Detective

Frame · Frontier and mystery thematic

Reading traces, recognizing connections, uncovering the truth – a puzzle that wants to be solved, and a world that would rather hide it.

Design question – Imagine your game is about a detective story. What crime was committed, who is lying – and what happens if the wrong person is arrested?

Reference example – Detective Pikachu: securing clues, questioning witnesses, drawing conclusions. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: solving a case in London with a city map, a newspaper and a directory. Disco Elysium: a murder case, and one’s own memory is the least reliable witness.

Associations

• Typical Activities – Investigating, Observing, Interrogating, Deducing
• Typical roles – investigators/suspects, informants, partners
• Typical spaces – crime scene, office, the city as a network of clues
• Typical conflicts – investigation, interrogation, pursuit, revelation

Atmosphere

mysterious, paranoid, intellectual, foggy

Coherence

Implied Activities: Investigating, Observing, Interrogating, Deducing. Mechanisms: Deduction (combining clues), Hidden Information (the culprit is concealed), Storytelling (cases unfold narratively), Action Points (limited investigation time). Ludic Organisational Structures: political order (the law), social order (the network of suspects).

Compatible with

• Tension (AT-16)
• Dread (AT-17)
• Horror (AT-18)
• Standoff (SI-04)
• Famine (SI-10)
• Hierarchy (SO-09)
• Democracy (SO-10)
• Fortress (SP-08)
• Borderland (SP-23)
• Amid Upheaval (TM-09)
• Between Times (TM-11)

Tension with

• Farm (TH-01) – Animals disappear on the farm. A rural whodunit in which knowledge of harvest cycles, animal tracks and neighbourly relations becomes the investigative tool. A cozy mystery on the farm.