Detective Trowel & The Rotten Posy

Engine: Unity

Programming Tools: MS Visual Studio

Language: C#

Role: Programmer

Team Size: 5

Date: 2023 (University Third Year)

Genre: Point & Click (Narrative game)

Download: https://oliminor.itch.io/detective-trowel-the-rotten-posy

Git: https://github.com/Oliminor/NarrativeGameTrowel

Blog: Narrative Game blog

The development process included (My part):

• Implement the camera system (Cinemachine) to navigate the game area (office).

• Implement the evidence card system and card template so that the player can pick up cards, observe them, and unlock new dialogues with NPCs.

• The outline effect is a third-party asset, but I implemented the system around it to show when the player interacts with objects using Interface.

• Implement the task system so that the game designer can create a focused (linear) story and unlock and lock objects based on the player's progress.

• Implement procedural animation to move the detective's hands and the pieces on the table.

• The Dialogue system was implemented by another team member, but I modified it to integrate tasks and lock or unlock objects based on the triggered dialogue. I also created the typewriter feature to make the text appear gradually.

• Implemented light changeing system so the designers able to change the lights based on the lights using Scriptable objects.

• Implement evidence spots so that the player can investigate points on the diorama to earn more information or additional evidence cards.

• Add a smoke effect particle when the main character is stressed.

• Implement transition fade in and fade out effects.

Pitch

Detective Trowel & The Rotten Posy is a point & clicker where the goal is to investigate the death of Bloomsted Council-head Col Tulip.

Description

Detective Trowel & The Rotten Posy takes place in the detective office (Trowel), and the playing area is his desk, where he builds dioramas based on the visited scenery and replays the case to figure out what happened with Col Tulip. To progress in this game, the player has to talk with the NPCs to get more information about the case and search for evidence around the dioramas to earn evidence cards. The evidence cards are another way to interact with other NPCs and gain further information about the case. However, if the player shows the wrong card, the detective gets stressed and smokes a cigarette to calm down. When the cigarette pack is empty, the game starts over.

Storyline (Made by someone else):

Group

In this group project, the task was to create a narrative game. The first and most important part was to create a plan. For that, we chose to use Miro to create the outline of the story narrative, and based on that, the necessary game mechanics. In this stage, my personal role was to make sure the game mechanics ideas were realistic enough to implement them. After the outline for the project was done, we moved the task list to Trello to follow the progress and make sure every necessary task was finished, and the game was presentable.