High Level Overview

Welcome! Over the coming months in my spare time, I will be developing a new LEGO fan-game called LEGO Investigations. Before I can build the full title, I need to make a vertical slice that demonstrates the full thing is feasible and will be worth the effort it will take.

 

In this High Level Overview, I will be going over some generalities. In my next blog, I will upload a golden path chart, beat sheet, level design plan as well as an asset list and potentially a script sample, which should give more specific detail into how the Vertical Slice will work.

 

Section 1: The Jist

What is this game?

LEGO Investigations is a first-person adventure game where players are a detective and must investigate accidents and emergencies to determine what has occurred. Made in Unity for the PC, this game focuses on the player narrative rather than the story, and makes use of interesting mechanics such as simulation and seeking.

 

Why is anybody going to care?

The big goal for this project is to be a successful LEGO fan-game, and to do this there will be intense focus on meeting the core LEGO brand values, including imagination, creativity, fun, learning, caring and quality. The game will use LEGO in a way that makes it core to the mechanics, and will give the players a chance to try new and rewarding gameplay that tests a player on their logical reasoning.

 

Who is the game for?

LEGO Investigations is primarily for boys and girls between the ages of 12 - 24. This game is very specifically aiming towards fans of the LEGO brand, especially its video gaming merchandise. This game will favour more inquisitive, logical and careful players rather than fast-paced action-orientated players. There is no client for this game, and the game will not be sold for profit (per licensing reasons).

 

Section 2a: The Vertical Slice - Summary

Title

LEGO Investigations: The First Case

Genre

First-Person, Adventure

Platforms

Windows PC via Unity3D 5.1.4

The Big Idea

It's your first day on the job, and you've been called to the scene of a major accident; a double-decker bus has come off the road and crashed into a local shop, leaving dozens hurt or disassembled. While the ambulance crews scurry to help the injured, you'll need to figure out who the correct culprit was; mechanical failure, driver error, weather or foul play? Don't mess this up; the Government is already under suspicion of muddling the truth of its investigations, and another wrong case could put us in the pits!

Play Mechanic

As a highly trained detective, you have the uncanny ability to sniff out relevant parts and people to the investigation. Combine that with a brilliant mind which can simulate all kinds of possible scenarios that involve the evidence you locate and a knack for conversing and getting the truth out of potential suspect, and then it only becomes a matter of correctly piecing together the chain of events in the right order.

License

The First Case is a standalone level which will not be a part of the final product, should plans go ahead to turn this vertical slice into a full game. It will represent the majority of the mechanics of the full game and give a fairly accurate view of the game experience. The average playtime should be in the ball-park of 10 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how many events and how many pieces are in the final build and how good the player is. Since the LEGO Brick/Brand is owned by The LEGO Group, the results of this project cannot be sold for profit.

Target Audience

The First Case is intended to generate some kind of reaction that can be used to gauge if pursuing the full product is a good idea; it must, therefore, be enticing to journalists and YouTube Let's Players, as well as figureheads in the AFOL community, as opposed to the final product which would be directed more towards the children. The development of this project should be public, and therefore needs to be fairly flexible to allow for constructive criticism to guide how the product turns out.

 

Section 2b: The Vertical Slice - Mechanics

Seeking

One of the most core aspects of the game is the ability to find relevant evidence to the case. The evidence the player needs can be scattered all over the level, and so it will take an inquisitive eye to find whichever pieces are most important to solving the mystery. Not even piece will help, and some may even be red herrings...

 

• Movement Mechanics: The first-person player can move forward, backward, left and right (strafing). The levels are not designed to require jumping or crouching, but may require the player to look up or down.
• LEGO/Item Collection: Items that can be interacted with are made of LEGO. Items that shine can be collected as "potential evidence" and are what the player needs to focus on. Collected items go into the player's backpack and will determine what events they can use during Simulation/Piecing. All evidence will leave notes and clues inside the player's notebook.
• Detail Investigation: In some instances, the player can "zoom-in" on certain parts of the world; for example, the player can get a view up-close of a desk and everything on the desk to see if there might be something useful there.
• Red Herrings: Many items in the world will outright be used to confuse or distract the player. Some items are from the investigation but did not play an active role in what happened, while other items may have been left-overs from the past before the accident. The player must simulate or collect additional evidence to determine if items had any relevance to the scene.
• Item Cancelling: Collecting some items may ultimately cancel out the existence of others (collecting a photo of a character without a moustache may mean they never had need for a moustache brush). This will help eliminate possible events for Simulation/Piecing, and cross off irrelevant/confusing notes inside the notebook.
   

Dialogue

It's important to listen to key witnesses and suspects when trying to evaluate what happened. While not everything they say will be true (by accident or intentionally), some evidence can be very helpful or even crucial to figuring out what happened. The key to the dialogue system is to try and get information, and that sometimes means challenging the character on what they've said.

 

• Conversation Options: When you initiate a dialogue with a character, you will have a Mass-Effect-style wheel of conversation topics to choose from. The main character's dialogue is never explicitly read out; you only witness the other character's side of the conversation. The conversation options on the left side are used to challenge what the character just said or their appearance/way of talking (when appropriate), while the right side allows you to ask more questions. The bottom allows you to leave the conversation at any point (you will resume from the same place when you return).
• Intelligence: If you have learned evidence from the items you've collected/investigated or from other characters which conflicts with what the person you're talking to has said, appropriate dialogue options to call out/challenge the character with your evidence will be highlighted, and will allow you to get more accurate information. This can be disabled in the menu to increase game difficulty.
• Notes: Any information you discover will be added to the notepad, and if that information is contradicted by correct information it will be crossed off.

 

Simulation

A fast player may wish to simply rush through; collect the minimum-necessary evidence and submit their findings. In order to get an accurate sequence of events and rank high, a smart player will want to make use of the simulation system which allows them to mix-and-match possible events in a chosen order to see if everything leads to how the crime scene looks when you arrive.

 

• Event Collection: An "event" is a thumbnail that sits in your backpack and represents a small snippet of time, usually a couple seconds, where a key part of the story happened (such as a part coming off a vehicle or a person getting out of a car). In order to use events in the simulation, you must have either collected enough evidence and/or notes for the simulation to appear in the browser. When you collect a piece of evidence, any events that require that evidence to be shown will be unhidden but locked; collecting all the required evidence items/notes will unlock the event for use. If you've unlocked evidence that makes an event contradictory, it will be locked and crossed-off.
• Notepad: The notepad can be accessed inside the simulator, and allows you to go over information you've collected. Not all note-evidence can be used to unlock events; some of the notes you collect will be general knowledge for your benefit (such as the speed of bullet in the air or how glass shatters when it breaks in different ways). These notes are in a separate section of the notepad, and should be used to compare similar events to see which one is more plausible.
• Event Chains: In order to use the Simulation aspect, the player must drag and drop events into a timeline. The start and end events are already given to the player, and the exact amount of "slots" will always be given, so the player knows exactly how many events took place. Each event has "handles" (different coloured/shaped edges on the left and right sides of the thumbnail); you can only put the correct-shapes and colours together in the chain. This prevents the player creating an order of events that is completely incompatible.
• Event Simulation: The real meat of the Simulator is to put events in a chain and see how they work together. Once the player has dragged and dropped events into the chain they can then begin "Simulator Mode". In Simulator Mode, the player becomes a flying camera which can watch, pause, play, fast-forward or reverse the events. Simulator Mode takes place inside the same scene as where the detective is, but anything that is changed from the scene will be a transparent "ghost", which allows the player to determine if elements ended up in the correct positions in their sequence of events.

 

Piecing

The ultimate goal of each scenario is to correctly identify what has happened. When you choose to finish your investigation, you must present your findings, and then you will be ranked on how close your were.

 

• Level End: You can choose to finish the level at any point by talking to the Boss. Doing so will bring you to a screen where you can input your findings, or back-out if you don't feel you have enough correct information.
• Notes: You can bring up your notebook or your bag of evidence at any point in this screen if you need to double-check what you have.
• Event Ordering: The first piece of info you will need to add is the correct order of events. This is exactly the same as the Simulator Mode, except you cannot simulate the events from this part of the game; this is to prevent players trying to rush through and dump evidence in that "looks" correct.
• Questions: After that, you will then need to provide answers to ~5 questions about the scene, including who/what was most guilty and some of the things that happened. For each "question", there will be a blank spot with a drop-down selection that will allow you to pick out an applicable item/note that correctly fills out the sentence.
• Submission: When you are confident you got everything right, you will be asked one final time if you're ready to submit; you will then be shown the sequence of events you chose in a cinematic order, and brought to a ranking page. The chain-of-events counts for 50% of the mark, and the 5 questions are each worth 10%. If the player does not get 100%, they will be shown some hints to consider for the next time if they want to replay the level. 50% is the minimum requirement for completion.

 

Considerations

These are miscellaneous mechanics that may not be applicable to the vertical slice, but could improve the experience.

 

• Randomisation: The correct chain-of-events and the position of elements in the world could be randomised on each play-through.
• Episodes: As well as having individual, "one-off" cases, it might also be good to have linked-sets of cases called "Episodes" where the player is trying to solve a big mystery by visiting different crime scenes.
• Timed/Speed-Run Mode: A mode that tests how fast you can collect the evidence and solve the case.
• Collectibles/100%: Getting the perfect ranking in each level (as well as the timed run) should give the player some unique items/abilities/additional cases. It might also be good to let players collect special items in the game world. Rewards could also include things like story/audio logs.
• Hub World: To launch different cases, rather than use a menu, the player should be inside a hub world (like the Tt Games) where they can launch each case. If the player completes all the cases, they can then complete a special case in the hub world itself.
• Hint System: It might be handy for less-experience players to have some kind of light hint system that guides them in the right direction, but does not solve the puzzles for them.