For my final project, I want to work on an interactive murder mystery game. The piece would let the player interact with it to get a sense of the setting of the story and the characters within it and then the player can proceed to search for clues, take interviews and finalize the suspect. The goal of the game is to find the killer.
On a side note, as I finalize the storyline, I want to explore non-murder mystery storylines too, focusing on plots with mystery and thrill. Right now, I’m thinking of doing a storyline with Christie’s Crooked House.
I want to create a soundscape for the game with eerie sounds, where the narrator invites the player to the story, talks about the place, and let them choose different characters and learn about them. For this part, I was thinking of implementing a potentiometer and a button or a switch that will let the user choose the character – as opposed to clicking on the screen itself.
After learning about the setting and the characters, the player can now look at the objects provided to them – these are things acquired from the murder scene. In this section, the user can interact with these objects to find some clues. I’m taking inspiration from the reading, “Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design”, by incorporating ways of interaction beyond buttons and slides. With the objects, I’m thinking of hiding some switches. What I’m envisioning is having all the objects connected via wires to make it look like they are secured to the table. As the player interacts with the object, I’m thinking of having a particular part of the material have some conductive material which when the user touches that part, it completes the circuit to reveal the clue. I was thinking of adding in some sounds for feedback as soon as this is done so that the player knows that they’ve found a clue and continues to press the hidden switch.
The clues on their own could be simple puzzles like cracking codes, trying to find the missing pattern, riddles, etc. This way the player is engaged with the piece.
Finally, when the time is up, they can choose the character who they think is the culprit and the screen will reveal whether they’ve won or lost.
Processing would show the story, the clues, the stories of the character, and the final result. Arduino would take input from the user on which menu setting they’d like to choose, which character they’ve chosen, and input puzzle answers.