Dev Log#2

Okay, so my original plan was a murder mystery game with similar mechanics of looking for evidence and using it against others in the trial to point out the culprit, in combination with building stats to determine the success rate and different interactions between the player character and the environment. The setting would be similar to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, in a "closed circle of suspects" environment where characters are all trapped in a place that’s isolated from the outside world. Through the process, driven by curiosity, the player character would also discover secrets of the npcs that are intertwined with the murder they need to solve to escape. References for investigation and identifying the murderer would be Ace Attorney and Danganronpa. The latter also has a similar story setting.

My first attempt at trying to prototype this idea is in Twine. I tried to see if the player would find it interesting to get evidence and solve puzzles when they have limited action points to schedule their days in the game. I gave the player 6 actions to see if they can get to evidence G. The repeated A simulates either the likability of character A toward the player character or the player character’s affection points.

It worked okay, but I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it. Something just doesn't feel right. When thinking about the game, I had trouble coming up with a design idea that gives the same feeling of solving a mystery without just using the same mechanics in another story. After pitching my idea, I got many good suggestions on how to approach this idea, including starting by thinking about the setting of the story to come up with gameplay mechanics based on that, and playing some role playing games.

I’ve been really addicted to this specific type of role playing game called Jubensha, which is basically a combination of TTRPG and LARP mystery games. The mechanic is similar to my original idea, but it would be a multiplayer game instead of having npcs, and players would be interacting with each other to hide and discover secrets. Another game that inspired me was Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. This is a puzzle game that has both a digital and a physical part. One player solves puzzles on a computer while the other player goes through the physical manual, giving instructions to help the other player solve the puzzles.

It’s a little hard to explain the gameplay of Jubensha since it’s mostly popular in Asia and games with English translations are not easy to find. I've only played the Chinese version of the game. Based on that, I came up with a (might or might not work) idea: What if I make this murder mystery game into a hybrid game, where the digital space is responsible for the escape room part, the real world space includes the social deduction part, and the hybrid space is where the murder mystery happens? Most Jubensha games require a Game Master to keep the game going, but in my game, I could include that in the digital part as audio or ui instructions to make it a GMless game.

I’m still not sure what my thesis is about. At this point, I’m very interested in exploring different ways to make a narrative game immersive. Maybe it’s me getting old, I start to fall asleep when playing text heavy games (don’t get me wrong I still love them). So maybe I can make something that avoids too much text and keeps players engaged? 

Two questions I have for myself are: 

1. How to use more interaction to tell the story and avoid heavy text. 

2. How the hybrid works. 

The goal for next week is to solve problem 2 by prototyping. Hopefully I can decide whether to move forward with this idea by then.

That’s all I have to report. Until next time!