[NDA] Whatsapp Mystery Text Adventure Game

Project Overview: Client proposed a potential user activation of a mystery text adventure played through Whatsapp. Players would text with 6 different characters in order to solve a mystery. Players who were successful in solving the mystery would receive an expedited application process to client’s members only club. This project is covered by an NDA.

My Role: Project Lead, Software Engineer, Narrative Systems Engineer, Game Designer, Artist

Project Duration: 6 Months (Fall 2023 - Spring 2024)

Project Status: Delivered to client.

Project Used: Node, Javascript, Whatsapp API, Photoshop

Project Goal: To create a mystery text adventure game played entirely through Whatsapp. Leverage multiple APIs and advanced Large Language Model (LLM) technology to transform interactions between players and non player characters (NPCs).

What Did I Do?

Project Lead

As Project Lead, I worked closely with the client and our CEO to develop project requirements, schedule, budget, and team makeup. I effectively tracked individual and team progress against project commitments to ensure successful outcomes.

I served as the primary point of contact for our client, ensuring alignment on project goals, capturing product requirements, conducting industry research, and delivering weekly status reports. I managed iterative development cycles informed by client feedback to optimize project outcomes.

Software Engineer

I acted as the project’s sole Software Engineer. I designed and coded the entire system, leveraging multiple APIs including google image identification, Azure audio transcription, and Whatsapp API, writing mostly in node.js.

I innovated comprehensive testing methodologies for this project, including A/B testing, user testing, and playtesting. At such a small company, we initially had no testing methodology, so I was able to build everything from the ground up, using my experience as a SOC Firmware Engineer focusing on validation while at Intel. At the startup, I was able to use my previous experience to develop robust test suites to explore unique solutions for emerging technologies such as LLMs. I applied user insights, data, and statistical analyses to inform decisions. This approach enhanced the success rate of player interactions by over 15%.

Due to the networking aspect of this experience, a big challenge that arose was dealing with race conditions while storing user data on our server, especially when sending multiple messages over text. Working through a few different solutions, and running each through a testing suite to determine the success of each solution, I implemented the solution with <1% rate of failure.

Narrative Systems Engineer

Working closely with our Narrative Systems Lead, I used our in-house narrative systems scripting system. This took natural language written in an excel file, using columns for individual narrative arcs, story state variables, and character information.

Due to our in house system focusing more on slower interactions, I updated the system to be more optimized for real time experiences.

Game Designer

I also acted as lead game designer on this project, collaborating with our narrative lead to write the branching narrative arcs. Using Figma to keep track of all the branches and individual character arcs as well as state changes.

I designed mini puzzles throughout the experience, including a small cipher that had to be decoded to move onto the next state.

I conducted playtests throughout the design and production phases to validate our design and ensure a fun and engaging experience for players.

Artist

Using Adobe Creative Suite (mostly photoshop) I created 2D art assets for the experience including: fake invoices and business licenses, personal photos, handwritten notes, and other clues.