Forensic Detective: Inside The Crime Scene
- Brand
- Oxygen
- Year
- 2018
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- AR & VR
- Agency
- Neo-Pangea
- With
- NBCUniversal
Objective
By 2018 Oxygen had rebuilt itself as a true-crime network and wanted a way to keep that audience engaged between broadcasts. Digital chief Lisa Hsia wanted to get true-crime viewers "off the couch" and let them test their own investigative instincts, so the network paired NBCUniversal's brand with cutting-edge AR to reach fans on a new platform and give its storytelling a foothold at the CrimeCon convention.
Solution
The player points an iPhone or iPad at their own living room, and the app scans the floor and walls to build a life-size murder scene around them: a body, bullet holes, and a suspect board appear directly on their real furniture and walls. A narrator briefs them on the case — the murder of Nashville musician Trent Park — and starts a seven-minute clock. The player walks around the room to reach glowing evidence markers, then uses a set of forensic tools to examine ballistics and bullet trajectories, fingerprints, blood samples, shell casings, and phone records, in whatever order they choose. Each piece of evidence is checked automatically against the case file and the four suspects' statements, and once enough evidence is gathered, the player taps to accuse a suspect and closes the case.
Results
The app climbed to #2 in the App Store's Entertainment category within eight weeks, trailing only Netflix, and drew over 700 App Store ratings averaging above 4 stars. Apple featured it twice in the Today tab.
- 1
The player installs the free iOS app (ARKit-capable iPhone or iPad; no Android version) and points the camera around the room; the app maps the floor and walls and dresses them in a full-scale AR crime scene.
- 2
A narrator briefs the case: local musician Trent Park has been shot dead in his Nashville apartment, with an estimated time of death between 11:45 and 11:50 PM.
- 3
The player taps ready to begin, starting a 7-minute countdown for the whole investigation.
- 4
The player physically walks around their own room from a first-person view, finding the body, furniture, and traces such as bullet holes overlaid on the real walls, and approaches lit-up evidence hotspots in any order to collect them into the case file.
- 5
Collected evidence is examined with interactive forensic tools — bullet trajectory and ballistics, fingerprint comparison, blood sample analysis, shell casings, phone records and case files — each of which is automatically checked against police records and suspect data to show how it narrows the field.
- 6
A suspect board on the wall holds four cards — the manager, the bassist, the brother, and the wife — which the player can arrange, and for each the player can play a recorded interrogation and review testimony and alibis against the evidence gathered.
- 7
Once enough evidence has been processed, an Accuse button unlocks; the player picks one of the four suspects, and the game reveals whether the guess was right along with the killer's identity and motive, with no penalty for a wrong accusation.
