Lentevuur

The project
Suzanne Vermeer is the pseudonym of a famous Dutch writer of mystery novels, whose identity remains a secret. The writer has a loyal audience of crime lovers. Suzanne Vermeer's thriller Lentevuur comes with a twist: an envelope full of documents that contain an extra mystery. By solving the mystery in the envelope, readers can unravel an old family secret of the characters in the book.

On this project I worked with Ruud Kool from Puzzelpost (now Diorama!), for publisher AW Bruna. With this project we brought an innovative element to a risk-averse industry and created a successful precedent for how puzzles can be integrated meaningfully with narrative.

The game
In the envelope the reader finds the same documents that main character Julia from Lentevuur found in the closet in her grandmother's bedroom. Solving the mystery can only be done by reading the book carefully, flipping back, and searching through the contents of the envelope. Careful study will lead to the answer: what happened on May 2, 1972 at the Chorinsky estate near Prague?

I am really proud of the narrative design we did on this project. The documents in the envelope are entirely diegetic and that the information in them is encrypted (“puzzles”) is narratively justified. The book can be enjoyed without the envelope for readers that are not into it, but solving the envelope’s mystery resolves a subplot in the book and gives access to an exclusive epilogue on the publisher’s website. The puzzles are each different in their solving mechanic, and they follow a rising arc of both difficulty and dramatic tension.