The top 5 mistakes game mystery writers make — and how to avoid them
I’ve been reading mysteries since I cracked open a Nancy Drew novel back when I first learned to read. I’m the author of the Dreamslippers amateur sleuth series, and I’ve personally steered the storylines on hundreds of mystery-themed story games over a nearly 15-year career in the game industry. I’ve had the opportunity to analyze when, why, and how mysteries work, and I make a living through a skilled understanding of how to fix them when they don’t.
Here are the top 5 mistakes we mystery writers can make in games — and how to avoid them.
5. Taking too heavy a hand on character development
Whether it’s the vaudeville relic of the mustache-twirling villain or the über-perfect heroine, painting with too broad a brush is tempting when you’re writing game mysteries. But some of the best-known characters in the genre are… complicated. The PI who’s battling her own drug addiction while trying to track down her brother’s killer. A boy who’s pushed to murder his own father in a fit of wild self-preservation. Maybe even the perpetrator of a justified revenge murder. We want to know more about people whose lives occupy the grey areas. The ones in mere black or white? We’ve seen ’em all before.
Just ask yourself who’s more interesting: Bailey, here, the protagonist of Wooga’s game Switchcraft…
Or high-functioning sociopathic antihero Sherlock Holmes?
For our team, the answer was clear: Sherlock Holmes (especially as brought to life by Benedict Cumberbatch) wins, hands-down. Story needs conflict, so our characters need foibles. There’s no point at which Bailey experiences ridicule — no example in which she’s ostracized for being a witch — so hearing her pride right off the bat didn’t endear her to us, and some of us felt turned off from her. Contrast that with Harry Potter, whose magic is a welcome reprieve after the abuse of having to live in a cupboard under the stairs. It’s earned, so we can celebrate with him.
A word about Switchcraft: Here at Brunette Games, we were over-the-moon to see a puzzle/story game in the supernatural mystery genre. We easily fell in love with the gorgeous art and brilliant game design, particularly the unique gameplay/story integration. It’s also a highly polished game; we see a surprising number of mobile games released with typos and other writing issues, and this game sets the bar high. (Full disclosure: Elisa Mader, a former Brunette Games writer/editor, worked on Switchcraft in her capacity as senior editor at Wooga. Kudos, Elisa!)
To avoid the pitfalls of character design, don’t be afraid to torture your good guys, or to lend a sympathetic ear to your crooks. We’ll feel your hero’s win all the more if she’s had to prevail against her own worst judgment in order to get there. And a villain is all the more diabolical for her charm.
When working with Uken Games and Mighty Kingdom on Ava’s Manor: A Solitaire Story, we wanted to make sure the title character was struggling with something at the outset; in this case, writer’s block. A character who’s too perfect — or too proud — just doesn’t resonate the same way.
4. Failing to provide a mission and motive
While asking “whodunnit” is the crux of the mystery genre, mission and motive are always key. Sure, killers are gonna kill, but if they can get what they’re after without resorting to murder, why wouldn’t they?
Which is not to say that motive can’t be mysterious, or even intangible. In my first novel, Cat in the Flock, the killer was bent not on personal gain but on the preservation of a religious ideal, something that never even really existed, but in her tortured mind, it was the most important thing. This is precisely how the “whydunnit” has supplanted traditional mysteries; we’re fascinated by criminal intent, the motive behind a killing that seems otherwise senseless.
In Switchcraft, you’re not solving a murder; instead, you’re searching for a missing person. This is a tried-and-true substitute for the murder-mystery in casual games, since we can’t usually show a dead body on screen, as the app store rules dictate more family-friendly fare. My long experience working on hundreds of missing-persons storylines tells me these are always a winner.
However, the problem with the Lydia plot line is that none of the characters you meet seem to have a single motive for kidnapping her. While none of the adult academics are sympathetically drawn, they pretty much universally lack motive. And the bubbly new bestie you acquire in the wake of Lydia’s disappearance doesn’t seem guilty at all.
When you’re working out the plot for your next mystery, constantly ask yourself, “What’s the motive?” Your suspects need to have a reason for us to suspect them.
Since we’re talking about game stories, it’s also important to make sure your villain’s motive is in direct conflict with your hero’s mission. Look how we set the villain’s motive up against the detective’s mission in Mystery Trackers: Silent Hollow. The mission is clear: Get to the scene and save Agent Clyde; then neutralize the threat. The villain’s motive is to make sure you fail in both missions.
Video Reference: Mystery Trackers: Silent Hollow Walkthrough — Part 1
I also had the honor of writing the first mystery story for the highly popular Choices app. Veil of Secrets begins with a frame device to set up the player character’s role and provide context for the mystery about to unfold. This genre convention distinguished the book from the others in the app, which might also have begun with a wedding.
Video Reference: Choices:- Veil Of Secrets Chapter #1 Naomi’s Route (Diamonds used)
3. Slacking off on research
This is one I’ve seen a lot with beginning writers, whether they’re writing for print or games. We’re all walking around with sort of rudimentary understandings of the law-enforcement process, for the most part gleaned from episodes of Law & Order and Scooby-Doo. But that doesn’t take the place of good research. For the jurisdiction you’re depicting in your story, what officially should happen when a dead body is found and reported to police? What are the police department’s procedures for filing a missing persons report? Do you know the difference between jail and prison? What is required for an arrest? What forensic evidence was found at the scene of the crime? What evidence is admissible in court? These are the questions that can make or break a story’s authenticity.
Don’t limit yourself to a simple Google search when you’re researching details for your mystery. I have illustrated guides to pistols, rifles, and poisons sitting on my bookshelf here at Brunette Games. When I lived in Chehalis, Washington, I attended a ‘day in the life’ program at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office. That day alone gave me tremendous insight, from how police scenario simulations work to what the inside of a county jail really looks like to what the drug evidence room smells like.
The inspiration for Cooking Confidential’s white-collar crime came from a real-life pay-to-play scheme that rocked the county government in our Brunette Games headquarters location. We enjoyed working out this plot with client Archosaur and believe it’s a great fit for the genre.
And it’s not just police procedurals that can benefit from research. When working with Big Fish partner developer Elephant Games on the ‘experimental psychic’ plot for Surface: The Noise She Couldn’t Make, I drew on deep research in psychology, which we used to integrate the storyline and the gameplay through a series of metaphorically linked goals as you heal the inner life of a Jane Doe.
2. Turning your story into an activist project
The place to watch out for one-dimensional portrayals the most these days is when the project is made primarily political. Are your people of color only victims, or only good? Are all of your villains stereotypical white males? Is your portrayal true-to-life, in all its nuances, or is it just true to your politics?
I read a thriller a few years back in which the twist at the end was that the big, bad mob boss turned out to be the bitter mother of a paraplegic son who ran her entire dirty operation via her cell phone while stuck at home caring for the kid. This was in the era before smartphones, too. It isn’t that I don’t think a mother is capable of acting as a brutal mob boss; I do; but this scenario seemed pretty implausible. How did she manage to instill the fear necessary to traffic drugs and human beings across the US-Mexico border from the personal comfort and safety of her home, using only rudimentary text messaging as her weapon? Just because we want a woman like that as a villain doesn’t mean it works.
By contrast, Mystery Trackers: Nightsville Horror boasts a diverse cast of characters within an authentic setting and storyline, and players responded by making it a fan favorite.
Video Reference: Let’s Play — Mystery Trackers 8 — Nightsville Horror — Full Walkthrough
1. Revealing too much too soon, or too little too late
Returning to Switchcraft for a moment, the other problem with the Lydia character’s disappearance/possible kidnapping is that it’s heavily foreshadowed in the beginning. And by heavily foreshadowed, I mean it’s revealed when your guide character receives a vision at the beginning of the game, spoiling the impact of Lydia’s later disappearance.
When Lydia finally vanishes, it’s not a surprise at all. We were waiting for it all along. Now if Bailey’s vision had been more mysterious, something for her and Lydia to puzzle out together (but did not spoil the disappearance), this could have worked.
The mystery genre is unique: It’s the only form of writing in which the story itself is also a puzzle to solve. That means mystery writers must also be puzzle designers, not just storytellers. By the time the big reveal comes, readers should be, above all, satisfied by it. They can be surprised by the reveal, but they shouldn’t be too surprised. They should be able to look back and trace the clues to see the logical outcome.
For example, in the hit series Squid Game, [spoiler alert!] elderly game participant Oh Il-nam turns out to be a surprise villain, in a brilliantly satisfying reveal. This revelation works powerfully well because we always had the sense he was different from the other game participants. This goes beyond his unique elderly status. When you trace back through the story’s breadcrumbs, you see a trail leading directly to the moment of the reveal, beginning with his apparent glee when playing a life-and-death game (the stakes were never truly that high for him) and culminating with his suspicious off-stage execution.
This is probably the toughest aspect of mystery writing to get right. It really depends on whether you’re the type of writer who likes to plot everything out ahead of time or just free write till you figure it out, but either way, you should take a moment to see if the clues add up at the right moment. Tip your hand too early, and you spoil the surprise.
We’d love to work on more mystery-themed projects with our clients, in order to better capitalize on our deep expertise in this area. Please reach out to us if you’re interested in discussing possibilities.
Image sources, from top:
- My photoshopped gallery with images from Amazon and Big Fish (legacy).
- All section headers from Pixabay, royalty-free.
- Screenshots from Switchcraft by Wooga.
- Sherlock Holmes meme generator, www.makeameme.org.
- Screenshot from Ava’s Manor: A Solitaire Story by Uken Games and Mighty Kingdom.
- Cooking Confidential loading screen art courtesy of Archosaur dba Famous Heart Ltd.
- Screenshot from www.stltoday.com.
- Videos as branded by channels via YouTube.
ABOUT BRUNETTE GAMES LLC
Both game-industry veterans and talented up-and-comers make up the Brunette Games team. Our founder and CCO is widely regarded as an expert in game storytelling and has been named an influencer by the trade press. Our VP is a legendary brand manager whose IP credits include notables like Dungeons & Dragons and Avalon Hill. Our team of top-notch writer | designers regularly author articles on game storytelling for industry press and deliver presentations at conferences such as GDC, GameDaily Connect, Geekle, and PixelPop.
We’re joined by a roster of actors who voice our scripts, and we serve clients all over the world, from Helsinki to L.A. We write and design for a mainstream, casual player audience across the demographic spectrum. We’ve designed and written 28 released titles in the narrative puzzle and visual novel categories since 2016, including top-performing, genre-defining games Matchington Mansion, Lily’s Garden, Sweet Escapes, Disney Frozen Adventures, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, and many others.
