Andrew Stewart – Game Designer

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENH8l7hSkaM

Investigations is a mystery puzzle game made for Cardboard VR. In Investigations players must solve the murder of Matthew Durbridge, New York’s (former) preeminent private eye. Players do this by scouring the crime scene for clues to determine which of three suspects is the killer. Once confident in their deductions players make their accusation, rightly or wrongly.

Investigation’s aesthetic draws on classic ‘noir’ detective fiction, with 1920’s set and dressing cast in greyscale and strong shadows. The models used in game maximise the use of the lighting with with simple structure and clean lines.

A unique challenge for Cardboard VR is the requirement for applications to function without any input save for the orientation tracking of the phone. While some headsets have tap support this is not universal so I designed Investigation to be playable using only head tracking. In game all actions are performed by looking at the relevant object in the scene for a second, after which the object’s function is carried out.

Investigations was produced over four weeks, with all assets produced independently, with the exception of fonts (sourced from dafont.com, see credits) and sounds (sourced from freesound.org, see credits).