Liam's Maze Mystery

Game Description

“You open the door as usual to go to work, but there is a body covered in blood in the hallway surrounded by four suspects.  Can you find the killer through this maze-traversing, pixilated, murder mystery?”

Our game is a story driven maze-traversal game.  The player is a young detective named Liam.  Liam begins his adventure by leaving his room and finding a dead body with four suspicious looking individuals.  The four witnesses all run into different rooms and it is the player’s responsibility to pursue these witnesses.  Each room contains a maze and the player will complete all four mazes by finding the corresponding witness in each maze.  Each maze also contains four special items that the player must find in order to finish the game.  Once the player has found all sixteen items and all four witnesses, a key will appear in the hallway.  The player will use the key to unlock the victim’s room.  While in the victim’s room, the real killer will confess his or her crimes to Liam and the game ends after a final cutscene.

Game Controls

The controls are fairly simple.  The only five keys that are used are the four arrow keys and the “F” key.  The player will use the arrow keys to move his character through the game.  The “F” key will be used to interact with doors, items, NPCs, and to continue through game dialogue.

Post-Mortem Document

What went right?

• What are we proud of?

We worked together to create our first game.  We put several hours into designing and developing it and we are all proud of that.  We are also proud of how well organized we kept our project.  The way that we organized our objects or sprites into folders made the game very easy to finish and debug.  Setting specific, organized names for all of our  objects, sprites, and variables also made the environment feel more professional.

• What worked better than we expected?

The project was made considerably easier by the implementation of the dialogue system.  The process of creating cutscenes is the most notable example of this.  We finished the game in a more efficient way and by using less time because of the dialogue system.

What went wrong?

• What problems did we face?

Our biggest issue that we faced as a group is our inconsistency in communication.  Early on in the development process, some of us were being unresponsive and almost unwilling to converse with each other.  This almost led to some members giving up.

• How did we overcome this?

Fortunately, we began to communicate more with each other, as the deadlines began to approach.  Everybody started putting in more effort towards helping each other and communicating with each other.

What did we learn?

• Rick:

The most important thing that I learned from this project was how to schedule deadlines.  In order to properly develop a game, everything needs to be planned way in advance.  Another important thing that I learned was that everyone communicates differently and I had to learn how to properly communicate with each member of this group.

• Amy: 

When designing mazes, do not copy paste so much. If you have to copy paste code all over the place, you’re doing it wrong.  Another thing that I learned from this project was to keep everything very well-organized because it is easier to change the sequence of certain events when every event is kept well organized.  This was mostly applicable to the design process of the cutscenes and dialogue system.

• Dylan:

Personally, I learned that I need to be better at communicating.  During the duration of this project, I was consistently busy with other classes, my job, and needing to practice my instrument, which meant that I did not set aside enough time for this project and I was not properly communicating with my teammates about the project.  Fortunately, I was able to salvage the issues with my teammates and we were able to come together to finish this really cool game!

I also learned how to do some coding that I did not learn in classes.  We were not taught how to make a menu system or a “fog of war” effect.  I took the time to learn these efforts from other sources from the internet.

• Anna:

  I was working on the art part, and the pixel style painting was a big challenge for me. I had never tried this style of painting before.

It was also important to communicate with my teammates. Everyone is responsible for different parts of the project, so it's important to give each other advice when creating.

Thank you for playing our game!!!