Neon Noir

Murder Mystery, Narrative-focused, social, and hybrid experience for mobile and PC.

Professor

Jonathan Walton

Professor

Chris Klug

Origin of Project

This project is a Faculty-Pitched Project by Prof. Jonathan Walton and Prof. Chris Klug, which was inspired by Jubensha (剧本杀), a popular murder mystery game genre in China.

Alpha Detective Agency Goal

Alpha Detective Agency is a team focused on building a Murder Mystery Game set in a Cyber-Noir world for PC and Mobile.

The target of the project is to build up an embodied, immersive, and innovative Jubensha-like experience, based on research of multiple Murder Mystery games in various forms.

Jubensha in China

“Jubensha is a unique Murder Mystery RPG in China, which was inspired by mystery & crime fiction, Victorian parlor games, and the board game Clue (1949). In these games, players take on fictional roles as different characters – acting them out in the manner of improv or larp.

During Jubensha, elaborate costumes and sets sometimes are arranged in onsite gameplay, but in other cases the setup may be relatively minimal. Then, over the course of 3 – 5 hours, players talk with each other in-character, investigate various “clues” and “secrets,” and try to determine which character (or maybe more than one) is the murderer.”

– Jonathan Walton