per piece, one offset shadow of 4 px at 15% opacity - Path laid on a cubic Bezier with ten discs placed by arc length; pieces sharing a disc are offset by 14 px - Die as a CSS 3D cube tumbling 900 ms to a face chosen beforehand by crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling - Hop animation as one parabolic arc per position, 220 ms each, with a 6% squash on landing - Sun arc with seven or eight peg stops; sky fill interpolated per stop through #DCE9EC, #F6D2B0 and #D9A7A0 via a CSS custom property - Amora's head turn (300 ms rotation toward the furthest-behind animal) and a lantern flame drawn only when lit, in honey yellow with a two-frame flicker - Seat signalling: 450 ms die slide between trays, rim recoloured raspberry or blueberry, leaf and acorn emblems - Win choreography with the Web Animations API: staggered window lights, burrow front hinged with rotateY, at most 12 steam puffs - Dusk ending: lantern glow as a radial gradient clipped to a 160 px circle following Amora; medallions with sun or lantern marks - Resume cards rendered from the saved state with the same SVG symbols at 40% scale - Leaf drift: at most 6 SVG leaves with sine sway, paused when the tab is hidden - Web Audio synthesis (filtered-noise tocks, sine chime, master gain 0.2) plus speechSynthesis in pt-PT or en-GB - State machine (enter, roll, pick, hop, sun step, win, dusk, resume) with input locked during transitions and versioned localStorage - Reduced-motion variant in which cross-fades of 150-300 ms replace all travel INTERACTION MODEL Tap the die in the active tray to roll it. On dots, the movable animals lift with a ring in the seat colour; tap one and it hops that many positions, entering the burrow at position 11. On the sun face nothing is picked: the sun drops one stop. After every roll the die slides to the other seat. Tapping the empty tray, or an animal before the roll, makes the die wobble and Amora look toward the seat whose turn it is; nothing else changes. Tapping a chestnut spins it. Tapping during an ending skips to its resting picture; "outra vez" starts a new game. On reopening an unfinished game, the larger first card continues it and the second starts afresh. The bell toggles sound, off at every load. Holding the knot in the sign for 2 s (or Enter when focused) opens the grown-ups panel: language, calm mode, "recomeçar". Keyboard: Tab moves through bell, die, animals, replay and knot; Space or Enter rolls and picks; Left/Right step between movable animals; M toggles sound; Escape closes the panel or skips an ending; focus is never trapped. A live region announces each roll and move. With reduced motion or calm mode, pieces, die and sun change in place and endings are still pictures.
What's inside this prompt
The sections of this prompt, in order, with their length.
- Overview 280 words
- Mood 128 words
- Materials 167 words
- Typography 112 words
- Entrance 108 words
- Interaction 182 words
- Signature moment 495 words
- Description 182 words
- Visual techniques 285 words
- Interaction model 213 words
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