The idea for this project has come together from a variety of places. A love of early 1980’s synthpop and UK pop culture; Scooby Doo, Nancy Drew, Misty style teen mystery stories; folklore and superstitions; and personal exploration from an LGBTQ++ angle. 

The Midnight Detective Club originally started out as two separate projects...

One being the desire to create a fictional chart-topping band that would have been active around 1982 in the UK, with an exploration of their story. This started out as a fantastical idea about creating a genuine exhibition of this band that never existed, but could possibly have if circumstances were different. Why? It was actually a bit of a thank you to 1980s band that had an impact on me, and have mentally helped me along the way, especially more recently, as in a way they finally gave me the confidence to come out to my friends and family. "Ooooh! It's almost getting a bit heavy here," you're possibly thinking. It's okay. It's not really – I want the whole project to have a light tone to it. :-) This idea about the band and the exhibition has been knocking around my head for a few years, and when I started thinking about the other part of this project it became a good opportunity to turn that band into something more tangible.

The second part of the project was inspired by a synthy instrumental track I'd written called The Midnight Detective Club. The track reminded me of an eerie comic book mystery - nothing to heavy - the sort of thing The Red Hand Gang, Goonies, Scooby Doo & co, or Nancy Drew might get caught up in. I wondered what that mystery might be, and if I could turn it into something real? Eventually I came up with the idea of a gang of teen detectives sneaking around a museum at night trying to solve a supernatural mystery. When I decided to combine the other project with this one, the museum became an exhibition space featuring a history of the 1980s band.

 As the project develops I'll go into more detail about all of this. :-) 

One thing that held me back on starting this project was deciding how it should look, and the tools I would use to create it. Over the years I've created games using a range of tools and languages, including Processing, Java, BASIC, Click Fusion, Bitsy, Game Guru, Twine, Squiffy, Pico-8, and Pocket Code. In the end I decided that I wanted it to be web based, so that discounted a few of the tools and programming languages. I also decided that, as I wanted it to feature a range of styles, I didn’t necessarily need to create it all in a single game engine or with a single coding language. So, at this point in time I’m using Artsteps to create a virtual 3D exhibition/exploration space; Twine for interactive text sections; Pico-8 & Bitsy for retro style games. My plan is to have separate “chapters” in different styles that players can jump between to piece together the whole story and solve the mystery. I’m looking to create interactive comics, magazine features, and a card battler style game as individual chapters as well. 

As well as these game engines I’m currently using Canva to create some of the visual assets, and Caustic and Cubase sequencers to create appropriate style music from the early 1980’s. 

So that’s the basic idea of this project. Subscribe to the blog if you’re interested in how this develops. In the meantime, I've attached a few early screenshots and asset ideas.