Design Process – Life & Crimes

Brief

Life & Crimes was created as an entry to The Case of the Thinky Game Jam 2023. I was asked to collaborate on the project as a writer and worked with Tim to devise a concept, create characters and historical context to underpin the puzzle-based narrative that forms the basis of the game. It’s an interactive detective puzzle in which players must search databases, read newspaper cuttings and listen to audio tapes to identify key figures in a criminal network. I worked on the writing part of Life & Crimes over a number of weeks prior to its release in December 2023.

Play Life & Crimes

Creative Process

I started working on Life & Crimes in early December after learning about Thinky Games, an initiative that focuses on games with problem-solving and curiosity mechanics at their core. This is the workflow I followed for my writing.

• Introductory Phase and Research
  • First, I explored the Thinky Games community to better understand the type of experience we’d be creating. I learned that these games are centred on creating curiosity, intrigue and problems for players to unpick.
  • Tim’s direction was centred on a text and audio-based interactive puzzle with a thematic grounding in the late 1970s and early 80s criminal underworld and corruption. With that in mind, I researched several British police documentaries and TV detective dramas.
  • Something that really piqued our interest was The Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Command. With over 100 years of history and a specialism in investigating robberies, we decided to design an overarching narrative around crime, corruption and consequences.
• Story Concepting
  • As I was working on this project in collaboration with Tim, I had a bit of time to bounce some ideas around for a concept that would match the gameplay and interface he was developing. Using The Flying Squad as inspiration, I set about designing potential stories that could weave together in a wider puzzle.
  • Eventually, I settled on the idea of a corrupt detective and an organised crime boss with a long interlinked history, which that player can uncover after a huge bank robbery goes wrong and one member of the criminal gang is caught out.
  • I began drafting an overview of the wider story in Confluence, checking in with Tim regularly to ensure the narrative aligned with the database-style game interface he was developing. Once the story beats were laid down, I moved on to character creation, as we wanted to tell the story through different character interviews.
  • This would be done with several different audio clips that should occur non-chronologically as the player searched for keywords they’d hear in the tapes.

• Character Development Phase
  • I began designing a set of characters to deliver the narrative with the required tone and complexity. I designed eight core characters that had interlinking histories, to varying degrees.
  • I chose to map them initially in a table that identified each character’s role in the story, the alias they’d be known by and which audio clip they’d be first mentioned in.
  • This helped me to envisage a rough puzzle structure for the narrative before starting to write the audio scripts. Knowing where (and more importantly when) each character should feature in the overall timeline of the story helped me refine and plan a sequence of events that could then be taken apart and presented non-chronologically in the game.
• Audio Script Writing
  • I then began writing the audio scripts to feature in the game’s playable database. These became three different interviews, each of which shed light on both the characters involved and the chronology of events in the wider narrative.
  • Key snippets of information such as names, dates or locations were added to the scripts and highlighted so that Tim could identify the textual clues as he was implementing the scripts into the game.
  • This part of the writing process was highly engaging, but it was sometimes difficult to decide which keywords to use. I didn’t want to make the clues too obvious, but it was also tricky working out how to present key vocabulary for players to pick up on. It was a bit like trying to put a jigsaw together using only the blank side on the reverse!
  • After some revisions, I wrote scripts for a police interview, a TV/radio interview and a section of a memoir to form the basis of the audio clips. These would be cut up into sections for players to discover by listening and identifying the correct keyword to enter into the database. This would unlock a new clip, and so on.
• Creating Newspaper Clippings
  • Once I’d completed the scripts for the audio recordings, I wrote some additional texts to feature on the main game screen as newspaper clippings.
  • These snippets were meant to shed some light on the wider backstory and give the player some contextual hints about what they’re listening out for, especially at the beginning of the game.
  • They should also give players potential clue words to explore if they struggling to identify them from the audio clips alone.
• Editing and Polish
  • I then spent some time editing and refining the interviews and clippings to create a sufficient level of challenge. Having made a number of these puzzle-based games before, Tim was an excellent mentor and support as I navigated this part of the process.
  • After finishing up the writing, I did some final playtesting before we were ready to submit the game to the jam. I was surprised at how challenging I actually found it, even though I already half knew what I was meant to be looking for!
  • The end result certainly worked to provoke analytical thinking and test my memory skills, so we were happy with the overall outcome of the experience.

What This Project taught Me

This project was an exciting challenge, as it allowed me to practice writing narrative puzzles. It’s the first game of this kind that I’ve worked on, so it gave me a lot of insight into developing a mystery experience through non-chronological accounts. I worked rapidly with Tim to ideate and iterate on the detective drama concept, giving it some cockney flavour as the twists and turns developed. I learned a lot about hiding keywords within the audio logs and newspaper clippings to create a breadcrumb trail for players to try and identify.

This was a new challenge for me and one that I’d be keen to practice further. I think I was wary of overcomplicating things so in my initial drafts some of the keyword placement might’ve been a bit obvious. We addressed this in the editing and rewrites, to ensure the game set a stronger level of challenge for players. In future puzzle-based narratives, I’d take more time over the clue-based mechanics to pitch the level of complexity and challenge with better accuracy. Due to the fast turnaround of the game jam window, this particular writing and creative process was quicker and more agile than I’ve worked on up to now.

I really enjoyed working on Life & Crimes, particularly developing the characters, scripts and backstory alongside Tim. We completed the project in just a couple of weeks, but narrative puzzle writing is definitely something I plan to revisit and refine without time constraints.