“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

2011 Categorized in Game Design

Test your knowledge of geography and world cultures as you use your deductive reasoning skills to track down the ever elusive Carmen Sandiego in “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” for Facebook!

This project was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. Like many in my generation, I had grown up playing the original incarnations of Carmen Sandiego. The nostalgia I carried for the series was enormous. It was one of the games that my late grandfather and I bonded over. So when the chance to help design a brand new incarnation of the game for Facebook presented itself I jumped at the opportunity.

I joined the team at Blue Fang as they were nearing the end of pre-production. At this stage the general idea for Carmen had been determined, and it was my responsibility to take those ideas, expand upon them, and write up an assortment of highly detailed design specs that the rest of the team would then base their work from. In total, I wrote about 10 – 12 different specs that ranged from the player leveling system, to specifics regarding how the case status screen would function.

In addition to authoring design specs, I was also responsible for working with engineering to integrate the proprietary design tool used to edit game data and track in-game content and case clues. As the tool was iterated on, I used it to begin populating the game with the vast amounts of data the game required. I also spent a lot of time researching various city locations, and helped to edit text that was submitted by the contract writers.

All in all, this project was one of the highlights of my career so far and I really enjoyed the time I spent working on it.

To check out the game for yourself visit: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?