MiniTown

Create MiniTown, a retro-inspired, pixel-art-flavored city simulation that plays more like a cozy god game than a traditional management game.

Start on an empty piece of land. The player should be able to place Residential, Shop, and Workspace zones, then watch roads appear automatically around them. Buildings should move through visible construction stages, become inhabited, and grow over time as the town comes alive.

The main pleasure of the game is observation. Simulated residents should have homes, workplaces, shops, schedules, and destinations. Show people walking and cars moving through town, and let the player hover over a house, shop, or workplace to see who is there and what is happening.

Support connected blocks of one, two, or three buildings by clicking and dragging. Everything placed during one drag should become one shared building block: roads form around its exterior, with no roads between the buildings inside it.

Add a visible day/night cycle so the town changes as time passes. At night, shift the environment toward soft cool colors while windows, streetlights, and occupied buildings emit warm, diffuse light. Keep the result readable, pretty, and cozy.

Use a slightly top-down camera suited to watching the whole town. Keep interaction light and observational: move the camera, explore freely, inspect buildings and residents, choose where zones should go, then watch the simulation unfold. Include a free Explore mode where the mouse is not placing anything.

Before building the game, use `$imagegen` to create several gameplay concepts and town states. Keep the visual direction technically achievable with simple stylized 3D models and generated art, with enough variation in buildings, people, and vehicles that the town does not feel repetitive.