3 Steps to Make a Mystery Game in 30 Days or Less
3 Steps to Make a Mystery Game in 30 Days or Less
A guide to help you get ready for the Mystery Game Jam!
Happy Mystery Monday!
The Mystery Game Jam will begin in just three days!
Over 80 people have signed up for it, and many of them have already joined our Discord server to form teams. So today, I'm going to give you all some tips to help anyone get started making their first mystery game!
Time management is important for any project, but it's especially crucial for a game jam. Most game jams only last a few days at most, but the Mystery Game Jam will run for an entire month, just so that you aren't too stressed out.
I'm a big fan of work-life balance, so I don't want anyone to crunch too badly for this event. Especially since there are many complicated parts to mystery game development that make it especially difficult.
So even though you have 30 days to make a game, I would recommend trying to aim for a game you can complete in 15 days instead. Or maybe even less than that. You will quickly find that your game's scope will expand as you start brainstorming more ideas for it.
So then the next logical question is: how do you make a mystery game in such a short amount of time?
Let's break the process down into 3 key parts: your idea, outline, and demo.
1. Decide on your core idea
There are many things to consider when brainstorming ideas and settling on just one, so I'll give you what I think are the most important for getting started.
Pick a topic that you know a lot about, or want to learn a lot about. For example, I made the mistake of picking a cruise ship for the setting of Detective Butler, even though I had never been on one and had no desire to ever go on one. (I should have picked something closer to technology or computers.)
The result was that I spent many hours on research, which became tedious and boring. The last thing you want for your project is to let it become tedious and boring, because that's what will make you want to drop it.
Motivation is the single greatest factor that will allow you to start and finish your game. And you will not be sufficiently motivated without the right idea.
Similarly, you should determine your target audience. Are you going to make a gritty noir mystery? Or a kid-friendly cozy? Will you make an easy to read visual novel? Or a complex stat-raising strategy game? Which one interests you more? Your process for creating each game will change greatly depending on its audience.
When brainstorming the mystery itself, you should begin with the end in mind. Begin with an everyday observation. Then wrap it in a mystery and deliver it to the player. Golden age mystery author G.K. Chesterton explained it best:
...The principle that the detective story like every literary form starts with an idea, and does not merely start out to find one, applies also to its more material mechanical detail. Where the story turns upon detection, it is still necessary that the writer should begin from the inside, though the detective approaches from the outside. Every good problem of this type originates in a positive notion, which is in itself a simple notion; some fact of daily life that the writer can remember and the reader can forget. But anyhow, a tale has to be founded on a truth; and though opium may be added to it, it must not merely be an opium dream.
By starting with a observation you already know, you won’t waste any time. And your goal is simply to communicate that observation with people who don’t know it. If you love what you’re writing about, then that shouldn’t be too hard to pull off!
2. Outline your mystery
Your mystery outline, more generally known as a game design document, will help you transform your idea into a playable game.
Your outline is your guide. You refer back to it whenever you're not sure what to do. If you change your guide, you will quickly get lost and end up in circles. Some people can write without an outline, but that's like going hiking without a map. If you're going to do that, you had better know what you're doing.
Your outline doesn't need to be very long. Reaplaced, the game which won us 3rd place in the Spooktober game jam, had an outline of 5,000 words. The game itself was 25,000 words and about 2 or 3 hours long.
A good outline will contain the following things:
Mystery summary. Explain your mystery in one sentence. This will give you a target to aim for while writing and planning. For Detective Butler: "A wealthy CEO is murdered on a cruise ship, and his son teams up with Detective Butler to solve the mystery."
Project title. You’ll likely change it, so it doesn't need to be perfect, but it should reflect the story's theme.
List of characters. Decide how many characters your mystery will involve — likely just a few to keep things simple. Even if you don't have names for them, you should determine certain things about them. Are they male or female? Young or old? What is their occupation? Which one is the victim, and which one is the killer?
Scene by scene breakdown. This is the bulk of your outline. Describe what happens at a high level: "The detective goes to the bedroom, where he finds a key hidden in a drawer. He realizes it's the key to the locked room from earlier, so he goes there and opens it to find... the dead body of Person X."
Drawings and/or detailed descriptions of each location. You don't have to be an artist yourself — stick figures work just fine. But especially if you are working with an artist, even the most basic picture can help convey your vision to them. Pictures will also help you keep details straight in your own mind.
Emphasized clues. Make it clear in your outline what's important and what's not. Explain the importance of each clue and how they are found.
Description of gameplay mechanics. Visual novels tend to include character profiles or a history of events to remind players of what happened so far. More complex games may involve pointing and clicking, dialogue options, or roaming around environments. Or maybe your game is trying something really innovative. Make sure your gameplay weaves itself neatly into the pursuit of truth.
If your outline meets all of the above criteria, you should have a pretty solid plan of action. You may need to spend some time revising it back and forth to settle on some key details. But at a certain point, you need to say enough is enough, and stick to what you have written.
Just remember, the purpose of your outline is not only to help you write, but to help you understand your mystery’s logic and eliminate any plot holes before it’s too late.
More tips for creating your outline can be found here.
3. Create a playable demo
Also known as a prototype, your demo should be just enough to convey the general idea of what your game is all about. You don't actually need to submit a finished game to this game jam, although if you keep your scope small, you should be able to do it. But the goal is really just to motivate you to get started making something.
Game jams are great for creating prototypes because of the short time limit. You're forced to think quickly and make fast decisions. But most importantly, you're forced to show something that isn't quite ready yet. There's a good saying in software: if you’re not embarrassed to show the first version of your product, then you launched it too late. The same thing is true for game prototypes.
Let’s end today’s article (what a long one!) with three pieces of advice for your demo:
Get right to the gameplay. Show off what makes your game unique as quickly as possible. If your game is more story-based, then get to the mystery as quickly as possible. This was always true advice for writing mystery stories, but it is even more true now in the attention economy.
Do more with less. I used to think that one or two hours was a good demo, but games like Locke(d) prove you can absolutely deliver a great experience in under 30 minutes. If you recall last week's newsletter, my only complaint was that the pacing was a little slow sometimes and that I couldn't get to the gameplay quickly enough. But once I did, it was super fun. It is better to have a short demo that is really fun than a long demo that puts players to sleep.
End on a cliffhanger, especially a puzzle. My demo for Detective Butler ended on the discovery of the victim's corpse, while the demo for Jisei ended shortly before the detective gave the answer. Both options leave the player with something to think about, and a reason to come back to your game.
You might want to check out this article for even more tips for getting started.
Best of luck, and I can’t wait to see what you all create in the month ahead!
Thanks for reading!
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