Clue: Murder By Death – How to Spin Intriguing Mystery in Indie Game
Cocodrolo Games, the developer of Clue: Murder By Death, a detective game inspired by The Abbey of Crime, Return of the Obra Dinn, and iconic movies, discussed how it mixed investigation, narrative, and puzzle-solving and made familiar characters feel alive.
Introduction
Cocodrolo Games is a small team that combines experienced developers with young talent full of fresh ideas. We believe this mix allows us to approach game development from diverse perspectives, creating unique experiences.
Our journey into the game industry started many years ago, working on a variety of projects across various platforms. Over time, we gained experience in game design, programming, art, and production, which eventually led us to create our own studio. The goal was clear: to build games with a strong identity, carefully crafted mechanics, and a clear creative vision.
Like many indie developers, we started with small projects, learning from every mistake and success. Little by little, we refined our workflow and our creative direction, always trying to balance ambition with feasibility. Today, we focus on creating narrative-driven experiences that combine classic inspirations with modern design principles.
Clue: Murder By Death
Clue: Murder by Death is inspired by classic detective stories, mystery novels, and old-school adventure games. We were especially influenced by titles such as Movie (1986) and The Abbey of Crime (1988), as well as by the golden age of mystery literature and films.
We wanted to create a game that captures the feeling of being inside a classic whodunit: a closed setting, a group of suspicious characters, and a mystery that slowly unfolds as you investigate. At the same time, we didn’t want to simply copy old formulas. Our goal was to reinterpret that classic structure with modern design ideas and a strong focus on player choice and perspective.
The idea of mixing investigation, narrative, and puzzle-solving in a single experience felt like the perfect way to pay homage to those influences while still creating something fresh. This is where we find the Return of the Obra Dinn flavour, in that players must work out what happened and what led to the events of the story. But, on a gameplay level, yes, Clue: Murder by Death is quite different.
We were looking for a way for the player to live the same experience as John Smith, the detective in the game. We like to say that it's a game where you don’t just take control of the detective, you must think like one, too.
From the beginning, we wanted the narrative to be fragmented and built from different points of view, so the story is divided into several segments, with each character offering their own perspective on the events. There are ten fragmented stories that, when put together, reveal the full picture of what really happened.
The subjectivity of the interactions of the characters you control is what makes the difference. In the game, the player controls three characters at a time from a cast of 10, and each one interacts with the other characters and the environment as you might expect real criminal suspects to.
When you observe the same object with different characters, you get their unique point of view, which is influenced by their role in this story. After all, it's not the same to observe a beautiful piano through the eyes of the aristocratic girl who plays it for the love of music, as it is through the eyes of the maid who has to dust it, key by key, every week.
We've tried to give that depth to what is observed and the dialogue that the player sees in the game. So, players can experience the mystery through 36 different combinations of characters, each of which can observe the events following the crime to try to discover who, how, and why the Lord of the mansion was murdered.
From there, we mix the narrative aspect with the natural way humans make decisions: based on incomplete information, assumptions and personal biases. The player doesn’t just follow a linear story; instead, they actively reconstruct it by exploring, observing, and connecting clues.
This structure allows us to play with uncertainty and doubt. The truth is never presented directly; instead, players have to deduce it by paying attention to details and questioning everything they see and hear.
Characters
People like intrigue, love affairs, envy, jealousy, and supernatural mysteries. Our characters are the perfect team where all players can see reflected the classic mystery stories, soap operas, and Agatha Christie cases. We have an aristocratic family with many secrets, devoted servants, interesting family friends, two twin sisters who fall in love with the same vampire, and a dead man who was a lover of occultism and Egyptian rituals. What could go wrong, right?
Actually, something similar is what the film "Murder by Death" does when it brings together the five best detectives of the era and locks them up for a weekend to solve a murder that hasn't happened yet; it's a small homage.
When the player chooses their two assistants, they're actually opening and closing narrative doors. Between the detective and the two chosen characters, we can only know a portion of the personal lives of the other 7 available characters through a subjective perspective informed by their interpersonal relationships.
There are 10 stories, one for each character, and you can only see a few fragments at a time, depending on which you control. The Anderson mansion, with its 166 rooms, is shown through each character's perspective. And of course, it's not the same to be a family guest, a devoted servant, or the lady of the house.
When time runs out, in the best-case scenario, you'll know part of the other characters' stories. You'll have explored the mansion, opened some doors, solved some puzzles, and they'll have told you the story from their point of view. Everyone lies or tells you the story from their perspective; you can even control the murderer, who can conspire against other characters. Above all, the player must learn as much as possible from each playthrough so that, in their next loop, they can use what they've learned to discover new clues to successfully complete the investigation.
The game is programmed in Unity because of its versatility. For us, it was very important that the game could be played on all platforms: PC, console, and eventually mobile devices. Once we got the first prototype working on a simple mobile device and on a high-performance PC, we were clear that the tools we had chosen were the right ones. From here, the rest was imagining how far we wanted to go.
The game will be on the market from 13 February 2026 for PC and consoles, and shortly after for mobile devices. "Clue: Murder by Death" is a calm game designed to be played after dinner with a notepad beside you, jotting down your theories, clues, and hypotheses, regardless of what type of player you are. We wanted to provide this opportunity, no matter whether you like to play investigations sitting on the sofa with your handheld console or tablet, on the TV with your console, or at your desk on your computer. In reality, what's more important are the notes you take with your paper and pen.
Conclusion
If you like investigations, mysteries, and novels, this is your game. Likewise, after the launch, we want to carefully analyse the data that Clue: Murder by Death provides us and learn from it. As a small team, we try to put our effort into doing what works, but we also want our game to stand out and show what we enjoy.
Once the game is launched, we'll continue working on the next project. Using the same type of art, we want to present the player with a narrative simulation game with morally difficult situations where nothing is black or white. We believe this is another idea that is different from much of the other games on the market, which can work in an industry where innovating seems increasingly difficult.
