The Electoral Investigation

How I created an enthralling and complex murder mystery story using the Twine program.

As a Game Design Club project, we had to create a game with a partner over two weeks with the theme of “conspiracy.”  I imagined the concept of a conspiracy related best as a written story for the reader to draw their own “guided” conclusions. I elected to write it in Twine, a text-based program that allows you to create your own text adventures.

Teaming up with a friend, Payton Grady, we created a murder mystery game based on my love for the murder mystery genre and also that I happened to be taking a course focusing on the genre that year.

Leveraging much of what I discovered in that course – and many personal experiences with mystery novels – I scripted characters Payton created into an intricately detailed story of the death of a close friend of the town mayor that threatened the mayor as well. As an added twist, I also developed a tricky secret ending, along with a cleverly hidden hint as to how to activate it.

I learned how to write several character types that I never had experience with before, including an alcoholic named Ben Harlow, who was particularly difficult to write as I have never partaken in the consumption of alcohol. Nevertheless, despite the hurdles and obstacles I faced writing the program, I managed to finish three days ahead of schedule, using that extra time to thoroughly check and re-check my work in both story development and operational design.