6 Tips for the Mystery Game Jam
How to make a great mystery game in a short amount of time
On April 4th, our annual Mystery Game Jam began!
It’s a friendly competition where developers work together — or go it alone — to create a mystery game in 30 days.
This year’s turnout is absolutely incredible — with over 500 registered participants, we more than 3x’d last year’s numbers! And at the same time, we surpassed 500 Discord members, nearly at 600 by the time of this article!
So I just have to say — thank you all so much! A lot of people have put a lot of trust in me to make sure this event runs smoothly, and I do not want to disappoint.
This year also includes voting, with the top 3 winners receiving special recognition.
On April 2nd, our Discord community held a group poll for the jam’s theme. We had quite a few options to choose from, but within the first 5 minutes one of them instantly took the lead and never let go of it: “Last Message!”
So, all submitted games will need to integrate that theme in some way.
Next year, I’ll be sure to hide the poll results until voting ends. Not only would it be more exciting, but it’s possible some chose to vote for the theme with the highest votes simply because it would give them more time to prepare if it remained in the lead the whole time. Nonetheless, I think it is still a great theme!
Now, I’ve already written an article on how to get others to rate your game highly, but someone asked specifically about help with thinking up small game ideas — and I think that’s worth a writeup, too.
Whether you’re an aspiring game dev, or just a fan who wants to know what goes into the creation of your favorite mystery games, I hope you enjoy today’s topic!
Here are 6 tips that will help you make a great mystery game in a short amount of time:
1. Play to your strengths
It should go without saying, but you want to lean into your strengths while avoiding your weaknesses.
With only have 30 days to make a game, you don’t want to spend most of that time learning something totally new (unless you want to challenge yourself).
If you’re good at programming, avoid making a game that relies heavily on visuals (like a visual novel) — try for something more abstract instead.
If you’re good at art, the inverse is true — use that skill to your advantage to make something that looks beautiful even if it’s not technically deep.
Whatever idea you brainstorm should reflect your core strengths — and if you’re on a team, the core strengths of your team, too.
2. Plan for a smaller scope
Although the deadline for the Mystery Game Jam is approximately 30 days, that doesn’t mean you actually need to spend all 30 days making your game.
You could just spend a couple weeks, or one week, or even a single weekend instead.
Something will almost always go wrong, and emergencies will almost always come up — your 14-day plan could easily turn into a 28-day execution, coming in just barely under the time limit.
Don’t underestimate the benefits that come from limiting the scope of your game.
3. Embrace your limits
Similar to the previous point, you should use limits to your creative advantage.
Just brainstorm one core game mechanic, or one core story idea.
Wrap the whole game around that one thing.
My suggestion is to just plan a mystery as normal around that idea — let it grow naturally — but then cut off the parts that aren’t truly necessary.
So you might come up with an idea that involves 10 characters, but you quickly find a way to make it work with just five — or maybe even just three.
Instead of travelling across a bunch of different locations, the story can just take place in one location, or even just one room.
You don’t need to go ultra-minimalist, but some of the most creative works in history came from people finding ways to innovate around limitations once thought impossible.
Challenge your limiting beliefs and push yourself to succeed — but don’t burn out.
4. Do less, polish more
I’ve often found that I spend too much time building and not enough time polishing and marketing.
Although marketing is its own topic not really relevant to the game jam, we can at least talk about polishing right now.
A 30 minute game that is highly polished and leaves a great impression is always better than 3 hour game that is frustrating to play and painful to look at.
Simply put: a short burst of fun is always better than a long slog of punishment.
Your game is not just its story or its mechanics, but its combination and presentation of both.
The overall experience matters — so when you fixate on just one part of it for too long, you lose sight of the big picture.
And remember: you can always expand the scope of the game later.
Right now, your goal is to captivate an audience — get them hooked with a great first impression, and make them want to come back for more.
So keep the scope small, deliver a fantastic first impression, and then go back to expand upon your ideas in more detail after the jam is over.
5. Study short-form media
Probably the best advice I can give for actual idea generation is to simply look at what others have done right.
Go watch some short films on YouTube — they’re free education on the topic. You’d be amazed at what these filmmakers can squeeze into just 10 minutes of video.
Or if you prefer books, the classic Two-Minute Mysteries inspired the short mysteries in Methods: The Detective Competition.
You will quickly notice that all short-form media works with a highly limited number of characters, in a constrained setting, and focused solely on one core idea that is executed well.
That’s why I had to mention all of those points up until now.
Now of course, don’t copy or plagiarize — but see how they do things, and see what makes a good story idea actually good in practice.
Use your own life experiences — or other things that motivate you or that you find interesting — and combine it with these short-form storytelling techniques.
6. Design for efficient scale
Efficient scale is the unique quality that video games bring to mysteries.
When you design your mystery game around a scalable system, you can extract hundreds of hours of gameplay out of even the smallest game loop.
Whether it’s Super Smash Bros., The Binding of Isaac, or Vampire Survivors, many successful games (especially indie games) thrive on small but highly replayable game loops.
Mystery games have always struggled in this regard, being mostly linear and text-based — but I strongly believe there is plenty of opportunity for innovation here.
Books and movies are typically only experienced once (though some are certainly worth a second or third viewing).
Games, on the other hand, are intended to be played dozens — if not hundreds — of times.
If you spend 30 days writing a book, engagement with that book only lasts so long.
If you spend 30 days making a game, people can be playing it for weeks, months, or even years.
Also, scalability is not just about length, but about modularity, too.
When you design a true game system, you should easily be able to add new components, or swap out components, to quickly create new experiences (which add to the length).
For example, if you make a platformer, it might take you a while to first create the physics and collision system — but after that, you can easily create a wide variety of levels with all the building blocks involved.
Adding new features and obstacles still takes effort, but those aspects can also scale for maximum efficiency.
So you end up getting exponentially faster at producing exponentially more content.
It’s not any different for mystery games.
Once you build your core gameplay mechanic — whether it’s an investigation system or deduction system or anything else — you can create as many new mystery scenarios as you want quickly and easily.
You can also re-use characters and locations across mysteries (and their assets) if they all take place in the same canon universe. Adding new content could be as simple as adding a new set of characters or locations, too.
And the best part of this kind of modularity is that it also works in reverse: you can easily cut content if you run out of time.
So when you're short on time, it's still worth thinking big — just focus on scalability, not scope.
Conclusion
I hope you find these tips helpful.
If you find this to be a bit overwhelming, that’s okay — it’s definitely not easy!
Like I mentioned previously, I am creating a number of tools and educational resources to help others with their mystery gamedev goals.
I want to see most of your time spent having fun designing a game, rather than wasting time and effort on things that don’t need to be so complicated anyway.
If that sounds like a great plan to you, subscribe to this newsletter and you’ll be the first to know!
And good luck to everyone with your submissions — I can’t wait to see what everyone makes!!!
Thanks for reading!
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