Whodunit — Case Study
AI-Powered Murder Mystery Chat Game
Co-Developer (Team of 3)
Winter Semester 2023/24
Android (Mobile App Development course)
Whodunit is a murder mystery chat game based on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Players interrogate AI-powered characters through dynamic conversations, gathering clues across chapters until they're ready to accuse the killer. Each character responds in-persona, changes status as murders unfold, and stops responding once they're dead.
This was a closely collaborative project — game flow, design decisions, scripting, debugging, and user testing were shared across the team. My individual contributions focused on the narrative architecture, core game mechanics, and key screens:
Narrative & Game Structure
- •Extracted and structured profiles for 10 characters directly from the book.
- •Structured the final game flow into chapters with objectives, context, and plot points.
- •Wrote the Introduction and Reveal Story narratives.
Core Mechanics
- •Implemented the Guess Button with string-matching logic and overlays.
- •Prompt Engineered the dynamic context that adapts AI instructions as the story progresses.
- •Developed Game Over, Congratulations, and Game State logic.
Annotated home screen diagram labeling game mechanics and character status trackers.
Backend Switching
Initially used GetStream.IO but switched to Firebase mid-project to better integrate with ChatGPT.
Prompt Engineering
Refining OpenAI instructions to keep characters in-persona consistently across long, unpredictable conversations.
Flutter Learning
Navigating the Flutter/Dart learning curve as a team with no prior deep experience in the framework.