MysteryPhone

A mysterious thief has boasted that he will pull off an amazing art heist during the Northern Spark festival. The city’s best detectives are on alert, but he seems to anticipate their every move. Which museum will he hit? And why is he leaving clues about his plans? Meanwhile, a group of urban explorers makes a remarkable discovery beneath the streets of Minneapolis. When some of them go missing, our detectives must follow their trail—but do they want to be found? And then there’s that lost cat…

MysteryPhone: Art of Darkness is a cross-platform (iOS, Android) interactive narrative game that was developed with a $16k grant awarded by Northern Spark for their annual festival. An unfolding location-based narrative and interactions with virtual characters reveal aspects of a hidden world all around Minneapolis. The story launched June 9th, 2014 and led up to the night of the Northern Spark festival on June 14th, with an epilogue released the next day. It relaunched for a week surrounding the Minneapolis and Northern Lights Creative City Challenge for their Play Day on July 19th. Players, or rather Detectives, could begin their story ahead of time, or at the events. The story could be experienced in many ways, and whether participants wanted to dig as deep as possible into the multiple mysteries or merely casually follow along, they became a vital part of the story.

The following is a piece about MysteryPhone written by Pat Harrigan:

An art heist. Missing persons. A missing cat.

Jerry Belich is a master criminal. He has planned his crimes with care. They are masterpieces of misdirection. They are executed with clockwork precision. Jerry Belich is the Napoleon of Crime, and like Napoleon, he is pretty short.

Jerry Belich employs only the best. No mere goons, these. His team is peerless in its villainy: David Pisa is a walking shadow, Megan Dowd keeps to the fringes, and Brian Quarfoth, expert bagman, keeps it all running, keeps you running. These are Jerry Belich’s team. They are the art in the darkness.

Jerry Belich knows who you are. You are a master detective.

You have been waiting for this night. You have searched for clues in the newspapers, you have interviewed lowlifes. You will pound the pavement, you will ask the tough questions, will make choices that cannot be unmade. Tonight you tread the mean streets, you delve deep into Minneapolis psychogeography. Its buildings and alleyways are no longer comforting; they are the scenes of an urgent mystery; each brick speaks a paragraph; each step is a move in the game.

You’ll spend a lot of time on your phone. Your Mystery Phone.

MysteryPhone: The Art of Darkness is the latest in Jerry Belich’s line of interactive narrative games. In previous works such as his Choosatron, he transformed the story-game format to create a customized reading experience for each player. Tonight’s MysteryPhone greatly expands the parameters of his interactive storytelling.

You want just the facts. Here they are. MysteryPhone is something like a live-action Choose Your Own Adventure book (because you make choices that advance the story). It’s something like How to Host a Murder (because you will solve crimes). Like The Big Sleep, it’s a mystery. Like Flappy Bird, it’s a game. Okay, it’s not much like Flappy Bird.

There are longstanding ludological questions we can ask, upon which much ink has been spilled: Can a game be art (and what is “art”)? Also: To what degree should we evaluate a game as a narrative (or as a structure for producing narrative) and to what degree should we focus on the game-structures themselves, considering narrative as only an epiphenomenon?

When you ask these questions, Jerry Belich is stealing your stuff.

Jerry Belich has woven a complex web of narrative possibilities among multiple real-world locations. Clues and narrative elements are place-based and occur in real time, delivered to your Mystery Phone. You will decide what leads to pursue or ignore, and the story you experience tonight will be unlike anyone else’s.

Your phone is the center of the mystery. Your phone tells you things, and shows you things, and asks you things. You tell it where you go and you tell it what you do. And when you tell it these things, you tell Jerry Belich too.

In fact Jerry Belich knows where you are—right now, this moment—and when you decide what to do next, he will know that too. Jerry Belich is one step ahead of you. He has planned it all, and he does not believe that you can prevent his crimes or solve his mysteries. But you believe differently. You will make Jerry Belich believe it too.

Jerry Belich has a heart of noir. He works his villainy in the dark places of your city. But you, detective, will light a spark.

A northern spark.

Credits

• Jerry Belich – Game / Narrative Designer, Programmer
• David Pisa – Narrative / Puzzle Designer
• Megan Dowd – Project Manager

Recognition

1. Northern Lights Creative City ChallengeRelaunch Play DayMinneapolis, MN — July 14 to 20, 2014
2. Northern Spark FestivalAwarded $16k Cash GrantMinneapolis, MN — June 9 to 15, 2014

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