B2: Creative Industry Response

 Party Game- Murder Party

For my final project I wanna make a party game. My idea for this party game is a social deduction. My idea for the name is 'Murder Party'.

My idea is that the game is set in a Victorian dinner party, when suddenly there is a MURDER! The police are called, and they send a Detective to solve the crime. Players are randomly assigned a role. A majority will be assigned the Innocent role. There will be one Detective and one Murderer. When the game begins everyone will be given a character, their roles, and where they were in the house. The Murderer will be given information on how they killed the victim. Once the murder has happened everyone will be put into a room for discussion. Only the Detective can accuse people and get them out. If the Detective is wrong, they are out, and a new Detective and Murderer is picked at random from the people left. 

This is the pitch that I have made for my game: Murder Party.pptx

Moodboard

This is the mood board that I made to get a feel of the style of the game. I collected these images after I done a lot of research that I am going to write about here. I am very happy with the way I have made this. I cannot wait to see the finished style of the game.

Research

Playside Studios

Founded in 2012, Playside is one of Australia biggest gaming development companies. One of their biggest successful games that they have made was 'Dumb Ways to Die', which has over 360 Million downloads since release. They released a party game called Icy Ropes released in 2016. In the game you are attached to another player and you have to survive the platforming levels. I really like the way you have to work together to get through the level, I want to have something similar for my game. Another game that is going to be released in 2025 is a 3D fighting game called Mouse. The style of the game is based on old 1930s Disney cartoons, particularly Mickey Mouse. 

PlaySide Games (playsidestudios.com)

Horrible Histories

Horrible Histories started out as a book series written by Terry Deary and illustrated by Martin Brown. The book series became very popular enough that a CBBC show was made based on it. I love the rough, gory but minimalist style that those illustrations have and I want to be inspired by that. A simplistic but gory game is what we are going for.

Horrible Histories (book series) - Wikipedia

King of the Castle

King of the Castle is a party game released in 2023. It revolves around the idea of someone playing as a monarch and others playing as nobles trying to reach the best outcome against each other. I adore the art style here. Again its minimalist but very unique in how it gives each character individual personality in how they look. 

King of the Castle | Medieval Multiplayer Game (kingofthecastlegame.com)

Jackbox 

Jackbox is a group of party games that you play with a bunch of your friends. The idea of each game is very different but the general idea is to make your friends laugh. The art styles of each game is again very different to each other but the best way I can describe them is weird and unusual. 

Jackbox Games - Home

Among Us

Among is a party social deduction game released in 2018. The goal of the game is to catch the impostor who is trying to murder the every other player. The art style of the game is very simple and cartoony. I really like the voting aspect of the game as well. This game is extremely popular as well, gaining over 530 million downloads. It is so popular it is engrained in meme culture and is all over the internet. There was no chance that this game wasn't going to be an inspiration.

Among Us on Steam (steampowered.com)

The Victorian Era

The Victorian era occurred between the years 1837-1901. This era developed its own style of upper class fashion. Top hats and highly detailed dresses were very popular during this time. I want to include this fashion on my characters. I want my characters to be a representation of that culture that is no longer with us. There is a very specific genre of Victorian fashion I want to inspire my characters on. This genre is called Gothic Victorian. This genre shows all the high and upper class of usual Victorian fashion but with a twist! It shows more of a scary vibe to it. Its not only fashion that can be described a gothic, so can architecture be described as Gothic. Its where we get our imagery for haunted houses from. As this is a game about murder I want to be inspired by that heavily.

Victorian era | History, Society, & Culture | Britannica

GDD

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vowVt3eS0usOIr9RY5Sam07C_8qkiBeBlJ1N2ow8jX4/edit?usp=sharing

This is the Game design document written by Pearl. It shows off what the game is going to be and what we need to make it. It also shows off how much time we are going to need to make it. I really hope that we manage to make what we set out to make.

Art

From all my research I can now understand where I want to go with my art. I want it to be simplistic, and cartoony but also dark and scary. I want my characters to be distinctive enough to be recognised by shape. I want their silhouette to be iconic and their colours to be unique.  

These are designs for one of the characters that I have decided to name Dr Quackle Hyde. I think I am going to go with the more duck like realistic shape for the final design, and I am very unsure on the shading, I will have to do some testing with it.

I really like this design but the shading is too dark to see the line art and I definitely need to change so its easier to see. I want the characters to stand out and I think I can communicate that better without shading.

This is the final design of Dr Quackle Hyde and I am happy with version. This character is based on the Victorian story Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This is a famous story that influenced a lot of English culture and writing. I am very happy that I could add something inspired by that into our game.

My team has decided to go through some paper prototypes to figure out how the game. It works really well on the paper prototype because the idea is so simple and fun. It is so fun to accuse other people when playing the game.

We have gone through some paper prototypes and found that the plan for the MVP works. It works so well because everyone is very suspicious of each other and it is so much fun to accuse each other of the murder.    

This is the diagram of the logic for the game that will be a mix of physical and digital. This makes the logic of the game pretty simple to understand and comprehend, and thus much easier to make, code and we can understand better what art to make for the game. We will need to make a Trello board not only to make a list of assets but for organisation for the team.

This is my design for the cat character and i have decided to name him Sir Cleocatra. I really like his design because it has inspirations from Victorian archaeologists and explorers of the time. The Victorian era was filled with archaeologists and explorers wanted to discover the mysteries of ancient Egypt.

We had a meeting and decided that we will have a mix of digital and physical card game. The original idea proved to hard to code in Unreal Engine at this point and we are far too late into production to change the game engine just like that, so we are just going to have adapt to the situation. 

This was the original Trello board and it really wasn't good at keeping organisation at all. We definitely need to go through this together. We can edit each ticket if we like to change the task we have.

We discussed the Trello and how to improve it. These are two screen shots of the Trello before and after improvement. The second screenshot is far more detailed with accurate instructions and descriptions. 

We have revised the Trello again and have sorted it by who is doing what and have added priority labels. I think this is much better organisation, and will help use prioritise our tasks better so we can make our game better.  

This is the rat that I drew and I am very proud of the feminine look. Long regal dresses were all the rage in the Victorian Era and I am very happy to add that inspiration to my game. It is also based on Connies rat and we decided to add it to the game as a reference to them. 

This is the Deer character drawn by Pearl. I really like how clean and smooth the lines are. I also really like the hat and scarf on it. I think it is really cute.

This is the rabbit made by Connie. This also has clean lines and i adore the bow added to the top of the ear, it adds a younger upper class girl look to it and I really appreciate that.

This is the code for the randomly assigned roles made by Nathan. I am really proud of what he was able to achieve here as it is really difficult to make randomness in Unreal Engine. 

This is the dinning room that was also drawn by Pearl. I really like how dark the room is. It adds so much Tension and Atmosphere to the discussion part of the Game which is definitely something we are going for. 

This is the wolf that Connie drew, I really like the tie that they added on to, it adds a professional look that a lot of Victorians had at the time. Its simple yet visually interesting to look at and that is something I adore about this style.

This is the screenshot of the Voting screen so far. It has some of the character but currently no background. It was coded by Nathan and I am very happy with how this is turning out. 

This is a prototype of one of the screens made by Nathan it is a right mess and I am very happy that we changed it. It has a mixed of all the screens and that just doesn't work. We just needed to make something that worked and the new ones were much better. 

This Fox was also drawn by Connie. This design was inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Another story made and set in Victorian times. Sherlock Holmes has existed for over 100 years and has been adapted countless times. It is ingrained not only in English culture but world culture and I am very happy to have that influence in my game. 

Post Mortem

Putting all our work together I think this Game turned out rather well. The art style of the game came out really good and it was really consistent which is an amazing feet considering that there were three artists on this team who have completely different ideas on how to create art. Another thing that I am really proud of is that I created the initial idea and was able to make sure everything went smoothly. The inspirations for the style of the game were really strong to, the game had inspiration from Playside studio games, Among Us, Horrible Histories and most importantly, the Victorian Era. These Inspirations and their research was really important to the game and how the art style came out and I am really proud of that. Another thing I am proud of is how Nathan managed to code the random role assignment feature in Unreal Engine which was really difficult. Unfortunately due to the game being a mix of digital and real life playing cards, I am currently unable to show gameplay footage of the game. I really wish that my original idea on how to play the game worked but that proved too difficult and we had to change the game in a fundamental way. I am also really happy with how we organised the production of the game with changing and debating the Trello board that we had created.