{"id":128038,"date":"2022-09-12T14:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=fkelkwzq"},"modified":"2022-09-12T14:00:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T14:00:57","slug":"behind-the-design-overboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/09\/12\/behind-the-design-overboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Overboard!"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The murder mystery game Overboard!<\/em> is a whodunit with a killer twist: You done it\u2026 and now you have to get away with it.<\/p>\n

In Overboard!<\/em>, you play not as the detective but the murderer most foul \u2014 Veronica Villensey, a fading 1930s starlet who\u2019s tossed her husband off a cruise ship. Now, you have just eight in-game hours to pin the crime on somebody else. Chat with unsuspecting (and suspecting) shipmates, eliminate problematic evidence, blackmail a spy, seduce a potential ally, show up to breakfast on time, cheat at a card game, visit a chapel (awkward), and lie \u2014 to everyone, basically all the time. (Did we mention the game won its 2022 Apple Design Award for \u201cDelight and Fun\u201d?)<\/p>\n

\"To<\/p>\n
\n

To get away with the crime, you’ll need to keep your story straight. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The upside-down narrative noir mystery is full of vintage style, stabs of dark humor, and a proper cast of murder-novel players. You might speak with the fetching dame in the Lauren Bacall hat, the dashing ship commander, the crusty old woman with many axes to grind, and more. Made in just 100 pandemic days, it\u2019s also a relatively breezy game that you can play in about 20 minutes \u2014 and then promptly replay to properly discover all of its multiple storylines and endings. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked around and thought, \u2018How has no one done Agatha Christie yet?\u2019\u201d says Jon Ingold, co-founder of game studio Inkle and the game\u2019s author. But the magic is how Overboard!<\/em> takes on Christie from the other side \u2014 while the Death on the Nile<\/em>-inspired chess pieces seem familiar, the construct certainly isn\u2019t. \u201cI definitely had the most fun job here,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\"Generally<\/p>\n
\n

Generally you don\u2019t see this type of behavior from non-guilty people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The game’s development came as a surprise \u2014 even to the studio itself. Inkle\u2019s acclaimed portfolio includes titles like Sorcery!<\/em>, Heaven\u2019s Vault<\/em>, and Jules Verne adventure 80 Days<\/em>, and Ingold and studio co-founder Joe Humfrey had been heads down on their next release: a game set in the Scottish highlands. In December 2020, however, Ingold turned up with an idea about a golden-age throwback mystery \u2014 a palate-cleansing side hustle that could be hammered out quickly. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re working on a big project, you\u2019re always dying to work on something smaller,\u201d says Humfrey. \u201cSo we thought, let\u2019s just do a one-month game jam! It\u2019s not like it\u2019ll destroy the other project! It ended up taking three months instead of one, but the attitude was refreshing. You don\u2019t labor over your decisions, and you\u2019re ruthless about coming up with elegant design.\u201d <\/p>\n

For Ingold, that speed became a delightful mechanic in of itself. \u201cWe had this bizarre constraint of trying to go as fast as we could,\u201d laughs Ingold. \u201cWe kept saying, \u2018This isn\u2019t even what we\u2019re supposed to be doing right now! We can\u2019t let this get out of the box!\u2019\u201d Luckily, they had a studio full of tools that gave them a big head start. <\/p>\n

Writing with Ink<\/h3>\n

Twelve years ago, Humfrey and Ingold left company jobs to launch their own game studio \u2014 and became accidental inventors in the process. \u201cInkle is a bit unusual in that we have a narrative engine that we built for ourselves,\u201d Ingold says. <\/p>\n

That proprietary engine, Ink, is essentially a word processor that lets Ingold and the Inkle team write a branching narrative story straight through \u2014 \u201clike a film script,\u201d Ingold says \u2014 before going back to flesh it out, expand the story, and sprinkle in all the choices, branches, and detours. \u201cIt\u2019s like Markdown for interactive fiction,\u201d says Humfrey. <\/p>\n

\"Meet<\/p>\n
\n

Meet Clarissa, Anders, and Subedar-Major Singh, three of the game\u2019s characters \/ victims \/ accomplices \/ suspects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

They wanted to create a tool that prioritized words rather than structure. \u201cMost branching story editors are presented as flowcharts,\u201d says Ingold. \u201cBut the truth about flowcharts is that they make things seem more complicated than they actually are; they\u2019re spread out all over the page.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ink, by contrast, scrolls like a traditional document. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing a scene with choices, you have a beginning, middle, and maybe multiple ends. But they\u2019re all going in one direction,\u201d says Ingold. As a lightweight markup language, Ink uses symbols to indicate elements: an asterisk is a choice, a \u2192 shifts to another part of the story. \u201cYou can essentially write a linear script, then go back through and say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m gonna pull this out,\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m gonna branch this bit,\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m gonna make this a long sidetrack that eventually joins back up.\u2019\u201d Bonus: Changing the script is a matter of copy-and-pasting, not rejiggering an entire flowchart. If this sounds interesting, you can check it out yourself: Ink has been open-sourced for the past five years, where Humfrey notes that \u201chundreds\u201d of games have put it to good use.<\/p>\n

\n

(Ink is) like Markdown for interactive fiction.<\/p>\n

Joe Humfrey, Inkle co-founder<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With Ink, Ingold could focus on the 75,000-word script and its pacing. \u201cGood interactive scenes aren\u2019t good because they have a funky structure. They\u2019re good because they\u2019re well-written,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most important thing is allowing the human at the keyboard to get on with [the game].\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Veronica<\/p>\n
\n

Veronica threatens the good commander \u2014 at least in this version of the script.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In just about three weeks, Ingold had knocked out a \u201cminimum viable story\u201d on Ink before a single line of Overboard!<\/em> code was written. \u201cI basically scribbled the opening scene out as is \u2014 Ink works really well as a notepad,\u201d he says. \u201cBut that scene ends when the steward knocks on the door, and you have to ask yourself: Are you going to lie? It\u2019s such a great first decision, and it leads to, OK, if you lie, what\u2019s the consequence of that?\u201d He smiles at the memory. \u201cNaturally, that makes you want to write the next scene.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018As little development as possible\u2019<\/h3>\n

With the game-jam timeline marching on \u2014 \u201cso fast that we barely had time to think about whether this was a good or bad idea,\u201d laughs Humfrey \u2014 the other members of the Overboard!<\/em> team began to think about populating their boat. <\/p>\n

By late January, the team had a rough prototype ready to go. \u201cIt was very unpolished,\u201d says Humfrey. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t even a minimum viable product. But you could play it through, and because the core concept was so simple, we could spend loads of time polishing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wyatt<\/p>\n
\n

Wyatt and the Overboard!<\/em> team tried a number of color combinations to set the appropriately sinister mood, eventually settling on the last.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

While historically a jack-of-all-trades for Inkle games, Humfrey served strictly as art director for Overboard!<\/em>, while Tom Kail handled the UI and artist Anastasia Wyatt drew up the cast of shady shipmates. To kick off art direction, Humfrey went back to Inkle\u2019s rich catalog. \u201cThe aim was to build it like a sequel to 80 Days<\/em>,\u201d says Humfrey. \u201cOf course, it diverged and had its own unique UI requirements. But the technology we\u2019d developed internally was already set up for a project like this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In addition to the 80 Days<\/em> skeleton, the team was able to repurpose existing Inkle systems for testing, gathering feedback, and creating animations; Ink even plugs right into Unity. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons we could do this in 100 days,\u201d says Humfrey.<\/p>\n

\n

People would say, \u2018I wonder what happens if I take this object and show it to that person?\u2019 and I\u2019d be like, \u2018Yeah! Good question!\u2019<\/p>\n

Jon Ingold, Inkle co-founder and *Overboard!* writer<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once the game was technically operational, playtesting started remarkably early, when the script was only about 30% finalized. \u201cIt was like pouring water into a bucket to find the cracks,\u201d Ingold says. \u201cEverything has to make sense. People would say, \u2018I wonder what happens if I take this object and show it to that person?\u2019 and I\u2019d be like, \u2018Yeah! Good question!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Can<\/p>\n
\n

Can characters who drink martinis this dramatically be trusted?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Even Ink did its part to help test and polish gameplay. Ingold added a feature that automatically speed-ran the game in Ink to explore the varying branches, so plot holes could be plugged before they even made it into the Unity build. In the final version, the software even keeps track of not only what you know (for instance, that you tossed a diamond earring out of a porthole), but what the other characters know too (for instance, that you\u2019re acting real squirrelly about when you were up on the deck). It\u2019ll also show you the choices you made before, in case you maybe wanna steal those sleeping pills this time around. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe replayablity mechanic is one of the features we\u2019re most proud of,\u201d says Humfrey. \u201cIt\u2019s so easy for a narrative game to feel repetitive, like you\u2019re seeing the same thing multiple times.\u201d To get around it, he looked to films like Groundhog Day<\/em>, the 1993 comedy about a guy doomed to relive the same day over and over. \u201cThat movie cut things down really tightly, so every time they did a time loop you saw just enough context to understand where you were in the loop. I think we managed to make that work quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"As<\/p>\n
\n

As the guilty Veronica, you’ll have to plead your case to more than just a few shipmates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The speedy timeline meant the script didn\u2019t require much editing, since anything extraneous never made it there in the first place. Instead, revisions involved adding dialogue, sprinkling in a few zingers, or testing the boundaries of the game\u2019s tone. (A slapsticky scene in which Veronica finds out a higher power is disappointed with her life choices stayed in; a scene where she attacks someone with a cross did not.) <\/p>\n

But sometimes, Ingold just wanted to fit in a scene he liked. \u201cAnd that\u2019s just sheer joy, because all you\u2019re doing is saying, \u2018I wish there was a scene where I could break into the old lady\u2019s room, so I\u2019ll slot that in here.\u201d The characters also lent themselves to wild interactions. \u201cEverybody clashes on the boat,\u201d Ingold says. \u201cVeronica wants everyone to be in awe of her, but the old lady isn\u2019t bothered by her at all. It\u2019s essentially a comedy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Humfrey puts it another way. \u201cThe thing that Jon\u2019s managed to crack is that Overboard!<\/em> doesn\u2019t take itself too seriously,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s the sort of person she is\u2019<\/h3>\n

The job of bringing those clashing characters to screen fell to artist and designer Anastasia Wyatt, who, from her home office in Manchester, raced to bring the Overboard!<\/em> cast to life; in fact, what you\u2019re playing on your device is probably pretty close to what she initially dreamed up. \u201cIn a lot of cases, I went with the first design that came into my head,\u201d says Wyatt.<\/p>\n

For those designs, Wyatt trawled into the rich potential of the game\u2019s vintage setting, pulling designs from 1930s fashion, magazines, and even sewing pattern books to outfit background players like the irritatingly effective detective Subedar-Major Singh, the curiously sad Clarissa Turpentine, and Veronica (who required extra care since she essentially never leaves the screen). \u201cI saw a picture of this particular hat and the way it sat on a woman\u2019s head,\u201d Wyatt says, \u201cand I could visualize the whole character from that one piece of clothing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Wyatt\u2019s<\/p>\n
\n

Wyatt\u2019s early takes on Veronica Villensey were all about hats and hairstyles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For the backgrounds, Wyatt found herself drawn to the art deco style of vintage British railway posters, all promising exotic globe-trotting adventure. \u201cThey were all advertising \u2014 \u2018Visit Aberystwyth!\u2019 \u2014 but they had this great palette of bright, hyper-cheery colors,\u201d says Wyatt. <\/p>\n

Wyatt and the design team took pains to make it an inspiration, rather than full recreation; Humfrey also brought in a bit of the comic book pop-art style from the \u201850s (all bold colors and slant-edged panels) to add a bit of playfulness to the dark surroundings. \u201cWe tried to push the boundaries, but not so much that it don\u2019t look like the \u201830s anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to find that balance between cartoonifying people and keeping them recognizable in real life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Early<\/p>\n
\n

Early versions of the caustic but stylish Lady H, complete with outlandish furs. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Wyatt also worked in a few Easter eggs \u2014 like Veronica\u2019s stylish hat, which casts an exaggerated shadow. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely what you\u2019d see in a character you can\u2019t trust,\u201d says Wyatt (even if, as the game goes on, you learn more about the character\u2019s backstory). Wyatt also draped Lady Honoria Armstrong\u2019s shoulders in an enormous fox fur, a grotesque touch of overamplified high society that\u2019s intentionally out of place. \u201cObviously you wouldn\u2019t wear a big fur coat with a whole dead fox around your neck in the summer,\u201d Wyatt laughs, \u201cbut that\u2019s the sort of person she is.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018You should always trade up\u2019<\/h3>\n

Overboard!<\/em> is designed for maximum replayability; even if you get away with murder the first time, there\u2019s plenty of story left to unpack. \u201cWith any of our games, you might only see 20% of the material on the first playthrough,\u201d says Humfrey. You can replay to score insurance money, check off a list of in-game objectives, or discover hidden storylines. According to the internet, some players have even been known to play through to try and eradicate everyone on the ship.<\/p>\n

\"Justice<\/p>\n
\n

Justice is served \u2014 in this ending, anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

All of that replayability, the sense that the mystery is yours to do with as you please, is the best possible outcome for such a mystery, says Ingold. Overboard!<\/em> is done; no updates or additional content are planned, though Humfrey admits to thinking about a sequel. If it happens, Ingold is on board. \u201cAs a writer, you should always trade up,\u201d he says. \u201cIs Overboard!<\/em> what I started off with? No, it\u2019s a version that\u2019s been traded up and up and up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about Overboard!<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Overboard! from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind the Design is a weekly series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the 12 winners of the 2022 Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Explore more of the 2022 Behind the Design series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The murder mystery game Overboard! is a whodunit with a killer twist: You done it\u2026 and now you have to get away with it. In Overboard!, you play not as the detective but the murderer most foul \u2014 Veronica Villensey, a fading 1930s starlet who\u2019s tossed her husband off a cruise ship. Now, you have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}