The Murder Book Casebook
Narrative Design
- What Makes a Good Detective Game?The design qualities that make detective games work, from fair clues and deduction checks to feedback and room for doubt.
- How Interrogation Becomes a Gameplay MechanicFour ways games turn questioning suspects into gameplay, with the strengths and design risks of each approach.
- How Games Use Unreliable NarratorsHow games turn untrustworthy accounts into something players search, question or create, and why an unreliable story is not always a lie.
- How Detective Games Create SuspicionThe tools detective games use to make players suspect a character, and why suspicion should prompt investigation rather than settle a case.
- How Mystery Games Hide Clues Without CheatingThe techniques mystery games use to hide clues fairly, and a simple test for telling a clever hidden clue from a cheat.
- What Makes a Satisfying Mystery Solution?Why some mystery endings feel earned and others feel like cheating, from Golden Age fair-play rules to branching detective games.
- How Dialogue Choices Create TensionThe design ingredients that make choosing a single line of dialogue feel tense, with examples from detective and crime games.
- How Games Turn Contradictions Into PuzzlesHow detective games turn inconsistent statements, evidence and documents into puzzles players have to prove.
- How Short Mystery Cases Are DesignedThe design principles behind short, self-contained mystery cases that still reward careful reasoning.
- How to Write a Believable SuspectA writer's guide to suspects who feel human, stay consistent and keep a mystery fair.