Watch early: What Makes a Good Detective Game? | Game Maker's Toolkit

Wonderful video – breaking down the fictional detective work into actions (and thinking about how to make these feel satisfying, rather than mechanical and brute-force-able) seems super-useful. One thing that came to mind after watching the video: just as the feeling of successful detective-work is hard to relate across games, Lovecraftian terror (and mental health in general) is also a fairly popular, but hard-to-nail theme. The Cthulhu board games (and there are dozens) often treat "sanity" as just a re-skinned meter of hit-points. If you're lucky, you get some flavour text thrown in for good measure (either to describe the cause of insanity or its effects), but for games like Darkest Dungeon it generally is just another metric to manage. Would love to hear your take on this in a future video – esp. now that Hellblade has made the tough subject of mental health depictions in games quite relevant again.

Top work Mark. Just wanted to share my most frustrating detective game moment. There's a Sherlock Holmes game where you have to solve a stolen painting mystery in the national gallery. There's a clue high up on a wall that only becomes visible AFTER you press a button to observe the markings left by a ladder the criminals used.

I loved your mention of consulting detective (though I wasn't aware that there was a video game port of it!) since it's by far my favorite detective experience. Sitting down with some friends, a cup of tea and a game of consulting detective is amazing, and it gives you exactly the kind of 'eureka!' moments you want from such a game. Mostly I love how the extremely simple mechanic of just picking the next location to go to solves so many problems - it allows you to follow up on the clues you think most important in an organic way (with a large possibility of picking unimportant clues and wasting time, meaning you need to critically analyse what information is relevant, something most detective games miss). It never prompts you to make a deduction - it just either leads you to figure out another location you need to visit or solves questions you will be asked at the end. It gives you complete freedom with very little hand holding. You never feel like the game is "testing" you to see if you have been paying attention - instead you are in control, solving the game. Add in the brilliant newspaper and some really clever puzzles and it really creates an amazing experience. Usually, we end up filling notebooks, debating, putting up post-its, taking breaks to get a different perspective etc. I'd say the main thing I miss in the game is action and urgency - something that I suppose video game already do quite well, which I guess is why it wasn't included in the video. A great detective story should have the villain being an active part of the story, adding twists and drama throughout. The game is very static in this way (which unfortunately might be impossible to solve in the physical medium, but a video game adaptation could do a lot more). Also not being able to return to a location with new information can be frustrating, since sometimes you really want to confront someone about a lie or new information. I guess it just speaks to how well designed the cases are that these kinds of continuity problems don't pop up more often (visiting a location earlier or later than you are supposed to for instance)

I've enjoyed all your videos Mark, but this one was a real standout one. I love that unlike platformers or side-scrolling shooters, we're looking here at a genre that is far from having been perfected, leaving my brain thinking as hard about where the genre might go as it should be when playing a detective game! Real food for thought. Plus there are several games you mention that I was unaware of, so there's some nice things to go off and discover. Thanks a lot! :)

Andy Latham

It looks like Patreon ate the comment I made yesterday, but regarding Her Story: as great as this game is, the limitations of the search engine felt massively contrived to me and I couldn't get into it as much as I wanted to. Cleverly, the fiction reflects this as you are an amateur struggling with an outdated, poorly written video database and not a great detective... but I want to feel like a great detective! I would like to see more ways in which this mechanic can be disguised and folded into the detective narrative in the future so not every game has you literally Googling for clues. I think the ultimate would be sufficient natural language processing so you can pose your queries as questions to people, but saying that might be cheating since a natural conversation system is the holy grail of every narrative game. Great video as always, and I'm glad my suggestion of Mystery Room made it in even if it was one of the "bad" examples.

Hey! I definitely watched this when you released it - I remember the teddies playing the board game - but not during research for this vid. I didn’t watch anyone else’s videos for this one as I have been thinking about this stuff for years. It’s a great video, don’t put it down!

Game Maker's Toolkit

I really respect the amount of research you put into this, you left no stone unturned and no game unplayed to really explore every aspect of detective games. Great video. I really want to ask though, have you seen this video? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vds-CtGZdyk" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vds-CtGZdyk</a> It's crap, was made by a douchebag, and doesn't go into nearly as much detail, but it deals with similar themes.

Mr Wendal

Thanks for the recommendatios! The Poirot game is Agatha Christie ABC Murders, it’s okay. Not the strongest detective game.

Game Maker's Toolkit

Mark, what's the Poirot game around 16:15? I loved this episode, really did. I found it really thought-provoking toeveryone that wants to make a detective game. I love the initial concept of LA Noire so much, but ended up so disappointed by it's final product =/ I loved the mention of one of my favorite series, Ace Attorney, and wanted to give you two good recommendations that you might like to try. One of them is the CING game catalogue, including Trace Memory (and Trace Memory R), Hotel Dusk and Last Window, and AGAIN, Eye of Providence, all of them great detective games that are not exactly good recommendations of great design ideas, but are some rather pleasant games, which have some good ideas. The other one might sound a bit awkward, but I really recommend playing Trauma Team. This game revolves around a team of different doctors, each one with a different specialty. One of them is a specialist in medical investigation, searching morgue bodies, and gathering as much pieces of information as possible from the victims place, trying to figure out what happened. It has som GREAT mechanics in adventures which I would love you to try and give your thoughts. Another one of them is a clinic specialist, who listen to patients and collect data from their statements (you have to point out what seems odd), and from making and analysing clinic exams such as blood tests, heartbeat analysis and breath sound analysis, all of them presented in a very "realistic" fashion (with the game logic applied, therefore, a clever lie). After that you gotta input in a computer all the symptons and abnormalities found to search a database and try to round down the possible conditions. Both are some very nice example of interactive mechanics who feels good to experiment the eureka moment when you make the thorough examination and the right deductions. This game is on the Wii console (an exclusive, so sad) and is an absolute gem that should have been made by Atlus to other platforms. You have the chance to try, pls do!

Felipe Lins

What a pleasant novel, I must say. I got interested in the GUMSHOE system. I also always wanted to think about something to do Scotland Yard a better job. I feel the game too lost to luck, by making movement around based on dice rolls =/ There's too little events happening on the game that gives extra chance for unlucky players who fall behind due to bad dice rolls, and I feel the badge/key system is a little weak. The idea of bits of information needed to advance is quite nice, but the other mechanics make it less a deductive game, and more a racing one.

Felipe Lins

Coming from the tabletop RPG world what stood out to me was that while we have some different problems, but also that there are some similar problems that may explain one of the negative play experiences mentioned in the video. The three main problems I have seen with player groups in investigative games are: missing key information due to chance, analysis paralysis, premature speculation, and the unfortunate detail that players are not professional investigators but want to play them. First, missing clues due to random chance. This is less of an issue with modern games, both digital and analog but the approach used by the system I play has some good ideas for how to structure an investigative game. In GUMSHOE, the system that we use, each part of the narrative is structured into little parts called scenes. Scenes in GUMSHOE are similar to scenes in a play or movie, but are not fixed in a chronological order. Additionally, each scene is listed as either a core scene or an alternate scene. Core scene container core clues which are the clues needed to figure out the mystery. An important note is that core clues do not require any sort of check or die roll, if the player(s) ask the right questions they get the clue. Alternate scenes tend to push players to core scenes, fill out world information, keep the suspense going by having the antagonist react or connect core scenes. The net result of this system is that the players will end the investigation with the clues needed to solve the mystery and are pushed in the investigation to the important scenes without being out and out told where to go. Next, players getting stuck in analysis paralysis. In many of the games I have run one of the problems I see with the group dynamics is that players will endless discuss what to do next rather than picking and option and running with it. This kills the pacing. No one would watch a movie that is 40% detectives arguing about what to do next. On the other hand you don’t want to tell the players what to do next. The tool I tend to use is called an ‘Antagonist Reaction’ in GUMSHOE. The basic idea is that if the players are pressing forward then their antagonist need to show up and put some pressure on them. The simplistic example is having hired thugs bust down the door with some evidence that leads to a core scene or just gives some support to a theory the group is considering. The other advantage of this is that it makes the world and narrative feel like it is reacting to the players while also letting you move things along. In short, players are very good at second guessing themselves, so sometimes hired thugs need to show up to move things along. The next problem is premature speculation. This may be more of an issue with group games than more solo games, but I am unsure. The root of the problem is that some players will come of with completely unfounded theories because they are missing core clues. The fixes here are a bit more tricky in that this is a player problem but is also the general behavior you want to encourage. The fixes I have for this are to either step in as the GM and point out that they are speculating or have a support character say something along the lines of ‘that seems rather unfounded...’ The last problem, and the one that may be driving some of the poor game-play ideas in the video is that your players are not detectives in real life. What this leads to is that you need to help them feel like detectives, while also guiding them. In a perfect world they should not notice the guidance but it still needs to be there, in a similar way to how the Souls games or Metriod limit back tracking to areas that can be fruitfully explored to move the game along. In these games there is a similar need to keep things moving. The anti-pattern here is to allow random guessing or hold the players hand so much that they can not fail to move forward. The video has some great examples of both. As for how to work around this, my main play is to use the character's own voice/background to slightly indirectly re-focus play. In practice this works out to something along the lines of: If the players are going off on an unproductive tangent I would pick one of them and tell them “As a seasoned investigator you know X” where X is something that helps re-focus the group on the fruitful investigation. The key in the tabletop space is to make it sound like the player or their character's idea not the GM or the games’ idea. If you guys are interested in a more video game style setup with only one player and one GM there is a book called Cthulhu Confidential that uses that format. I am curious what video game designers think of that system and setup. Sorry for the novel.

Zachary Joyner

Very interesting! This reminds me that I still haven't seen a good 'investigation' in a pen and paper RPG - to often it boils down to a perception roll and some form of knowledge check. It would be interesting to take some of the ideas here and apply them to that media - with a DM, there is a lot more room for careful feedback and nudging.

Great Video! Detective games are my favorite ! I personally, liked some of Heavy rains deduction sequences, where you have to combine clues u managed to find to make sense of them. Like geo profiling a receipt, locations of police officers and areas where a certain flower grows. I think clues should act like a filter, eliminating the impossible choices down to the relevant ones. It makes it more like a logical puzzle. Where you choose what information is relevant and what isn't.

Aadit Doshi

I quite like it! It's basically just exposing lies, and it can get a bit repetitive. But it's well done, even if it's ultra campy. Jenks is just a funny character and it's fun to follow him around. Reserved recommendation then, maybe during a sale :)

Game Maker's Toolkit

Fantastic video, even better than usual. But what caught my eye was the game Contradictions... is that actually any good?

Mark O.

The video is fascinating. One can see that a lot of effort has been put into it. By the way, when I was watching the video and following your reasoning I thinking "all of this is in Her Story, which not only elegantly solves it, but is, by far, the best detective game I have ever played. ". And then I reached the 12' mark :). The mechanic of this game is simply brilliant. This is the only detective game in which I 'felt' like a detective because all the work was inside my head, not using "game systems" like you mention in the video.

Manuel Alcoba

Yeah, that’s definitely a good point. I mention it in passing when taking about how Papers, Please let’s you use absolutely anything to make a connection.

Game Maker's Toolkit

Something you skipped over that I find pertinent was the initial step evidence, being handheld. Gathering physical evidence is particularly important in making logical connections, but in my cases of recent detective games, I've found that not only do they hint at when you have all the important evidence, but more importantly evidence that is UNIMPORTANT. I have never had to question myself into thinking whether I am on the right track because I know that my evidence is relevant to the case, and I think this is a major part of detective work. I want the opportunity to pick up an item and assume it is an important connection, when really a "£400 receipt for a coat" has nothing to do with the case.

Dingle Dee

This is the best video you've done to date! Fantastic stuff. My pick would be the first 1/3rd of Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (before it flew off a cliff). I loved it's flavour of reverse police procedural where you play out the answer as the suspect straight away, before covering up the clues that you search for in the next level as the detectives.

Not really a detective game, but I felt that the end of Myst required you understand what had happened on the island so you could pick the right solution. I remember that part more that the individual puzzles, which I think is because it had more meaning, as it required you to connect more to the characters and the story.

Discworld Noir! What a game! I totally forgot it existed, thaks for another great video and for bringing back some good old memories!

Hugo Pastor