I'm thinking of making a detective/mystery game. What mechanics could go into a game like this? This is what I've thought of so far.
1. Traditional adventure game find item->use item in right place.
2. Dialogue choices.
3. Hidden item search.
4. Use correct item during dialogue with opponent. (i.e. Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney)
5. Select contradictory sentence from opponent dialogue (i.e. Danganronpa)
6. QTE's (i.e. TellTale stuff)
Anything else that you've come across that you think works really well?
Detective/Mystery Game Mechanics
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Pick lock?
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Bring correct people to correct location at a correct time?
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- Remember details about scenes you had seen earlier.
- Decipher clues to figure out what location to visit next. (e.g. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego)
- Solve puzzles to gain access to new areas (e.g. Museum Madness, Talos Principle) for investigation
- Interrogate suspects, using techniques to manipulate their mode (panic, calm, anger, etc.)
- Simulate laboratory techniques, such as using chemicals to reveal fingerprints or traces of DNA
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I guess I could point you towards the CSI games series, and that'd be it.
pretty much everything you need, is there.... interrogation, puzzle solving, clue gathering, data research, behavior reading.... -
Besides the above mentioned, I've seen these as well:
Link clues together. (As used by the Enigmatis series and the Miles Edgeworth spin-off game)
(Crime) Scene reconstruction. (as used in the 9 Clues series) -
Mark Brown has a youtube video 'What makes a good detective game?' Daresay his channel in general should be required viewing for any budding game designer.
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That also depends on if it's a series of cases or just one big mystery adventure game.
I think one fun thing is also conditional or something like a time-limit.
It's not just gathering evidences and testimonies, but you have to make assumption to press the mystery on. It'll become a race between whether or not you can find the "who," "how" and "why" in time before the "who" can destroy evidence or kill more people who can give valuable testimonies. It's not like a race against the clock, but more like how much stamina is consumed by investigation. The less stamina, the more the perpetrator can destroy more evidences.
Another thing I can think of is... Assumption making or Suspect elimination.
In each stage of the game, instead of given choices to choose, the player must choose eliminate suspects out by using evidences that they can find in a puzzle-game-like manner. After process of elimination, the player can choose the left-over suspect to pursue for more evidences which will unlock more dialogue choices, or place to explore. Combine with time-limit above, the player might need to choose wisely to make them think with the mystery.
Then again, this still depends on the game. I got this idea thanks to the video suggestion above. -
the one thing I hated from detective/medical procedure shows like House.Assumption making
"the symptom is THIS, so it must be THAT disease!"
no, dumbass! you don't guess the disease by looking at the symptom, you order an analysis, use the analysis to discard what doesn't fit and THEN resolve the disease.
that's how I grew to predict the outcome of shows like CSI.
everyone they question is a suspect until something clears them.... which you yourself can do in your head based on the dialogue and the evidence discovered.
by the end of the third act, you can already guess who the killer is, based on who's left from the people they met so far (because they *NEVER* pin it on someone who hasn't been shown on screen at least once! :D )