Blind Justice: Crafting a Narrative
A little over a year ago my partner in crime, Jackson, came to me with an idea…
“Let’s create an app version of the board game Secret Hitler”
Having never played the game myself at that point in time, I thought “sure, why not, how hard can it be…” and so that is what we set about doing. Kind of.
Not wanting to get sued, the first thing Jackson and I agreed on was that it had to be an original game, with an original story and all original artwork; what we wanted to create in the end was a game that was inspired by the spirit with which Secret Hitler was created and which mimicked the gameplay that makes games like it (and others before it) so much fun to play, but obviously as a mobile app rather than as a physical board game.
Serendipitously a theme was essentially delivered to us care of the political climate in the US and the timeliness of some key associates to Individual 1 being investigated, arrested and tried as part of the Mueller investigation; and so, without much in the way of head-scratching, Blind Justice was born.
Once we decided on a theme for the game, crafting the narrative really came down to developing a story that in a very loose way followed the process of creating the “establishment”, picking a visual style that would support the story we were telling and developing characters that would carry that story all the way through to the end.
The story of Blind Justice is pretty simple, you have two sides, The Justice Department and The Criminals. The criminals are led by the Kingpin who, like all good criminal bosses, is seeking power through corrupting the legal system with the help of a criminal network. Justice on the other hand is fighting to protect the system from the criminals, however often by using the same tactics employed by the very people they’re fighting.
The visual style of Blind Justice was crafted to mimic the various items and motifs you would come across on any day with enough time spent navigating the legal system in the United States. Government style seals to represent each side, legal documents and folders and some good old fashioned patriotism make up the bulk of the styling with dash of some skeuomorphism to bring the board game feeling back (just a bit).
The characters that we developed for Blind Justice are, in a way, inspired by some of the central figures in the media during this time in history. I’m not going to say who, I’ll just let you make your own assumptions about who was, and wasn’t, invading my subconscious as I developed each character.
Blind Justice is the first game for MRKT Project and its definitely been a fun ride so; my favourite part has definitely been crafting the narrative and everything that has gone with it. Blind Justice may poke fun at a particularly sensitive time period for some, but that is kind of the point; it’s our hope we created a narrative for the game that crosses party lines so that anyone can play (and based on early returns, we achieved that).
