Cameron Woodard is taking things slower these days—compared to last year when he was working on the second “chapter” of his video game, Occult Crime Police (OCP). “I was basically just a machine for making this game. I did my day job, and I did work on this new chapter, and that was it,” says the Wild Canary Production Assistant and Story Revisionist.
This isn’t to say he’s not excited about the third OCP chapter he’s working on now. In fact, he says, he’s been envisioning an investigation into “a body-snatching epidemic at the local mall” since he first got the idea for OCP more than five years ago when he was a student in animation at Loyola Marymount University.
At school, when it came time to decide on his senior thesis, he says: “Everyone was picking their projects and I was like, it would be fun to do this weird mystery video game.” But he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be allowed to do it. “At some point somebody’s going to say, ‘You have to do a normal thesis,’… but that never happened, and so I made the whole game.”
Woodard’s inspirations for OCP are conspiracy mystery stories like Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Gravity Falls. It’s also a “love letter” to Capcom’s Ace Attorney series, “about playing a defense attorney defending your clients from murder charges in all of these wacky melodramatic cases,” says Woodard.
Wacky is the operative word in Case 1: Occult Crime Police. A missing persons case at a mysterious government base has destroyed the reputation of Sheriff Miranda Warren. Now, a murder case at that same base offers her a chance for redemption. That is, if she has what it takes to deal with a condescending FBI Agent, a suspect who keeps lying to prove his own guilt, and a so-called “thought influencer.” For Case 2: Medium at Large, a spirit medium claims to be able to use a séance to solve the case that ruined Warren’s life—more murder, ghost hunts, and stupid witnesses ensue.
“The interesting thing is that the mystery framing of the story also helps with the game design. They’re very symbiotic… I need to tell the player this information in this order so that they understand the mystery. Not just because it’s a story, but because it’s a puzzle that they have to solve.”
During a beginning “Investigation” sequence in OCP, the player is free to explore all the locations related to the crime, collect evidence, and speak to any of the eyewitnesses. Then, sometimes to uncover what a witness is hiding, a player enters into a “Persuasion” sequence. “Here you have a list of predetermined dialogue choices based on the witness’ personality, and you have to pick the right ones to get them to open up,” says Woodard. For instance, a player needs the help of a brusque and narcissistic FBI Agent; they can choose between responses that flatter him, responses that are logical, or responses that are blunt and to the point. “If you pick the right responses in the right order, you’ll get what you need,” Woodard says. “Otherwise, you’ll have to start over.” Finally, there are “Interrogation” segments, where a suspect gives phony testimony, and the player uses the evidence they’ve gathered to prove the suspect is lying.
The version of OCP that Woodard created in college evolved into what he calls the “cleaned-up version,” released in 2021 by his newly formed Eggcorn Games and followed by the second chapter in 2023. Each chapter, or case, takes place in the same world and is a self-contained mystery. “The interesting thing is that the mystery framing of the story also helps with the game design,” Woodard says. “They’re very symbiotic…I need to tell the player this information in this order so that they understand the mystery. Not just because it’s a story, but because it’s a puzzle that they have to solve.”
Except for the music and sound effects, created by Woodard’s friend Sam Santillan, Woodard is responsible for all aspects of OCP: writing, animating, and coding. To create the character animation in the original chapter, he used Toon Boom, but for the second chapter, he switched over to Clip Studio because he liked the program’s brushes and tool work. “It does make it a little trickier to do full frame-by-frame animation, but I think the trade-off is worth it,” he says. He modeled the environments in Blender and then moved them into Clip Studio, drawing over the top to get the proportions right. The game itself runs through an engine called Ren’Py. This open-source game engine was designed for making visual novels, which Woodard describes as “a funny term for games where there’s a lot of writing.”
Ren’Py did some heavy lifting, but Woodard says he had to build coding on top of it to customize the game: “All of the investigation mechanics had to be programmed by me.” For example, he built out a custom inventory system so a player can pick up evidence, look at it, and show it to different characters.
“Basically, every character in the game, you can talk to [them] and you can show them all the evidence you’ve picked up,” he says. “You can ask them about any other person who’s involved with the case. One of the things I’m really proud of is that all of these [questions] will have some kind of unique response to them. It’s not just a generic: ‘I don’t know about that object’ or ‘I’ve never met that person.’ Each of the characters will respond in a way that reflects their personality and the object they are being shown.”
In turn, Occult Crime Police is a reflection of Woodard. Not only does it embody his passion for animation, filmmaking, and storytelling, but it also showcases his particular brand of humor—wherever he can, he sneaks in a joke. As well, it’s helped him discover unique strengths to expand his skills as he continues on his animation journey.
.png)