The Missing Case of John Doe
The story follows a young 6-year-old boy by the name of Timmy who loves the noir detective shows that his father watches. He likes playing pretend in his home as a detective, going around questioning his toys like witnesses, as well as having a trusted toy deer by the name of John Doe as his partner. One night, John goes missing and it's up to Timmy to uncover the disappearance of his deer friend!
Brainstorming
My team and I began our brainstorming session by throwing out several game ideas. We thought of a tower defense game, a rhythm game similar to Patapon, and then a detective game. My teammate suggested that the game would be something like an interrogation simulator where you will interrogate unique characters that come in to share their testimonies.
In their testimonies, some words may be highlighted and you may click on the words to question them further on the matter. Once you think that you have the full story laid out and know who the culprit is, you can accuse the person.
We thought that the game was a bit too simple and we were trying to think of ways to spice things up. After taking a break, my teammate and I came up with the idea of maybe we could have the concept of a child playing and talking to his toys. That's when we combined the two ideas together and got this concept of a child playing a noir detective.
Story in Three-Act Structure
Our story follows a simple three-act structure, starting with a short cutscene at the start that lays out the exposition of Timmy sleeping soundly in his room when a mysterious figure enters the room and takes away John Doe. The next day, Timmy wakes up and realizes that John is gone, which is the inciting incident for Timmy to set off to find out who took John and where he could be.
In the rising action, Timmy will go around to question his toys to incur details, clues, and evidence about John's disappearance. However, the toys will not so easily spare details unless Timmy can give them something in return. After talking to all the toys and obtaining all the necessary evidence, Timmy deduces that the prime suspect would be his mother, who is preparing lunch in the kitchen.
At the climax, Timmy confronts his mother about John's disappearance, and by using the correct evidence to counter his mother's rebuttals, the whole story unravels and the falling action begins.
Timmy was having a tea party with his sister when tea was spilled onto John. His mother wanted to wash him but Timmy refused and goes to bed with John. She then sneaks into Timmy's room, takes John away, and throws him into the washing machine to be washed.
In the wrap-up, Timmy's mother admits to it and apologizes for her actions. Timmy forgives her, but will never forget the traumatic experience that John had gone through, being tossed into that whirling machine while possibly drowning to his death.
Character Creation
Since this is a mystery story, we decided to work backward. We first came up with what really happened to John, which was that he was trapped in the washing machine because of Timmy's mother. Then, we thought of how she had done it and why she did it. After that, we thought of how she had come to that motive, and then once we have the whole story laid out, we began to think of the middle, how we should present the clues and evidence to the player.
At first, we thought it would be good to include other human characters as suspects, like Timmy's sister and father, but due to time constraints, we decided to stick with just the toys and have his mother be the only suspect. We decided to have 3 toys with differing personalities that would pertain to some stereotypes of noir films. Beary Bernstein, a butler bear, who used to be Timmy's favourite toy until John came along. Bunnie Von Bunbun, an elegant bunny, who is one of Timmy's sister's toys, and Boss Beaks, a bombastic cassowary whom Timmy often teases. We decided to give each of the toys at least one piece of evidence to unveil to Timmy and refer each other to him.
Linking the Evidence
We thought about the things that would need to be proven during Timmy's accusation of his mother, what kind of statements she would make to refute the accusations made against her. We came up with 3 different rebuttals that she could make against Timmy.
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1. Timmy could have just misplaced John himself.
2. Try to pin the blame on Timmy's sister.
3. Having no motive to take John away.
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With these, we came up with 3 different pieces of evidence to dispute those claims. First, John's tie is near the bedroom door. Timmy was sleeping with John, how would his tie end up by the door? Beary gives this evidence to John. Second, his mother's hairpin underneath his bed. This proves that she was in his room and not his sister. Madame BunBun gives him a tip about this evidence. Lastly, a testimony of John being stinky. This would mean that Timmy's mother would have the motive of taking John away to wash him. With that, the whole story unravels itself.
Dialogue Writing
We decided to write and plan out our dialogue on an excel sheet so that we could all write together. For the dialogue, the player is presented with questions that they can ask the toys. When the toys answer, we give words that are taken from the toy's statements as options as a means to pry on particular subjects or topics from the statement.
There are also certain conditions that have to be met in order for some dialogues to be unlocked. An example of this is when you first talk to BunBun, she tells you that she's too hungry and busy to talk. The player will have to go to the kitchen to bring her something to eat first before her dialogue unlocks.
Within certain dialogues, there is also the aforementioned prying part, and this causes the dialogues to branch out, where each option grants a different response. Only one option is correct, and upon selecting said option unlocks either new evidence or information.
When all evidence has been collected, the player can confront and accuse Timmy's mother, where they will have to pick the corresponding evidence to use against the correct statement. Wrong options will cause her to not take the situation seriously and send the player back to their room. Upon trying again, she will sigh and give them another chance. An ending cutscene will play when the player presents all the correct evidence.
Dialogue Writing Excel Sheet
Click the image to get the full excel sheet
Environmental Storytelling
Apart from designing the story, I also drew the art assets for the human characters and environment. Since this is a detective game, I think that environmental storytelling would play a big role in helping the players understand their surroundings and the setting of the game. One such example is on the image to the left. Timmy's drawing of him and John looks new and well maintained while the drawing of him and Beary is tattered with the tape coming off the wall. It shows that Timmy used to have a close bond with Beary until he got John, and ended up neglecting Beary. This is further elaborated when Timmy talks to Beary, he brings up his distaste for John ever since Timmy got him.
There is also another example, where if you refer to the image above at "Linking the Evidence", and "Dialogue Writing", you can see a family portrait, as well as another portrait of Timmy's mother and father. His mother wears a flower hairpin on both portraits. This tells the player that the hairpin evidence that they find under Timmy's bed belongs to his mother.