Serial Killer Mystery: A Detective Game

1.The location of the crystals
2.How the crystals came to be
3.Why the crystals were hidden
4.Finally revealing their power is not to rule the world, but to evaporate the oceans so that we could all live on land. OMG plot twist.

Objectives of the game:

The story is set in the modern 21^st century. The crime in the city of London has risen. Crimes have been increasing even after the city has advanced security policies (Fernandez-Vara Digital Games). The police has been given the responsibility by the government of London to look into the matter as it is a grave matter of concern. Though the police of the city is efficient enough to solve such crimes, but still they are unable to stop such crimes.

Serial killing is one such crime which has infected the city of London (Chung 2018). The government is mostly concerned with this type of crime as they do not get to know the next possible target of the heinous crime (Shan, Azim and Neamtiu 2016). The police and the government of London are being dominated by the person who is involved and is the ‘master mind’ behind all the killings in the town.

In this time of urgency, the government has suggested the police to get in touch with Robert Magerson, the one and only popular detective in the town (Canfora, Mercaldo and Visaggio 2016). He has solved the most serious and challenging crimes in the town. Robert is a man who has a fascinating sense of intelligence, strong observation powers and an explosive sense of wit, which he uses in order to solve the crimes. He can solve riddles and puzzles in a fraction of second. This unique skillset sets him apart from the rest of the department and thus helps him get reach to the person behind the crime (Mahardhika 2016).

Stages of the plot:

1. The detective enters the first room as he would be suggested by the police.
2. Robert would need to solve riddles, which would be left in the room by the serial killer.
3. There would be minimum of six set of random riddles.
4. Robert would get a minimum of three attempts from a total of seven options.
5. After solving the riddle, Robert would be directed to the next room in order to solve the next riddle.
6. On reaching the third room and solving the riddle, he would be directed to the serial killer (Gibler et al. 2013).

Objectives of the game:

The primary objective of the game is to solve all the riddles that would be located in all the three rooms and thus get to the serial killer (Berns et al. 2016).

Expected gameplay:

1. The player would have to enter the rooms as directed by the police.
2. The player would have to get the answer to the riddle in the first three attempts, otherwise he would have to quit from the game and restart the game again.
3. The player would be directed to the next rooms after having solved the riddle in the present room.
4. At the end of the third room, the player would reach the destination and hence the game would automatically quit (Tobar-Munoz, Fabregat and Baldiris 2015).

Interactivity of the game:

1. The player would be able to move in all the four directions and around the room in order to search for the answer to the riddle.
2. The player would be able to select the options of the riddle which would be based on scroll options from left to right.
3. The player would receive the storyline on the very first page at the starting of the game.
4. The player would get the question of the riddle on a pop-up basis.
5. The player would get the directions of the room and he would be able to locate the next room based on the directions which would be provided at the bottom of the screen (El Borji and Khaldi 2014).

• It is one of the best free hidden object game. The game is set to solve a series of crimes or cases of murder in the hidden object. It is a kind of adventure game, which can bring the best of the skills of the detective nature of an individual. The user would have to join the Police of Grimsborough in order to solve a series of crimes and cases of murder in the adventure game. The scenes of the crime would have to be investigated for finding the clues, the suspects have to be brought for interrogation in order to catch the killers (Kokkonen 2014).
• Pros:
  • The users can investigate the scenes of the crime in a corrupted city
  • The user can play with their friends in order to be the best detective
  • The clues can be examined and the samples would be analyzed in order to look and search for the proper evidence
  • The story of the entire game is very intriguing, which can engross the user
  • The graphics level of the game is very good
• Cons:
  • The user is not entirely free of cost and the user needs to pay after a certain level in order to continue to the next level
  • Popup advertisements are a big harassment for the users as they can distract the attention of the user
• The game is not entirely free. It contains In-app purchases.

• Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective of all times. The mysterious character proves himself helpful, with his extraordinary skills to find out clues. This game takes the user into the underworld of modern day London to solve the mysteries (Mukherjee 2013).
• Pros:
  • The user needs to use their detective skills to find the objects which are hidden
  • Puzzles would be needed to be deciphered
  • Different clues can be gathered and various locations can be explored
  • A thrilling adventure can be enjoyed
• Cons:
  • It is an online game, which needs a WiFi/Data connection
  • The game stops after a certain level and then needs to be refreshed after which it starts from the beginning
  • The game has a certain level of server issues and the server crashes for most of the time
• It is a free game with various In-app purchases.

• This game is one of the best investigation games that are related to procedural forensics crime. The game is a combination of challenging puzzles and several hidden objects in the game-play. In this game the user needs to investigate spectacular crime scenes, clues from spot, interrogation of suspects, analyzing of evidence and hence arresting them. The user needs to delve into the detective nature to find the clues.
• Pros:
  • The game exposes the truth behind five different criminal cases
  • The character can be customized according to the choice of the user and with other members of the team
  • The user needs to enhance his skills of puzzle in order to solve all the puzzles
• Cons:
  • The game provides a lesser amount of energy to the user in order to continue to the next level
  • The interactivity with the user within the app is a matter of concern
  • The game has certain bugs between the different levels
• It is a free game that contains advertisements and In-app purchases

• In this game, the user needs to join the high level Team of Police bin the world. The user would travel around the globe in order to solve a series of murder crimes. The crime scenes would need to be investigated in search of the clues. The suspects would be brought for interrogation and then the evidence would be analyzed in order to catch the killers.
• Pros:
  • The user needs to investigate the crime scenes from all over the world
  • Clues would need to be examined and various samples would be analyzed in order to search for evidence
  • Witnesses and suspects would be interrogated
• Cons:
  • A lot of users commented that after getting an update the user had to start all over from the beginning
  • The controls of the game is an annoying factor for most of the users
  • The game has a lot of issues as it hangs and exits from the application
• It is a free game with In-app purchases.
  

• It is an object oriented game. The Police of the Pacific Bay are to be joined by the user in order to solve a series of murder cases. It is an adventurous game in which the scenes of crime are to be investigated for discovering the clues, questionnaire with the suspects and evaluate the evidences for the killers (Linne 2014).  
• Pros:
  • The user needs to investigate the crime scenes and discover the darker side of the world
  • The clues need to be examined and the possible samples are analyzed in order to search for the evidence
  • The witnesses are interrogated
• Cons:
  • A lot of users commented that the game was a slight boring
  • The game has a slight issue of lag
• The game is a free game with In-app purchases.

The game should have some features which should be included in the game in order to give the user a better UI experience. The following are the features, which should be included in the game are:

• Action screen: This is a simple panel that is half-screen at the bottom. This action screen would provide the user four button at the bottom of the screen. This would enable the user to make actions and move around in the provided place (Morford et al. 2014).
• Map: The user should be provided a map for the direction, which he would use in order to toggle around the screen. The map should be enabled at the top most corner of the screen for the benefit of the user (Wake 2013).
• Text: Pop-up features should be enabled at every point of the game. This feature would direct the user at every moment to do the various actions. It would also act as a guide for the user.
• Interactive Audio: This feature can help the user to listen to the voice commands. The voice commands would be in synchronization with the text commands. The text-to-speech feature should be a must for the benefit of the users.
• Minute Animation: A small amount of animation could be better for the game. The animation could be a simple popup of a person or text animation (Wattanasoontorn et al. 2013). For example, at the starting of the game, a police officer would appear and would prompt the user to do something. The prompt could be a text command. The text command would be followed by a voice command. All these kind of animations would make the game much more interactive.

A certain amount of features would be included within the game in the future if time is permitted. This would gain much more attention of the users towards the game. The existing users would also feel to play the game on a long basis.

• Sound effects: Though some sound effects would be included in the previous versions of the game, the new sound effects should be included, which should be much more thrilling and adventurous type. The users should get the atmosphere feeling of a real time situation.
• Animation & Graphics: The animation and the level of the graphics should be improved. The graphics should be changed from pixelated to vector graphics. This would improve the user interactivity of the game.
• Puzzles: The game should not be based on solving riddles. It should also provide some medium level of puzzles. This would make the game much more interesting. The puzzles should vary from medium to high (Duveskog et al. 2013).
• New Options: The game should enable new options for the interactivity of the user. For example, at the end of the second attempt, the user would get a prompt that the user should be careful before trying the last attempt.
• Levels: At the beginning of the game, the user would need to cross only three levels. But with the future updates to the application, the user would be able to use more levels in the game.
• Extra Storyline: With further improvements to the game application, the user would be able to access to a new story board. This would mean that the user would be able to explore new stories.  

Overview: The developers of the game would be developing the story and the basic concepts that would be implemented in the story of the game (Munoz, Gesa and Baldiris 2015).

Expected gameplay:

Specifics:

1. The characters would be designed [1 hour]
2. A rough idea of the story would be framed [24 hours]
3. The sketch and basic drawing of the story would be made [48 hours]

Overview: The developer should implement his ideas based on the story, which was created in Week 1. The developer would design the characters, develop the storyline and implement the ideas of the story in the application (Muessig et al. 2013).

Specifics:

1. Create the basic user interface (UI) [24 hours]
2. The icons would be designed using software [12 hours]
3. The basic storyline would be implemented in the application [24 hours]
4. The design of the rooms would be made [12 hours]
5. The riddles would need to be framed in such a way such that they can be solved by medium level to critical level of users. [12 hours]

Duration: 48 hours

ETA: End of Week 3

Overview: The developers would launch the application and the users would be able to download the application and use it on their devices.

Specifics:

1. The users who would download the application should check the necessary specifications and basic requirements for the application in order to download [1 hour]
2. The user would check the application after downloading it. He would also check the basic features and interactivity of the application [2 hours]

External Data:

• A layout of all the maps of all the positions of the player (JSON)
• A single file which will contain the details of the NPC characteristics (JSON) (Kim et al. 2014)

Internal Data:

• Current location of the map
• The statistics of the player (the position of the player, the number of attempts, levels accomplished) (Chen et al. 2013)

The Variable used for the game
int	PlayerScore	(Values from 0 – 100)
string	NameofPlayer
int	MaxAttempt	3
int	Attempt	(Values from 1 – MaxAttept)

This is the main home screen of the game. This consists of many options and provides a brief of the application (Jadhav, Bhutkar and Mehta 2013).

This screen opens after the user has logged in to the application of the game. This game provides four navigation keys in order to move the user to the houses and select them. The white person is the protagonist of the story and the red colored person is the villain of the story.

In order to select any object after reaching there, the player would have to select it by tapping on the screen. The user can exit/pause the game by clicking on the back button of the phone.

This is a picture of a room. The user needs to search for the exact location and object in order to find the riddle.

This screen would appear after the user has searched for the object and the riddle has appeared. The riddle needs to be selected by tapping on each of the object and find the exact answer.

This screen would appear after the user has successfully finished the last riddle of the game. The user can exit from the game by tapping on the ‘Exit’ button (Emmerich, Liszio and Masuch 2014).

The following classes and functions would be helpful in the design of the game (Ong et al. 2015).

The classes are defined as under:

1. User – This class would store the details of the new user who would sign up for the game.
2. Human – This class will store all the characteristics of the human like name, color and many others.
3. Hero – This class will inherit the basic characteristics of the human class along with some additional features like color of the entity and other abilities.
4. Police – The class will inherit characteristics from human class with additional features like color and other distinguishable characteristics.
5. Villain – The villain class also inherits the basic behavior from the human class with additional features.
6. Riddle – The riddle class would be able to store the basic details of the riddle such as the level of difficulty of the riddle, the details of the text of the riddle and the number of riddles that would be stored.

The functions are defined as under:

1. SignUp() – This function would be registering the new user of the game.
2. login() – This function would be checking the existing details of the registered user.
3. StartGame() – The function would be proceeding with the first level of the game.
4. LoadMap() – This function would load the basic routes of the game.
5. LoadCharacters() – The characters of the game would be loaded after calling the function.
6. LoadRiddles() – The function would be responsible for loading the different riddles.
7. RandomizeRiddles() – The riddles would be randomized in order.
8. CheckRiddles() – The riddles would be checked based on the level of difficulty of the riddle.
9. CheckMaxAttempt() – The maximum number of the attempts would be checked.
10. UpdateScore() – The score of the player would be updated based on the riddle that are attempted correctly.
11. EndGame() – The game would end upon solving the last riddle.
12. Reset() -  This function would set the game from the beginning after deleting the previous record of the user.
13. calcHighScore() – The highest score of the user would be calculated based on the total score after reaching the final level.

• Icons and Splashscreens
• Android: 4 icons
• 3 persons (police officer, detective and the villain) (Fang, Han and Li 2014)

References

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Canfora, G., Mercaldo, F. and Visaggio, C.A., 2016. An hmm and structural entropy based detector for android malware: An empirical study. Computers & Security, 61, pp.1-18.

Chen, X., Chen, Y., Ma, Z. and Fernandes, F.C., 2013, February. How is energy consumed in smartphone display applications?. In Proceedings of the 14th Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (p. 3). ACM.

Chung, S.F., 2018. The semantic extensions of kill and killer in magazine and newspaper corpora. International Review of Pragmatics, 10(1), pp.29-56.

Interactivity of the game:

Duveskog, M., Laine, T.H., Arevalo, J., Raisanen, V., Kirongo, B. and Orina, A., 2013, May. EntVenture—From binary trees to Kenyan forests: An Android game designed by students. In IST-Africa Conference and Exhibition (IST-Africa), 2013 (pp. 1-11). IEEE.

El Borji, Y. and Khaldi, M., 2014. An IEEE LOM application profile to describe serious games «SG-LOM». International Journal of Computer Applications, 86(13).

Emmerich, K., Liszio, S. and Masuch, M., 2014, November. Defining second screen gaming: Exploration of new design patterns. In Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (p. 7). ACM.

Fang, Z., Han, W. and Li, Y., 2014. Permission based Android security: Issues and countermeasures. computers & security, 43, pp.205-218.

Fernandez-Vara, C., Digital Games: The New Frontier of Postmodern Detective Fiction. Electronic Literature, p.119.

Gibler, C., Stevens, R., Crussell, J., Chen, H., Zang, H. and Choi, H., 2013, June. Adrob: Examining the landscape and impact of android application plagiarism. In Proceeding of the 11th annual international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (pp. 431-444). ACM.

Jadhav, D., Bhutkar, G. and Mehta, V., 2013, September. Usability evaluation of messenger applications for Android phones using cognitive walkthrough. In Proceedings of the 11th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (pp. 9-18). ACM.

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Kokkonen, T., 2014. Microtransactions in an Android Game.

Linne, J., 2014. Common uses of Facebook among adolescents from different social sectors in Buenos Aires City. Comunicar, 22(43), pp.189-197.

Mahardhika, G.P., 2016. Math Ship: Digital Game Based Learning to Improve Students’ Mathematics Skill. Advanced Science Letters, 22(10), pp.3181-3184.

Morford, Z.H., Witts, B.N., Killingsworth, K.J. and Alavosius, M.P., 2014. Gamification: the intersection between behavior analysis and game design technologies. The Behavior Analyst, 37(1), pp.25-40.

Muessig, K.E., Pike, E.C., LeGrand, S. and Hightow-Weidman, L.B., 2013. Mobile phone applications for the care and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases: a review. Journal of medical Internet research, 15(1).

Mukherjee, S., 2013. Sherlock Holmes Reloaded: Holmes, Videogames and Multiplicity. In Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle (pp. 109-123). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Muñoz, H.T., Gesa, R.F. and Baldiris, S., 2015. Augmented Reality Game-Based Learning for Mathematics Skills Training in Inclusive Contexts. IE Comunicaciones: Revista Iberoamericana de Informática Educativa, (21), p.4.

Ong, S.P., Cholia, S., Jain, A., Brafman, M., Gunter, D., Ceder, G. and Persson, K.A., 2015. The Materials Application Programming Interface (API): A simple, flexible and efficient API for materials data based on REpresentational State Transfer (REST) principles. Computational Materials Science, 97, pp.209-215.

Shan, Z., Azim, T. and Neamtiu, I., 2016, October. Finding resume and restart errors in android applications. In ACM SIGPLAN Notices (Vol. 51, No. 10, pp. 864-880). ACM.

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Wattanasoontorn, V., Boada, I., García, R. and Sbert, M., 2013. Serious games for health. Entertainment Computing, 4(4), pp.231-247.