I know I had a whole set of different ideas, but I have my reasons okay – I love murder mysteries and when Gopika mentioned that she was planning to make one and give it an Indian twist and offered to partner up, I thought it would be more rewarding creatively to work on this project (as appealing as Bollywood DDR might be). I am very very excited to be working on it 🙂 (thank you for the offer once again!!)
Gopika provided a pretty succinct summary of it so I’ll copy that here:
“The interactive murder mystery game would let the user play detective at a murder scene. They will get a sense of the murder scene and characters in the beginning. Followed by this, they can inspect objects from the murder scene and get clues. Finally, the user can select who the murderer is.
As for the storyline, we have developed a pretty vague idea. We want the murder victim to be a rich man who was at their holiday home in a hill station in south India. We want to add in some supernatural elements (like Yakshi) to add to the thrill. For aesthetics, we want to have a soundscape that would consist of typical murder mystery elements like a nursery rhyme out of place, jumpscares, etc.”
Materials/Space Needed
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- Projector – This could help give more of a horror vibe, but we are unsure how the controls would work with it
- Slider – to choose the murder suspect at the end (but press a button to confirm)
- Gloves (which the users will wear and touch the objects with)
- Aluminium Foil (to put on the gloves, if this doesn’t work, we use switches on the objects)
- Clue objects which fit the aesthetic of the game, for example a doll if there is a child and some Indian jewellery if possible
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Again, Gopika provided the timeline we discussed so I have copied that as it is too:
“Timeline of the Game
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- Set the story – user interaction includes using buttons to go to the next scene and during this part of the game, the player gets to understand the characters, the story, and the motive of the game.
- Clues inspection – in this part, the user gets to interact with the objects from the murder scene and find clues. The story develops in parallel as the user interacts with the objects to find clues. We were thinking of having the story progress once the user finds, for example, 2 clues. Rather than having a timer to reveal the story. So, the story goes at the pace of the player. Here are some ideas we’ve had for the clues:
- Morse code with LEDs – have it seem like the supernatural element is communicating the clues to the player
- Hidden switch in one of the objects to reveal a clue
- Letters/messages/diary notes are revealed
- Set up a switch that requires simultaneous pressure on multiple items. We were also thinking of having the pressure points be tapped in a certain sequence and a sequence is revealed by an earlier clue.
- User chooses their pick – they can reach this phase by either pressing a button mid-game deciding to finalize their pick or after they’ve found all the clues.
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The user has access to all the clues they found so far – throughout the game – they can access it by clicking a button. This helps them review all the clues they’ve gotten so far as they progress through the game.”
Hardest Part
I think the hardest part is developing the storyline in a satisfying way, such that it fulfils both our and the players’ expectations. Once we have this in place, setting up the visuals for the aesthetic we have in mind would also take some time, but the logical code should be relatively simple. The clues should be very carefully chosen and actually lead to the conclusion of who the killer is for someone who has no previous idea of the game. The audio and visual and interactive aspects should tie in to give you the whole murder mystery experience!
I think that’s all we have for now, and I can’t wait to start working on this practically!