Unlawful (Prototype)

Unlawful is a single-player procedural murder mystery.  On each play through, all actions that the suspects took on the night of the murder and the relationships between the suspects are randomized, as well as their individual lines.  Each restart feels very different as a result.

The game was intended to be played only with the detective's journal, but this prototype also includes a series of quick-question buttons.  The team worked closely to allow the game to be solved completely by questioning suspects based off of information from other interrogations.

Note: The art is programmer art and not representative of the game as a whole.

Credits

Beth Weeren - Creative Director

• Lead the team of ten people
• Made executive level decisions 
• Scheduled meetings
• QA

Hudson Bielstein - Narrative Designer

• Lead Writer/Editor
• Character Design
• Dialogue Implementation Design
• Relationship Design
• Procedural Randomization Design
• Play Tester/QA

Mike Li - Producer

• Build Management
• Gantt Chart/Schedule Management
• Scope Advisor
• Created Player Feedback Surveys

Grant Barbee - Engineer

• Programmed dialogue box
• Designed and programmed procedural dialogue system
• Programmed alert toast system
• Programmed player interactions
• Integrated dialogue system with the journal system
• Designed and programmed narrative tool
• Bugfixes

Max Sobhani - Engineer

• Programmed Journal
• Programmed Map
• Programmed Player Self-entry Pages
• Programmed Inventory System
• Programmed Credits Page
• Programmed Time System
• Programmed the Base Auto Entry Addition
• Bugfixes

Sharon Lougheed - Engineer

• Programmed initial player movement
• Programmed cameras
• Programmed menu
• Programmed NPC movement
• Added sprites and environment
• Reprogrammed sprite layering
• Programmed item spawn system
• Bugfixes

Jarrod Humes - Game Designer

• Menu Layouts
• GUI Layouts
• Inventory Layout
• Asset Lists for Art, & helped with Sound
• Control Scheme
• Brainstorm Mechanics and Narrative flow
• Play Tester/QA
• Helped with Narrative charts, Game Flow charts, and Map item placement
• Helped with some polish items such as: item feedback style and clock style
• General help with All Game Designers and Narrative director to help think through ideas etc.
• Helped create some dialogue lines

Justin Mendoza - Game Designer

• Journal layout
• Day cycle design
• Asset List for Sound
• Play Tester/QA
• Narrative debugging
• Mechanic brainstorming
• Lockpicking mechanic (scrapped before added to build)

Sam Owens - Game Designer

• Level Design
• Art Implementation
• Collaborated on Character Creation
• Helped Write Some Dialogue Lines
• Play Tester/QA