Culprit: The Board Game

Overview

Culprit is a two-player adversarial game where one player (the culprit) attempts to hide evidence that they committed a crime, while the other (the detective) attempts to find the evidence to incriminate the culprit. Specifically, the objective for the detective is to find the 3 pieces of incriminating evidence, while the culprit attempts to keep the pieces of evidence hidden for 8 rounds. The gameplay is like matching games (think flipping over two cards to find matching objects) but altered to fit the premise. 

How to set up

As the exact pieces and sets do not matter, only that the numbers of each element match the list in the ruleset, creating your own game elements is fairly straightforward. For objects and covers, visual elements are drawn on the front while what they are is written on the back. Sets do not require this.

Reflection

The demo I created was indeed representative of the core loop I wanted, as it showed the premise of how environment interaction would go. It also gave me an answer as to whether a game where you were playing as the culprit - atypical for a point-and-click game - would work and be fun. Changes I would make would be to make it so that the detective can tell whenever something gets moved but not what or where, as well as implementing suspicion by making the culprit not able to lie constantly. As for where I would take it next, I would either expand the game to have more pieces and to be balanced, or turn it into the actual digital point-and-click game.