Design and Research 

For the first stage of my application development, after reading various articles and discussions on companion apps and looking at some from the app store like the official and unofficial animal crossing and battlefield companion apps

I explored different ideas for both games and TV shows based on the three most engaging concepts to me: murder mystery, casual simulation and adventure/shooter. The murder mystery ended up being the most interesting, as I thought back to my mother watching the TV show Traitors and decided to use her as a base to find my target audience. I considered the other games and shows she enjoys, what she likes about them, how I could emulate this with my show and what I could add to make it unique. I used Figjam’s ideate to further develop the murder mystery show concept, as well as an audience profile.

I explored the things that connect and attract people to reality TV, like Traitors, such as a handful of celebrities being repeatedly used as familiar faces across most shows and how ordinary people live vicariously through seeing other people like them on TV experiencing fame. I looked at the colour scheme and art style of candy crush with the thought that people are more likely to use an app that feels familiar to them, and with the overlap between the audience demographic for candy crush and Traitors which I was using as my primary inspiration, making the art of my game similarly simple and rounded would help users get comfortable with the application.

(sources for demographic screenshots in bibliography on blog 4)

(In case embedded figjam link has a visual glitch use full screen to fix)

Further developing the features of the application, I continued with Ideate, pursuing the concept of an interactive murder mystery that features heavy audience participation. This includes aspects like voting for who is eliminated, controlling a character within the show without the other contestants’ knowledge, and voting on scenarios, settings, games, etc. that directly impact the experiences of the contestants on the show.