Concept
For my midterm project, I decided to create an interactive courtroom experience where the player becomes the judge and has to decide whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty based on testimony and evidence. The original element of my project is that the player must interpret conflicting evidence and testimony rather than relying on obvious clues, making each decision feel uncertain and investigative. I chose this idea because I was interested in how people interpret information differently and how evidence can sometimes be misleading depending on how it’s presented. I wanted to design something that makes the user think critically rather than just react quickly. Also, because I love law and the process in general.
The experience begins with a cover, then an instruction screen that explains what the user has to do. From there, they move through the trial, evidence review, verdict decision, and final results. Each case is randomly generated from a set of scenarios, so the experience feels different every time someone plays.
Design
So far, I have focused on designing both the concept and the structure of the project. I planned out the different screens first (cover, instructions, trial, evidence, verdict, result) so I could understand the flow before building anything. That helped me feel less overwhelmed because I could work on one part at a time instead of the whole game at once. I went ahead and made the backgrounds using Canva and some generative AI pieces with the text (I will implement on-screen text for the testimonies), here are some:
Right now, I have the main structure of the game working, like the interaction controls, screen transitions, and the characters. I separated everything into classes and functions, and made some interactive buttons and keys to move through the different stages. I already have an idea in mind on how I want this game to work, so now I’m just trying to put it all together. I also started designing case scenarios, and I came up with 20. Now I just need to think about designing the visual evidence icons because I will have 5 pieces of evidence displayed for each case.
Visually, I plan to keep the characters stylized and minimal, created using p5 shapes instead of detailed illustrations. I want the courtroom environment to feel cohesive but not overly complex, so the focus stays on interaction and decision-making. The characters (defendant, lawyer, and witness) are drawn from mid-chest up using oop, so I can easily place them anywhere on the screen.
Challenging Aspects
The most frustrating and uncertain part so far has been positioning the elements on the screen, especially when switching to full-screen mode. My characters kept moving to different places, which made it hard to design the layout. Another difficult aspect is managing multiple interactive elements at once, like the hover detection, clickable areas, and screen transitions, because they all require precise logic to work smoothly together. I’m also worried about making all of the pieces of evidence using shapes, but I am thinking about doing them on different sketches, finding inspiration, and then combining them into my final sketch.
Risk Prevention
To reduce the layout issues, I switched from fixed pixel positioning to relative positioning based on the canvas width and height. This allows the objects to scale and stay in the correct space even when the screen size changes. I also used a coordinate display tool that shows my mouse position on screen while designing, to help me put everything precisely instead of guessing.
Also, to manage the interaction complexity, I tested individual features separately before combining them. For example, I built and tested hover detection for the characters before integrating it into the full scene. I also focused on building the basic system early, so I could confirm that the scene transitions worked before adding the detailed images. To me, breaking the project into smaller testable parts made the process feel more manageable.
Moving forward, I want to focus on refining the visuals, adding the pop-up for the testimony and evidence, which you get when you click on the character, and the sounds.