Tidewake: one-page design (frozen; changes only through docs/decisions.md)
Working title. Status: draft defaults, 2026-10-08. Pierre can override any line.
Pitch
A compact top-down action-adventure in the Link's Awakening tradition: explore a small world, find an item, use it to open new places, clear the dungeon it unlocks, beat its boss. Two to three hours, finished and polished rather than big.
Pillars
- It feels great in the hands. Responsive 8-direction movement, a sword with hit-stop, knockback and sound, readable enemy tells. Every action has feedback.
- Rooms that click. Each room has one idea. Dungeons fold back on themselves. Items open the world. The player's skill and wits are the progression.
- Small and finished. Fixed scope. Polish beats more content.
Scope
- A village and an overworld of about 6 × 6 screens.
- Three dungeons, each with one new item that also opens new overworld paths, plus a final boss. Items are picked in the dungeon designs (bombs / hookshot-like / one more).
- Health in hearts with heart containers and pieces. One currency, a shop. No XP or levels.
- Save, pause map, simple inventory. Controller, keyboard and phone touch.
Look and sound
- "Double SNES": 32 px tiles, 640 × 360 internal resolution, integer scaling with nearest filtering (1280×720 = 2×, 1080p = 3×). One screen = 20 × 11 tiles, HUD overlay.
- Hero about 32 × 48 px. One master palette, one light direction, consistent pixel density. AI-generated art through one cleanup pipeline (see AGENTS.md).
- Gated by the art test (roadmap M0) before production art starts.
- Original music and sound.
Story
Open. Three short pitches come after the feel slice (M1); Pierre picks. Yala's story is not carried over.
Tech
Godot 4.7 + GDScript, web export first, served from CT1160. Headless tests and an exact-export browser check gate every publish.