Introducing Arcadia

In October last year I committed to work on a new concept for the next 9 or so months. As a solo designer pouring in hours of effort, it needed to be something I could enjoy and stay excited about from concept to launch and beyond. Thus The Arcadia Report was born. Existing at the intersection of games, narrative media, and experience-based entertainment, The Arcadia Report aims to deliver a new kind of story designed specifically for our short-attention span, experience-craving world.

The Arcadia Report is an immersive murder mystery experience that transforms your city into an escape room. The mystery invades reality as you must travel to real world locations to unlock new evidence as you delve into the dark past of the failed Arcadia startup and their quest to build an algorithm to solve crimes.

But enough prattling. Want to know more? Check out ArcadiaReport.com and join the Citizens Club for exclusive updates and early access as the game develops.

The Turning Point

That was 4 months ago. Now halfway through my final year of interaction design studies (and roughly halfway through my alpha project timeline), it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate. I ended 2019 with an alpha visual prototype after weeks of research, talking and testing with potential players, studying early GUI design, and justifying binge watching Columbo as research.

Coming back with fresh eyes after Christmas in January (the annual holiday occurring after frenzied weeks of work in the corner while others eat Turkey since your coursework deadline is the start of January), my goal is to take a step back and reevaluate not only the work done so far but the project as a whole and where I want to go with it. As part of that, I’m finally taking my head out of the sand and doing what I wanted from the start: designing in the open. So from here on out, I’ll be sharing regular updates on progress, challenges, failures, learnings, and general musings from bootstrapping a game as a solo designer and first time product launcher.

Here we go!

Week 1 Recap

That is, week 1 of properly resuming work on The Arcadia Report in 2020. Coinciding with my first week back to university (and the first day of my final semester. This is it, people!), this involved all the usual chores of first weeks. For my part, there was a lot of reviewing, analysing, calendaring, and generally plotting where the project is going, what remains to be done, what the next steps are, mapping out deadlines, and all around general setup.

With most of the planning and goal setting underway, I could start putting it into action. First things first, I wrote up an overall strategy and refocusing around the essence of The Arcadia Report as a location-driven mystery experience. From there my aim for week one was to identify and set up the most impactful content channels and begin doing what I’d wanted to all along: share work and design in the open. From an itch.io page to sorting out the newsletter templates, twitter account plan, and generally sorting out all those niggly bits to form a consistent presence on the web.

With the focus on planning strategy and establishing channels, it was a slower start than I had hoped. This was partly due to the lack of the week 0 I had planned for all this setup (because, you know, procrastination happens). However, I think it’s well worth it in the long run to start off on a firm foundation with a much clearer idea of where I’m going.

Win

• Gathered valuable design feedback from a variety of sources, including designers, tutors, and users, to compare to my own gut reaction (which, as usual, started with the knee jerk “everything is terrible” that occurs every time you return to your designs after not seeing them for a while. Or is that just me?).
• Forced myself to slow down and think about the big picture. Between that and the feedback, the next steps are becoming clearer.
• Accounts set up and ready to go to begin designing and sharing content for The Arcadia Report and getting involved in the game design community.

Loss

• There’s a lot that could be simpler and I’m not satisfied. This means more design work is needed than I originally anticipated to reach a MVP delivering an appropriate experience.

Lessons Learnt

• Never too late: If you want to design in the open, best if you do it from the start. But now, whatever stage that may be, is still better than never.
• Don’t leave it until the end: Content strategy and marketing are a design problem too, especially when you’re working on your own. Who is your target audience? Where are they? How can you bring them value? On what schedule? This impacts the platforms you use as well and can save time down the line rather than porting over blog posts and such to another platform (like I’m doing at the moment).
• Take the time: There is such a thing as too much planning. You can’t map out every little thing that’s going to happen months in advance. However, it is worth it to step back and acknowledge any assumptions, plans, and establish an approach and priorities. Whether you consciously make a strategy or not, you probably have assumptions or hopes in the back of your head and I find it’s good to get those out in the open so you can evaluate what you really want to do and how to get there.
• Set your northstar: Speaking of how to get there, don’t lose sight of what you’re building along the way. Working by myself, there were so many hats to swap and elements to track, it was all too easy to get caught up in the work and forget the whole it all comes together to create. This halfway point is a turning point for the project because it’s an opportunity to step back and go back to my original pitch. How much has been lost or evolved along the way? Is that good or bad? What could be removed?

Next Week

I’ve got big plans for week 2. Not only is it an opportunity to roadtest my new strategy, as part of that I’m also co-opting the 5 day design sprint model to hopefully help focus on one key aim per week and get work in front of players as soon as possible. First up: a radical simplification of the overall experience.

Until next time, stay safe.

Thanks for reading! The Arcadia Report is an immersive murder mystery experience, transforming your city into an escape room. To follow along with the development and help shape the experience, join the Citizens Club.