Ocean's Secret: A Dolphin Pier Mystery

Ocean's Secret is an anti-smoking 3D mystery game for young girls funded by The National Cancer Institute and the NIH. This extensive game experience was created to support research endeavors, and included key partnerships with Gabriel Interactive, Dr. Anna McDaniel at Indiana University, and Girls, Inc. This adventure-style game employed rich 3D game-play with a wide range of 2D puzzles, with national testing taking place at various Girls, Inc. locations.

The primary game design used a traditional 3D adventure-style convention with strong dialogue aspects. The storyline centered around 3 primary characters, one of which whose mother goes missing; in the midst is a mysterious toxic spill in the friendly seaside village of Dolphin Pier that has suspicious ties to a cigarette manufacturer. The girls must solve the mystery of the missing mother, and in the process encounter villains, friends, and smoking-related content, conduct research in a lab, and numerous adventures that make for great fun and discovery. The critical objective for this project was education awareness.

Concept paintings for game reference were created by artist Jeremiah Humphries.