Dial-Up Detective: Blood in the Water

Dial Up Detective is a narrative story game, played with a real 1969's rotary phone (modded during the hack) to speak to characters, interrogating them to solve this case of murder set in Chicago.

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Inspiration

The project originally started as an excuse to mess with a novelty 80's tech became a full fledged story game using an old 1969 analogue rotary phone (Thank you Daudi's Mum!)

What it does

The premise is simple! Dial the number of suspects and witnesses with the rotary phone to solve the mysterious murder case of Lawrence Macor, a big-time lawyer in Chicago 1984.

How we built it

Lots of hardware and suffering to get a 60-year old phone to act as our controller for the game. We hand crafted a story and dialogue for 6 characters (With no AI involved at all!) Then, using Unity, we display our case using a digital pin-board inspired by the early GUIs of the late 70s. This GUI is hand drawn!

Challenges we ran into

You'd think we learnt this last time, but pre-digital tech is black magic, and it refuses to tell you it's secrets. Unity suuuuucks. Also creative writing is so hard!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The whole thing! It was a tricky one to get working, and we made it after a huge slump!

What we learned

We got slightly better at reading circuit diagrams, and using unity

What's next for Dial-Up Detective: Blood in the Water

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