Langston Key - Portfolio

Crossword Killer

This is the caption to an image, you don't have to include it but it may be useful in describing the intention behind this choice of visual aid.

When development began, I had recently played The Return of the Obra Dinn and designed a New York Times crossword after regularly playing the mini, which is how I developed the concept of a crossword mechanic that gradually revealed information about a larger narrative.
Solving a crossword initially feels overwhelming. Players have nothing but clues that can be hard to decipher without the context of other words. I thought this could be an effective parallel to solving a mystery.
After determining the mechanic, I was experimenting with post-processing and found a screen tone shader, when it dawned on me that newsprint visuals could be a primary part of the game's visual direction.
Initially, the game was going to be entirely black and white, inspired by newsprint and film noir. Although color was added, the themes worked sonically and thematically.

In a few seconds the solution and shape of the puzzle can be edited. (The periods "." are the black spots in a crossword)

Since I knew the puzzle would likely require many iterations, the first thing I developed was a robust tool for importing, exporting, editing, and solving crossword puzzles inside Unity.
This system utilized .csv and files, so puzzles could be edited inside an external spreadsheet editor instead of inside Unity.
My experience with solving the mini gave me insight into the user experience of creating a smooth crossword solving experience. I replicated the controls one would expect from a typical online crossword puzzle, including tabbing around the puzzle, skipping lines, and seamlessly transitioning between the keyboard and mouse.

All the context needed to solve the puzzles are in vignettes that take place around the city

When designing a crossword puzzle, the trickiest part is the context. How are players supposed to know what clues mean without a world to give them that information? New York Times crosswords typically have real life as the context, but when telling a story with the puzzle, I want all information to be findable within the game.
I decided to give the player multiple tools to navigate the vignettes: a map to see where they are, a calendar to see when they are, and the final cipher to reveal the last step in the puzzle.
I created the crossword puzzle first, so I knew what each of the words were before creating any vignettes, or importantly, naming locations. I was able to clue the words with the vignettes by including both the normal crossword clue and context for the world, which gave me more details for clues to draw from.

Screenshot from a playtest with Casey Weeks

Playtesting was a vital part of development, and once the puzzle became solvable, I needed to test every time I changed how I was cluing the puzzles, which included both the text and visuals of the vignettes.
However, every time someone playtested the game in its entirety, they couldn't play it again because they knew the secret message at the end of the game.
Nonetheless, I was able to get playtesters to test both the crossword user experience without needing to solve the puzzle and navigation around the vignettes without knowing their context, so repeated tests were still utilized and valuable.

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contact at keylangs@msu.edu