Narrative Game 02.

Still working on the prototype after another 2 weeks, and the challenge was to create a playing card system, which is basically the endgame mechanic, where the player is able to use the clue cards (similar to the board game Cluedo) and guess who did the murder, what was the weapon and the motive.

Still using the plans from the Miro project:

So basically I needed three piles of cards, and each pile represents a clue (Character, Weapon, and Motive (was Location originally, but it is changed since)). The player is able to interact with each pile of cards which fans out the deck for the player and gives the option to inspect every card, the name and the picture of it, and the description.

After the inspection, the player has the option to put these cards in certain slots, which is basically a slot for the final decision. The player is able to change these cards anytime, and for additional immersion, these cards are shows up on the table (not interactable, just visuals). After the three slots are occupied, the player can take a call that confirms if the guess was right or not.

Gameplay-wise the player able to hover the mouse over the cards and it sticks out a little bit (showing that is your selected card) after the player is able to click on the card, which gives a closer look so it is easier to read the description or just simply drag and drop to the slot (or from the slot back to the deck). Every card has its own type, when the card is dragged, the same type of slot is lit up (an outline appears around it) and gives a guide to the player to put the card there. The system is fail-safe, so the player is not able to mismatch the slot type and the card type.

The player can swap between the decks by clicking on the deck on the table, no need to exit from it every time.

This feature was a difficult problem to tackle because the card has a high amount of states (hover the mouse, drag it, click on it, and wait between transition and animation). I worked on it 3 days in a row and still not perfect, but already feels good and good enough to use it and hopefully clear enough to understand.

The pictures, titles, and even the descriptions are placeholders.

And after a week yet again a new version:

Some visual changes happened by the other team members such as toon shader added and new models, but my task is still on the playing card feature.

Some gameplay changes occurred such as interacting with the decks on the table is no longer an end-game mechanic, but just to inspect the cards, technically the same feature, but without the card slots.

The slots feature for the play cards is not discarded, just added to a different feature. From now on the player is able to "Call" the characters on the diorama and use the same slot-based guess game mechanic, but instead of guessing the final case, the player is able to guess a subcase, or side quest if that is better.

So every feature is still there, it just changed places, so the player has more opportunity to guess and feel more involved in the gameplay.

Also had to rework the card system, visual and feature wise it is still similar, but the script behind it changed a lot, so easier to scale and interact with numerous numbers of cards.

Thank you for reading!