Solving the #1 Problem for Mystery Game Developers
Early access to a new tool built specifically for Mystery Gamedev.
Want to know the biggest mistake mystery game developers make?
Imagine this: you have a great idea for a game that excites you, so you just dive in and start building it.
But after a few weeks, or maybe a few months, the excitement wears off, and you start getting overwhelmed with all the information you need to manage:
Characters will lie, so what is the true sequence of events?
Where is each character during each scene, and who has an alibi?
Does every clue appear, and do they appear in a logical order?
What does the player know that the characters don't know?
Should you change the solution, and what else changes as a result?
And ultimately, you end up getting confused by your own story.
Of course, mystery games are supposed to be puzzles — but for the audience, not the creator!
Why staying organized is worth it
Failure to stay organized is what keeps a great idea from becoming a great mystery game.
Making mystery games is all about managing the flow of information: from the creator, to the game world, and then finally to the player.
The player must interact with the game world in order to piece together the story the creator wanted to tell.
So, when you can't even keep your own story straight, how do you expect players to figure it out?
Let's not pretend that writing isn't an iterative process. It's common to think of different ways the story could go while you write it, and then partway through, you change your mind. And maybe it's actually worth doing.
But then you run the risk of creating a logic error.
You started writing the story with a particular solution in mind, so switching to a different solution means you need to go back through what you've already written, and adjust it to the new set of facts.
Clues that used to be meaningful are turned into misdirection at best, and logical contradictions at worst.
That's challenging enough for a linear story, but since games are interactive, you're often dealing with non-linear narratives.
How does one small change ripple across different branching storylines?
How does modifying one clue affect how players interactively solve the puzzle?
These are the questions we have to ask ourselves all the time. And in many cases, the answer is simply that we have no idea, and we hope for the best.
The best way to mitigate those problems, so far, is writing a mystery outline.
As I always say: it is better to rewrite 1,000 words of an outline, than 10,000 words of a story.
Organizing your mystery with outlines
I've always used an outline for writing my mystery games, but it didn't solve all of my problems.
Call me old-fashioned, but I always used a plain text file in Notepad to keep track of my stories — plus good old pen and paper when I wasn't around a computer.
Everyone has their own way of doing it — you can use Google Docs, Excel spreadsheets, Notion templates, or even flowcharting software.
Outlines can be text documents, they can have pictures, or they can be charts or diagrams, or they can be some combination of all of those — whatever helps you get the job done.
You might even want more than one outline: a short, birds-eye view of the story, followed by a longer, more detailed explanation of what happens. Maybe add a flowchart to visualize player choices or general story flow, plus a chart to track how characters are related to each other...
Really, the number of ways you can organize a mystery game is almost endless.
But organizing is not building, and it is easy to get addicted to planning your game rather than actually finishing it.
Every time you modify your plan, you increase your scope, simply because you moved the goalposts further back.
You might have been almost done, but you intentionally reset your progress in the hopes of making a better story.
The reason why we organize our stories in the first place should be to save time, not to waste it.
My experience with mystery outlines
It has happened to me, and to many developers I personally know. We enjoy thinking about our project, changing pieces of it here or there — whether it's out of creative fun, or fear of imperfection.
My first official mystery game, Detective Butler: Maiden Voyage Murder, took two years to develop. That first year was spent creating the first draft, and technically it was a completed game. But after showing the game to beta testers, I spent the second year rewriting many parts of the story.
During its development, I did actually outline the story. The problem was that I kept changing the outline, and then had to go and rewrite the already-written story to match the new outline.
Ultimately, the rewrites were well worth it. But they still took a full year, and I was often struggling to comprehend the web of puzzles I had intentionally created.
Entire scenes and solutions to mysteries were constantly changing — even the questions!
In the original story, the murder was discovered in the bedroom, the locked room setup was completely different, and the initial solution involved rope-swinging across balconies.
The characters often misplaced their keys, so between keeping track of who had which key, especially when the locked room setup involved two different locked rooms, and a victim who had gone missing for nearly a full day, there was a lot of room for me to change the exact solution.
And I did. A lot.
I should have learned my lesson there, but those problems only increased when working on the sequel.
The first game was a highly linear story, but in the second game, I tried adding non-linear gameplay. I drew countless diagrams trying to wrap my head around the puzzles and all the different ways they could be solved.
At the same time, my story and characters were also constantly changing. Trying to reconcile those two aspects — the story and puzzle — was the most difficult part that prevented me from finishing the game.
And again, I fell into the trap of writing the actual story before writing the outline. I actually think I have more outlines than I have actual text!
When I worked with other mystery game developers to create Reaplaced in 2023, we only had 30 days to make the game (not unlike our annual Mystery Game Jam). Considering my other projects took years, and not wanting to make those same mistakes, I knew we had to plan carefully, or we wouldn't come close to getting it done in time.
So we first designed the outline, and stuck to the outline while writing the story. All changes to the story were made during the outlining phase, and if there were any changes during writing, it was minimal (nothing significant for the plot).
And as a result, the game was finished — a solid 2 or 3 hour experience — and won 3rd place in the competition.
That's the importance of starting with an outline, and sticking to it.
A new tool for staying organized
Now of course, you might be aiming for a mystery more complex than Reaplaced, with longer playtime, more interactivity, more non-linearity, and potentially branching paths.
Like I said before, there are ways to outline your story using text documents, pen and paper, or other tools.
But all of those tools have been general-purpose tools, not particularly aimed at mystery creators, or even game developers in general.
What mystery game developers have long needed is a custom-made tool that helps us easily make changes to our stories without costing us a significant amount of time getting back up to speed.
We've needed a way to organize all of the intentionally confusing information about our story, without confusing ourselves in the process.
So recently, after much thought, I figured out a way to build a tool that solves this problem.
In January of this year, I began prototyping a tool designed to help mystery game developers outline their games.
It combines the benefits of note-taking apps with flowchart software, to solve the very specific problems that we have.
I have many ambitious plans for the tool, with the ultimate goal of saving time for all mystery game developers (not just myself).
Right now it's still an early prototype, but at the moment you can:
Create and organize scenes in a clear flowchart.
Add and track characters, places, and clues.
Map relationships between characters.
Filter your flowchart for key info.
I've also implemented some other big features, but they aren't quite ready to be revealed to the general public — it will take a few months at least.
But a handful of notable developers have seen the prototype in action, and they’ve all told me they wish they had this tool when making their own games years ago.
Like I said at the start: I want you to spend most of your time having fun creating your game, not being confused by your own story.
Current limitations
All users are limited to one project for now.
However, the size of your project is mostly unlimited. That's because almost all of your project data is being stored locally (the exceptions, for now, being the project name and description). Long-term, there will be cloud storage support, but local storage is the easiest way for us to get started.
Keep in mind that if you clear your browser's local storage, you will permanently lose your project data, so be careful! This also means that you will not be able to access that data from a different browser or different device.
The current lack of cloud support also means the tool is primarily aimed at solo developers, or teams where one person does all of the story building. We intend to fully support cloud storage and team collaboration in the future.
Test out the prototype today
Sounds exciting? Here's how to get started:
Go to the app website here.
Click on the login link, which redirects you to the Mystery Gamedev website.
Login using your Mystery Gamedev account (or register if you don't have one — you will also need to verify your email).
The page will redirect you back to the app website, and you will be able to create your project.
Please be aware that, this is indeed a very early prototype — expect lots of updates and bugfixes in the future.
But there’s a saying in software development that suggests it is better to ship early, even if it’s not 100% ready yet, so that’s what I’m doing here.
Some instructions on how to use the app are included in the app itself, but over time I will add more detailed documentation, including videos of how to use it.
Right now, I’m opening it up to early adopters, willing to try something new and potentially shape the direction of the tool.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for the tool, feel free to reach out to me on the Mystery Gamedev Discord server. There will soon be a method in-app for sending beta feedback, too.
I want to make sure I'm building the best tool for mystery game development, so your feedback is truly important.
Thanks for reading!
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