Detective mystery template
One scene, three clues, and a question you are allowed to answer wrong. Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018) lets you accuse before you are ready. The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games, 2022) asks you to build a sentence from what you saw. A cutscene that solves the clue has fired the player. The AI visual novel maker can hold the testimony. Story to game is the question turning into a scene.
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What makes a detective mystery
Detective mystery: you gather clues and reason your way to the truth.
The games that set the standard are Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018), The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games, 2022) and Her Story (Sam Barlow, 2015).
What the template starts with
The detective mystery template starts with one scene, three clues and one question to answer. That is the smallest version of the loop that defines the genre: find a clue, connect it, test a theory.
What to change first
Let the player submit an early wrong answer and live in the story that follows for one beat. If the game refuses to continue until they are correct, you built a lock.
2D or 3D
The detective mystery template starts in 2D.
Related templates
Start from this template in the Flockbay app
Describe your version in one sentence. The AI writes a brief from the template, and nothing is built until you approve it. Free for Windows and Mac.