My goal is for players stay for as long as possible in a murder mystery style game of mine which I will be investing in heavily in the near future.
What I have implemented in MY version which makes it DIFFERENT to other murder mystery games:
Each round every players is given a random gadget to use . 90% of gadgets are actually helpful to increase chances of winning (e.g. temporary invisibility, security camera, disguises, revive a dead player, extra life + 20ish more), the rest are either fun or silly stuff.
Single player mode available with NPC’s spawning to fill in server slots. This option is also available in normal multiplayer mode.
Given players the option to earn 4 limited items if they complete an obby and clicker (like a click simulator) (they teleport to different place to do so). They can also earn 2 other limited items by logging in 5 times in a row.
Sheriff powers (typically a murder mystery game only gives the option for the murderer to have powers).
Many powers are unique (e.g. for sheriff: give another player a gun // for murderer: land mines). There are a few more too.
Plenty of unique game passes (e.g. build your own sword). Many more.
Result history board showing the results of up to 5 rounds ago in the server.
These are the main features, however there are many more unique features not seen in other murder mystery games.
I have come to the forum to ask the community: What do YOU want to see in a murder mystery game to make you engaged and entertained as much as possible?
Every idea will be heavily considered. Go ahead and think of ANYTHING, I’d love to hear it!
your version does sound interesting. my concern is that being the murderer or the sheriff becomes less valuable because the gadgets would be the more interesting parts–your examples of what gadgets would do sound more game-changing than the ones given for sheriff powers and compared to what powers i’ve seen more murderers in other games.
what would be a nice change for murder mystery games is that the murderer actually remains a mystery. usually the murderer just whips out their knife and goes on a rampage. there’s too much focus on the thrill of being chased, and rarely any focus on collecting clues to find the murderer as players go missing one by one.
i assume that rampaging works well because it’s simple and straightforward, and in my experience children (using ‘children’ because from what i hear roblox is mostly children) prefer to have an explosion of excitement.
on the side you can consider a gamemode in which there are two murderers, but the second murderer is on an entirely different team from everyone else and their goal is to frame someone for a murder (via forcing the framed player to hold a fake knife).
I agree. A lot of the attention span for young users on a murder mystery game is waiting until they get the rare/unique thing and then get to have fun (Such as being 1/16 players to be the murderer). They will remain for many rounds until they get to be murderer.
Keeping that in mind, also make sure to reward long play sessions such as rewarding special gadgets after playing 10, 20, 30 minutes (like Lucky Block) to keep players in your game.
Players want to be with their friends
If you can keep groups of players who know each other in your game, they will stay longer than if they’re playing with randoms. Make sure that players want to and will invite their friends to the game for longer play sessions.
You need to have a reward system for player. The game has a replayability aspect to it but there needs to be rewards for the players, Maybe a level system where you unlock new swords like you said for gamepasses iirc.
I totally agree with you and have thought the same before. Maybe make the equip of the murderer tools local except for when they kill someone? I’ll note this idea down as I definitely agree.
And the powers I listed were definitely the high-tier gadgets and nothing can actually harm other users, only benefit themselves, so I think that’s fine there. I’ll see what I can do along the lines of being more of a mystery though.
I also agree with you, waiting for a turn can be a pain. Which is why I have already implemented a feature which disables someone from being murderer 2x in a row + players can pay 8 R$ to enter a queue to be the sheriff or murderer.
Your idea of gadget quality being proportional to play time is good. I’ll see what I can do.
With the friends, that is with many games, and yeah not much I can do except by making the game better overall. This is defs a play-with-friend game.
Since I know many kids like click simulators, I’ve given them the option to teleport to a different place and complete feats and come back with badges in which they can equip limited items. The clicker isn’t in the game itself.
There definitely is, players increase their kill-count and unlock various items with their own kill-count. Kill count is not lowered on purchase, so it’s basically an eligibility store.
And there is a short-term 5-day login streak which can earn them 2 limited items permanently too.
Among Us probably do it because you’re actually making an impact on the others chances of winning in Among Us if you leave.
You can’t leave a round in my version unless you reset, but even there, I don’t see people doing this very often at all, and how would I punish them? They aren’t really impacting anyone. I have already made it that when the sheriff leaves the actual game, the gun will spawn somewhere on the map because that will actually affect the rest of the players.
But in this instance, using a security camera or something, you can’t eliminate the murderer. Sure, you can help, but the sheriff would still have to be the one to take out the murderer.
Just made a smart chance system for gadgets. You get +5% chance for the highest tier gadget, for each round you play. Plus math.random(0, 10) % free chance each round so that it isn’t solely based on how many rounds you play.
