November 20, 2021

A Game in Lockdown

November 1st, 2020: the second lockdown starts in Germany.

The day before, we met with some close friends for a last time before spending a lot more time at home. We needed to get creative to push the boredom away: we went into gaming.

Well, don't get me wrong. Neither of us has ever been a big gamer. We dived into a very niche gaming community, the one of interactive fiction, text-based MUD games and online escape games.

A few months later and the next lockdown around, we were ready to create something new after playing so much. The Missing Banksy was born.

Concept

As you might be aware, we are huge fans of street art. It felt natural to dig into our existing knowledge of Berlin urban arts scene to craft a treasure hunt adventure.

First thing first, we wanted our game to be available online for free. As game creators newbies, we decided on a simple text-based format—similar to these "choose your own adventure" illustrated books we used to play as kids.

But we didn't want it to be too linear. One thing we liked from text-based games was their exploration aspect. Imagine starting at Point A, discovering new locations as the game went on, but still being able to easily go back to past locations to search for more clues.

We had this rough idea to start with, but we now needed to give it a shape.

Scenario

Coming up with a scenario and puzzles that made sense was definitely the most challenging part of this project. We drew mind maps, created puzzles, wondering if they were too easy, or too difficult, spoke loud while flailing, finally went into one direction, only to backtrack a bit down the line.

And after multiple evenings dedicated only to this project, we finally had a story that intertwined elegantly with puzzles and riddles. Or at least, we had a first draft to kick off the prototyping process.

Making It Concrete

Tech-wise, we chose to go for a set-up that was simple to build and edit. We had the draft of a story, but we were aware that it could change at any turn and needed our creation process to be as flexible as possible.

We decided to create a Next.js app deployed on Vercel, using Tailwind CSS for quick styling.

In parallel, we collected free-to-use pictures that we could collate together to build the world we had in mind.

Many evenings into this project, we suddenly had an Alpha version ready to launch.

Testing

Putting something you created in front of the eyes of others is one of the most intimidating things you can do. We usually tend to procrastinate coming to this part, as there is always something to be improved.

Thankfully, we are surrounded by family and friends who are more than eager to try out our weird experiments. For this project, we went one step further and sent our game to be tested by escape games experts.

This was an insightful and humbling step of the process. We took all the feedback we could get and made the amends we thought best.

After many evenings and multiple edits, The Missing Banksy is live for you to play! We will probably not drastically rework it at this point, but would love to get your feedback. Enjoy the hunt!

— R & C