You Gotta Have a Library

December 4, 2020

Another month, come and gone. One more month closer to putting this year behind us. It’s time for a bit of reflection. And what better place to do that than in the shipboard library in Sleuthhounds: Cruise?

The library is a place that players will revisit a number of times over the course of the game to find both required and optional material to help in the case. Unfortunately, as the game opens, Jane Ampson has been something of a nuisance to the librarian, who is less than helpful as a result. Players will have to search the resources available to find the ones that are pertinent.

The library is a place for contemplative research. And annoying the librarian.

That searching takes place in close-up. In order to ensure that the bookshelves look the same both in the close-up and in the normal room, I started by drawing the library with a blank rectangle for the bookshelves. I then scaled that rectangle to the size I wanted for the close-up and drew all the books there. Finally, I scaled the bookshelves down, and adjusted their angle slightly, so they’d fit nicely into the library background.

Shelves and shelves of books. Do they contain valuable clues? Yes. Of course they do.

Now, you may be thinking, “That’s a lot of books to have to search through!” And you’d be right. Fortunately, your search will be aided by the handy card catalog available in the room. Armed with a few hints, players will first search the card catalog to find the locations of particular reference works. Just like a real library! Except they now use computers. In real libraries. I think.

Let the card catalog be your guide.

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