Qu'as-Tu Vu? | Figuring out mystery in a solo journaling format.

When I found Winter Horrorland TTRPG Jam 2024,  I really wanted to participate but I wasn’t sure where to start. My horror tends to lean pretty subtle, and coming up with something I was excited about was stressing me out.

That said, the holidays are a lot, and often in ways that have nothing to do with supernatural forces or raging axe-murderers. Isn't there an inherent horror to the family member who never quite meets your eyes at Thanksgiving? The weirdly passive-aggressive present you got on Christmas day? Is there horror to be found in the very real, decaying familial relationships around us all? 

I kept coming back to the movie 8 Femmes, a movie I saw for the first time at about fifteen with zero context whatsoever when it came to French cinema or the actresses in it. Let me tell you: knowing nothing about it going in, that movie is a fever dream. But for all its bizarre drama and odd musical moments, it's remained one of the foundations stones of my narrative imagination for the absolute ache in its depiction of a family torn apart. No one is innocent, and everyone is hurt in all the small, subtle ways that one day go from cracks to truly deep rifts.

So, a murder mystery. One about family. I have always loved  classic murder mysteries, especially the ones with a large cast of characters all confined to one place. There’s something fascinating about a small, contained space full of secrets, where everyone is guilty of something. But writing a murder mystery as a solo game is tricky. Without a GM or other players to know things you don't know, how do you create suspense? How do you build a mystery without just telling the player what happens?

I considered the idea of having to show a friend a card. But how could I assure that card would get any play at all? And how unsatisfying would it be to get to the end of the game and the killer and their motive came out of nowhere, never having been discussed before?

I considered the idea that once you got to the end of the game, whichever motive card you'd drawn most often would be the motive of the killer. But what would you do in the event of a tie? What if you drew every motive card once and never any others? And there's so little chance of a twist.

I tried to figure out how to make Clue work for a TTRPG. But the problem with Clue is that it turns out you never get a why. Not mechanically, anyhow. And if we want drama, we need a why.

I eventually landed on a tarot-based mechanic. At the start of the game, pulling cards from secrets and motives piles builds the tension. You find that just about everyone here had a reason they might have wanted the victim dead. As play progresses, you draw cards that reveal tensions, uncover secrets, and push the story forward. But halfway through, the mechanics shift—you start removing motives from the pile, one by one, until only a single one remains.

That final motive belongs to the killer.

And because it’s the only one that never gets removed, it has a chance of showing up more and more often in the final days of play. Maybe you don’t notice at first. Maybe it just seems like coincidence. But as you reach the end, the weight of that repeating theme settles in. The truth was there all along.

I love how this mechanic turned out—simple, but effective in creating tension and inevitability. 

There is the possibility of getting to the end of the game without ever drawing that motive card. You may never figure out who did it. But also, like, it's a solo game so if you want to just choose someone... I will never know and I wouldn't tell you that you did it wrong even if I did.

If you like murder mysteries, journaling games, or just seeing how paranoia unfolds, check it out!

And if you end up playing, let me know how it goes. Did the ending surprise you? Did you see it coming? Or did the cards conspire against you in ways you didn’t expect?

And let me do the indie dev thing and beg you to rate and comment. Feedback gives me the strength to go on and make more weird games!