We decided to create a prototype (none of us had developed a game before). We invited a friend who also wanted to start a career in game development, thinking that working on our own project wouldn't be a bad plan. We began pre-production, heavily inspired by a GMTK video about detective games: YouTube. Our roles were divided as follows: my friend and I handled development, game design, and marketing, while my wife and I took care of the story and music. My wife also single-handedly worked on the artwork and 3D models.

Initially, the protagonist was supposed to be a detective cat who solves cases in his dreams. 

Then, it evolved into an anthropomorphic detective cat (the game was called Catactive), with his office designed to resemble fish shapes. However, as the story developed, we felt a female protagonist would be better (spoiler: this is related to her partner).

The Game World: We decided on a fictional world with anthropomorphic animals to make characters more memorable. The setting was chosen to be noir, which we thought could blend into a noir cyberpunk theme. The original story was about a milkman stealing a chair from an apartment building on Christmas Eve—an odd fit for noir and cyberpunk, so we scrapped it. We had an incredible plot twist near the end. Now, the first case involves investigating the disappearance of a famous writer, and the setting has shifted to retrofuturism (I’m not sure when that happened, lol).

The office was designed with interactivity in mind. Exiting the game was done by clicking on the door. The desk and the board with the map were separate. Clicking on the board would start the investigation. Settings were hidden on the shelves of the cabinets, and, of course, there was a record player for changing the music. Later, we combined all these elements onto a single screen to make access easier for the player.

Challenges in Writing the Script: The main problem was that the narrative wasn’t linear. Essentially, I had to write 3-5 scripts simultaneously, figuring out how players might interpret clues and guiding them through each plotline, while hinting at the truth. Additionally, the scripts were written in Excel. Until I realized that clues and locations needed different indexing, I constantly mixed up where each clue led. But that’s a spoiler for the next devlog, where I'll explain how we developed the gameplay.