Written, designed and illustrated by Marcella Cheng
Card portraits and development by Sebastian Guillema
The DC Code is an online game developed for the UTS student club, Drawing Circle, that was played live for 5 weeks in the 2018 spring semester. The game was hosted on its own website, played entirely online and automated to update a new round twice a week for a total of 10 rounds. In collaboration with Sebastian Guillema, the game took 5 weeks to develop from beginning to end, including writing, designing and coding. The game won ActivateUTS's 'Best Small Event' prize of 2018 and remains Drawing Circle's members' favourite game of the year.
The home screen of the game.
The premise of the game was a classic murder mystery, taking inspiration from 'whodunnit' board games to provide an interactive online game for members of the club to play together. Members aimed to work together to solve the (fictional) murder of the current president of Drawing Circle, who was killed mysteriously just minutes before the AGM: an event that settled the elections of all executives for the following year. Everyone on the exec team was a suspect, and as new evidence was released every week, members were required to vote for the most guilty suspect every round to narrow down the killer. All votes were tallied at the end of the game to decide the winning players, and to see if the club really did manage to vote on the correct murderer...
Screenshot of the 'Evidence' tab. Two new photographs would be released every round along with a descriptive caption, revealing a little more of what happened that day and bringing certain suspects into unfavourable lights. Players could toggle left and right to sift through both old and new evidence.
Above: Screenshot of the 'Votes' tab. A summary of everyone's votes from each round would update live in this tab. As players could change their vote as many times as they liked up until the round ended, this could sometimes sway the opinion of the people.
Below: Some of the suspect statements that would change every round, either commenting on the evidence revealed that round or perhaps even subtly accusing another suspect of the crime.
In the prizes given to winning players, a DC Code exclusive 'mystery prize' was also made as a souvenir of the event; both a keepsake for the most diligent of players and a little closure for the end of the game.
The prize consisted of:
- full set of executive cards from the game
- a collection of all crime scene photographs
- a letter from the murderer
- a small metal charm (the tea-cup was the murder weapon) hand-sewn with red thread
- all packaged in a thick brown folded card printed with The DC Code logo, and a charcoal grey envelope stamped with a fake wax seal
- all packaged in a thick brown folded card printed with The DC Code logo, and a charcoal grey envelope stamped with a fake wax seal
This project was developed and coded by Sebastian Guillema.
Contact him at: sguillema@hotmail.com or 0425 243 052 for more information.
