Duration 15 weeks (Jan 15 - May 5, 2018)
Team Size 6
Platform Tabletop + Mobile
Links Official Website
Project Info:
Enigma is a hybrid tabletop role-playing experience enhanced by physical props and mobile application. It also involves collaborative puzzle solving sessions.
Players will play as women code-breakers working at Bletchley Park in England during World War II, who contributed significantly to decoding the German army’s ultimate cipher machine – Enigma, but can not tell anyone what they have done. They will walk through a story from entering the Bletchley Park, becoming a team, to working together, sharing news from family, in the end, to a big event Coventry Bombing as a climax, where the emotional impact is really huge.
More information can be found in it's website.
Notable Contribution:
■ Worked as lead designer, responsible for the whole picture, led the team in design decision making, coordinated the design work with other designers.
■ As experience designer, designed a two-hour long experience flow as framework of the experience, where role playing, puzzles and App interaction are working. See the experience flow here.
■ Held playtest sessions, guided and collaborated with the team to iterate on the whole experience.
■ Above is a video shows you how the experience flows.
Design decisions
Our client was developing a role-playing game about the women codebreakers of Bletchley Park, following earlier work on Rosenstrasse and War Birds. Our brief was to explore how collaborative puzzles, mobile interaction, and physical props could support that experience.
Building context for a puzzle
The original request was a 10–15 minute collaborative puzzle activity. We built a two-hour experience around it so we could design and evaluate the puzzle in context: introducing the characters, establishing teamwork, and connecting codebreaking to personal and emotional stakes.
Keeping attention at the table
Using individual phones as puzzle-solving tools risked pulling players away from each other. We instead placed the devices on the table as shared resources, available to the group without assigning one to each player.
Connecting puzzles and story
The scenario built toward the Coventry bombing as a fixed narrative climax. The design challenge was to connect the group’s codebreaking work to an emotional outcome within that story. Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) recorded the voice of Winston Churchill for the experience.
