A logic debate mystery deckbuilder?! 😮

And how to brainstorm innovative ideas for your own game!

Happy Mystery Monday!

The Deckbuilder Fest begins today on Steam, which is actually great timing for what I wanted to talk about in today's post.

I’ve been getting questions about how you can come up with ideas for mystery games that aren’t strictly visual novels, so today’s post will highlight exactly that.

As you might expect, there aren't a whole lot of mystery-themed deckbuilders, but I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across one that really caught my attention.

Reality Layer Zero

Your grandfather has been accused of murder. You've been summoned by the city of Liere to testify in his defense. You must prove his innocence, or he will be executed.

Shortly after arriving in the city, you acquired a strange ability that allows you to control others' minds by defeating them in a verbal debate.

With this... You might be able to uncover the truth.

I decided to give the demo a "quick" playthrough to try out the card mechanics, and although I still haven't finished it after 2 hours, there is just so much to this game that it really stands out to me as a hidden gem worth talking about today.

Overhead shot of the town during a free-roam investigation section.

The visuals are a beautiful mix of 2D characters on 3D environments. The soundtrack, especially during the card battles and investigation sections, is excellent. The writing is clever, and the textbox uses a font eerily similar to what Umineko and Detective Butler use, so that makes me happy too.

The game plays as a unique mix of RPG, visual novel, and deckbuilder. My only complaint is that sometimes things got a little slow. Out of the 2 hours I spent on the demo, I only experienced 3 card battles. Most of that time was spent reading the visual novel sections, and the remainder was spent moving around the map investigating the crime scene and searching for suspects.

The textbox waits for a click after every sentence — a nice, immersive touch.

However, for the few times you do interact with it, the card system is considerably well planned out. I'll let an excerpt from the developer's blog posts explain:

The debating system is loosely based on a model for persuasion that Aristotle put forward in The Art of Rhetoric. The three modes—Logos, Ethos, and Pathos—as well as the concept of an “Enthymeme”—can be traced directly to that work.

Each argument has an associated cost represented by its premises, or the amount of points from each of the three rhetorical modes required to resonate (score) the argument.

On resonance, the argument's weight will be applied to your resonance meter. Fill this meter to deplete your opponent's willpower and, ultimately, defeat them.

Who wouldn’t want a Minor Ad Hominem Reflector in real life?

If you learned about discrete math or philosophy in college (like me) then you will love seeing such attention to detail put into both the game mechanics and narrative. My two favorite logical concepts, Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens, even made an appearance in the game! If you have no idea what that means, don't worry, I was planning on explaining these things at some point later on. Logical debate is a key component to thinking like a detective, after all.

Anyway, my point is that the card system revolves around these logical concepts, both thematically and mechanically. Your goal is to construct arguments by placing premise cards while avoiding the criticism of your opponent.

I am definitely not an expert on deckbuilders (though I did play a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up), but as a mystery and debate enthusiast I really enjoyed what I played.

Close-up camera angles also capture the 3D scenes in a cool way.

Back in 2016, I tried to implement my own debate system for Detective Butler 2. My system also had dual healthbars, but instead of the weights being assigned to abstract concepts, they were assigned to clues related to the case — which you would gather, incidentally, by exploring a 3D world scattered with 2D sprites. (I’m not biased!)

My result was so terrible, though, that I decided to scrap it all. I couldn’t model 3D to save my life, and I realized that trying to design a debate system was so difficult that it could very well be its own game — and that really wasn’t my goal with DB2.

But Reality Layer Zero is a game precisely designed around logical debate. And as far as I can tell, it’s a solo effort, which makes it all the more impressive. It’s still in development, so if it sounds like something up your alley, you can support it by adding it to your wishlist.

What can developers learn from this game?

Like I said at the beginning, I wanted to give some tips for coming up with ideas for your mystery game today, since that’s what at least 50 people will be doing for the Mystery Game Jam soon! (Wow! That’s a lot of people signed up already!)

So let’s end this post with 4 types of ideas, and how to brainstorm for them:

1. Story ideas. These are the ideas you are probably most familiar with, like when you’re trying to write a mystery story. My best advice is to pick a topic or theme you know a lot about or want to learn about. In this game’s case, the topic was logical debate. Every aspect of the story — from the unfair court trial, to the guards who can’t be reasoned with in a group, to the name of the world being “Liere” (which I can only hope is a pun on “Liar”), everything in the story derives its meaning from the core theme.

2. Gameplay ideas. As mentioned earlier, the card battle system has unique gameplay mechanics. My best advice here is to not try to do too much at the same time (a lesson I learned from my own attempt at this). Make your gameplay systems similar enough to existing games so that people know how to play them, but add a unique twist that makes people want to play your game more than others.

3. Presentation ideas. The story could’ve been told 100% as a visual novel, but the decision to include RPG gameplay (to search for clues and suspects) and card battles makes the game stand out a lot. The decision to use a mix of 2D and 3D also gives the game a special charm. Try to think of how your game can present itself in a unique way, especially if you can lean into your own art style.

4. Puzzle ideas. RLZ has a few puzzles outside of the main murder mystery, namely searching for a particular character hidden in the environment, and selecting a clue to answer a question mid-debate. Draw from your story and gameplay ideas to come up with puzzle ideas that are unique to your game.

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Thanks for reading!

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