Overview
A Detective Story is a compact detective simulator that brings natural conversation to the heart of interactive fiction, where you can interrogate NPCs using natural languages - as they are powered by LLMs (well, SLMs to be precise).
A murder has taken place in the sunlit seaside town of Baytown, where everyone has a story. Question suspects, explore the town for clues, and test their alibis against the evidence. You may have only three days to solve the crime - and there may be more than one murderer!
Development Experience
Making a game is very different from building an app - or any other kind of software, for that matter. I don't think I've ever worked on a software project where even the smallest incremental improvement could feel so difficult.
Ironically, even though engine and gameplay development consumed nearly 80% of the development time, I'd still call it the "easy part" of the whole endeavor. Designing the story, integrating the graphics, and, most importantly, making sure the mystery is actually solvable - those turned out to be challenges that go well beyond the usual technical maneuver.
Reception
The initial trailer, despite its relatively simple graphics by today's standards, felt quite intriguing to me. The idea of fully integrating LLM-powered NPCs into a game is certainly nothing new, but it's still rarely seen in actual games.
I even told my friends that A Detective Story might end up being more popular than Fantasy Planet Painter. Both are niche titles, but ADS seemed more approachable and appealing to a broader audience.
Reality, however, told a different story. The game attracted relatively little interest during its first few months, which eventually led me to scale back the time and effort I was putting into getting it released.
Revival of Effort
With Divooka approaching maturity and preparing for its public release later this year, it's time to revisit and refine the integrated LLM capabilities within the Divooka ecosystem, particularly features such as RAG and knowledge base management.
ADS runs on Crime Engine, which itself is built upon components from Divooka, making it a natural testing ground for these capabilities.
On a more personal note, I also have other game projects in mind for Methodox. However, Project Aegis has made little progress, and Codename Wayhome remains a prototype. At some point, I really need to get a game across the finish line. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'll have the courage to embark on yet another game project!
The Things I Am Still Not Satisfied With
I suppose this is something every creative endeavor struggles with. I wish we could polish the scenes a little more, make the story more vibrant, bring the characters to life, and make our little fictional town feel more realistic and expansive. The list goes on and on. But we can't stay hidden forever. At some point, when things are good enough, we have to let our creations out into the world and see how they fare. Perfection is a difficult goal to chase, and perhaps an impossible one to reach.
On the model side, I can't honestly say the conversation experience is optimal yet. NPCs can sometimes be overly restrictive or reluctant to reveal information, making it unnecessarily difficult for players to piece together clues and solve the mystery. I suspect the best long-term solution might be to train a custom model specifically for this kind of interaction, perhaps taking inspiration from how Character.AI approaches conversational characters. That's certainly something worth exploring further.
I'll share more about the technical side of using AI in game development in a future post.
References
