Story
The year is 2262 and you’re, Meeygun Hill, a tough as nails P.I. working in the slums of one of the last major cities in North America. Life is all missing kids and cheating spouses until a dame barges in from the Risen-City and changes your life. Her sister has been murdered and the cops are useless. It’s up to you to find out who the real murderer is. Murdered sisters, mind wiping drugs and flying palaces, this case goes way farther than the banks of this one detective’s little slum in this indigenous cybernoir. A narrative detective game in the spirit of Oxenfree and The Shiva that lets you solve who did it.

Meegan
Meeygun and Mary (not final art)
Team up with your client, Mary LaPensée, an elite citizen of the Risen-City looking for answers, and uncover a conspiracy that goes deeper than either of them could ever have imagined. Interview witnesses and suspects, collect evidence (and determine what is important from the red herrings), compile a case and make your accusations! There’s always a possibility that you might be wrong, but even wrong accusations don’t stop the story! At the Hill Agency there are no do-overs, only pressing forward to find the truth.

Creative Strengths
The primary selling point of the game will be its unique narrative tree where the narrative continues even if the player successfully accuses the wrong person. In addition to this, the original Indigenous story and a gorgeous hand-drawn cybernoir-inspired aesthetic will be strong draws. Hill Agency is a detective game that is a return to the classic detective/mystery genre that requires the player to use their wits rather than guess-work. This encourages the player to explore every nook and alley of the game world and talk to anyone they meet.

However, what makes Hill Agency particularly unique is that there is no game over or restart for a wrong answer. The game keeps going no matter how the player handles a case, but the game narrative changes as it progresses. Put in a warrant for the wrong person? No problem. You will always have the option of uncovering new evidence to undo what you’ve done. You can go on with your life but it gets increasingly harder to undo the mistakes you make as the game progresses.

We wanted to create a detective game that has never been made before, one that allows the player to make mistakes without choking the story. Instead of stopping gameplay, this narrative tree weaves mistakes into the narrative itself.

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Gameplay
Hill Agency is 2.5D third-person detective game with a variety of logic puzzles to uncover the truth. The heart of Hill Agency is discovery through investigation. This involves two parts: Interviews and evidence finding. The player is equipped with a notebook that keeps track of all the people, objects and testimony they have picked up during their investigation. There is no combat in the game, rather players will use deduction, induction and their wits to find out whodunnit.

Interviews
The player will be invited to interact with various objects and individuals across the three different areas of the game (The Ground, the Risen City, and the Flying Palace). Testimonial evidence is uncovered through interviews and casual conversations with a variety of characters populating these vastly different locations.

Evidence
Players will be able to collect evidence and even show it to NPCs they are interviewing to gain more information. Players will have four sections to their Notebook: Witness Profiles, Physical Evidence, Statements and Persons of Interest.

The Notebook serves as the Player’s inventory system; when a player wants to know more about something in their Notebook or open up new dialogue options they can drag and drop a piece of evidence from their Notebook onto the NPC they are talking to. This system can also be used to give items to NPCs.