MURDER ON THE FAIRYTALE EXPRESS
Brief of Concept
Step into the world of fairy tales and board the Fairytale Express bound for Drury Lane. You are a detective tasked with solving the murder of the Fairy Godmother in the dining cart. Use your VR headset to shape-shift into the different perspectives of the suspects - thanks to the magical help of Fairy Godmother’s wand - and explore the train to gather clues and solve the mystery. This game is a fairytale “whodunnit” mystery solving experience in virtual reality. Murder on the Fairytale Express is an interactive non-linear narrative with a 3 act structure: the murder, collecting clues, and solving the murder.
Related Material
Fisherman's Tale
Stanley's Parable
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets
Hoodwinked
Murder on the Orient Express
Professional Summary
Creative and collaborative game designer with experience in interactive nonlinear narrative structure and story development. Proficient in utilizing Inky to implement text choices into Unity. Skilled in recording voice overs for text and collaborating closely with development teams to integrate story elements with game mechanics.
Project Roles:
Narrative Designer
Crafted compelling interactive nonlinear narrative structures with branching choices implementing Inky's scripting program
Collaborated closely with development teams, integrating story elements with game mechanics, and utilizing extensive knowledge of storytelling and game design
Conducted research into real-world murder mysteries and crime investigations, iterating and refining narrative to ensure an engaging and challenging gameplay experience for users.
Project Manager
Proficient project manager with extensive experience in creating and maintaining project documentation, utilizing collaborative tools such as Google Drive, and creating presentations that effectively communicate project progress
Skilled in facilitating communication and collaboration among team members, maintaining notes of weekly goals to meet, and conducting regular meetings to ensure timely completion of projects while balancing competing priorities.
Voice Actor
Recorded voice-overs for multiple parts of the game
Welcome to the game audio
First act of the story - the introduction
Third act of the story - what really happened in the murder
Audio to complement the text for each of the clues
User Journey
Timeline of Contributions
Additional Feature - UI menu pages
Start page
This takes the player to the game, this screenshot shows the button as is
Post-Detecting
This page takes the player to the Outro, here the button is highlighted
Game Over
This page allows players to play again, here the button has been pressed
Reflections
Murder on the Fairytale Express is a virtual reality game focused on narrative design and storytelling that combines the nostalgia of fairytales with the challenge of solving a murder mystery. This project was an act of love and cooperation with my course-mates who brought my story to life through their incredible talent. Jiaqi as our illustrator, Asan as our developer, and Wen Hao as our 3D modeller. In order to stay within scope for this project, we changed a few aspects of our original ideas but moving forward there is plenty that can be added to improve the player's experience. Some challenges we faced were in determining how to share backstory without animating interactions between characters or the events leading up to the murder in the perspective of each character. To remedy this, we illustrated the introduction and ending scenes into a book before and after the gaming portion and then worked the magic interaction of shapeshifting into the storyline through the wand. With more time and resources, Murder on the Fairytale Express could become a commercially produced video game for virtual reality.