Death in the Suburbs
Sanat Prasad | Jayesh Pillai
‘Death in the Suburbs’ is an interactive 360° detective story, designed to place the user at the centre of the crime scene and make them feel like the detective conducting the investigation, rather than merely observing the events as a bystander.
Premise
Abhishek, 24, is found dead in his apartment from an unusual neck wound. A private investigator, Sanjay Sharma, is called in to investigate the death. Sharma searches all the rooms of the apartment while questioning all three others who lived there with Abhishek. Each of them could potentially be the killer, and the user embodies Sharma as he combs through all the evidence to figure out who it was, and why.
Experience
The experience of the narrative was prototyped on Wonda VR, and can be accessed here:
Death in the Suburbs
The experience takes place within a virtual house, and the user has freedom to enter all the rooms and look around. The environment also contains hotspots that users can press to receive information through clue cards and audio. As with any investigation, the real clues are within a pool of irrelevant clues and red herrings, and the user has to decipher which ones are the real clues. They get to select which character they suspect before the truth is revealed.
Narrative Structure
User testing
