Inspectigator

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Miro

Section one

I worked on this project as a systems designer for the deduction and board and artist for the cards.

Inspectigator is a 1v1 murder mystery board game where both players race to deduce their opponent's murder. Players are given sets of cards representing a Murder Weapon, Motive, Victim, and Location of crime. They draw these cards by collecting witnesses on the board and play them through "interrogating" their opponent. The first to guess the correct circumstances of their opponent's murder wins.

Section one

Designing Deduction

For this game, I designed a deduction system which involves players asking their opponent questions to eliminate possible Weapons, Motives, Victims, and Locations.

My primary inspiration was the game Clue, which uses a similar process of elimination. The first iteration involved a system where players used "question" cards to deduce facts of the case.

For example, a question card could be "Were you out late?" if the player answers no, you could then eliminate the "Dark Alley" as a location.

Below, the fact that "the victim had a slow death" can be elimated because the player did not use a knife in the murder even though the other two questions were answered yes.

Section two
Section two

Process

This system, which allowed for variety from other basic deduction games, did not playtest well.

We decided that the game's fun feeling and simplistic nature would benefit from a more straightforward system and allow us to focus on the board aspect of the game.

In the end, players found it fun to use dry erase cards to elimate different traits of the murder.

Outcome

In the final game, each weapon, motive, victim, and location had specific categories assigned to them, which would be elimated through investigation on the board. The overlap in categories meant the players usually had to fill in the gaps themselves, enhancing the detective feel.