Jay & Crow: The Return to the Swanson Cold Case (2026)

  • OverviewVisual DevelopmentTechnical Breakdown

    • Over the course of August 2025 to April 2026, I solo developed a point and click mystery game as my thesis project for senior year of undergrad.

    An image of Jay and Crow: The Return to the Swanson Cold Case (2026) at the Parsons BFA Illustration Class of 2026 Senior Show. The game is displayed on a laptop housed in a bartop arcade cabinet facade.
    Title screen for Jay and Crow: The Return to the Swanson Cold Case (2026), there's a start, continue, and credits button and copyright 2026 CSYao. The title of the game is on the left of the screen and on the right there's a blue jay with a crow shaped shadow looking over a dead swan. The spotlight overhead the birds has a slight back and forth sway
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    Inspired by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, this retro styled point and click narrative game aims to bring the player through a week of gameplay to uncover the mystery behind the death of Mr.Swanson. There’s a colorful cast of residents in Sea Song Piers to interact with to get insight into Mr.Swanson's character and what motivations a murderer might have had to kill the man. Unfortunately the scene of the murder has long since been cleaned up, however there might be something you’re able to still discover from revisiting the Swanson manor.

    In game screenshot of the start of the game. Jay (the player character) stands in his home office, the game's ui reads Sunday evening and 10/10 energy. There's a notebook in the player's inventory.In game screenshot of the town map for Sea Song Piers. The ocean and beach is towards the left of the map while the rest of the terrain is grass. There's roads extending outwards from a town square to connect to different buildings scattered around town.In game screenshot of Jay talking with Pidge. On the left hand side there's a portait of Jay looking towards Pidge on the right hand side who says: Hey Jay! When did you get back?

    The Visual Development

    This project started out with planning out a mystery story through charting out an overall plot progression which would take place over a week's worth of gameplay. This felt like a fitting timeframe to attempt to tell a story within and short enough to hopefully prevent any underestimated scope issues further down the line. In addition to this, mapping out a character relationship web was helpful to figure out what I needed out of the cast of characters I would need to create for my mystery story. My primary focus with developing this character cast was to create a diverse range of characters with strong silhouettes.

    A messy flow chart of the game's plot, a character relationship web to figure out how many and what characters need to be made, and timeline planning for this game's development cycle
    The cast of Jay and Crow: The Return to the Swanson Cold Case (2026) all lined up

    L -> R: Swanson, Jay, Robin, Pidge, Brook, Corbyn, Jackson, Gulliver, Piper, and Margaret

    The cast of Jay and Crow: The Return to the Swanson Cold Case (2026) in silhouette to check the cast's shape language and recognizability.
    Exploration doodles of different expressions on Corbyn, Brook, and Piper. Each character is sketched in their color-coded color with flat coloringExploration doodles of different expressions on Jay, Pidge, and Gulliver. Each character is sketched in their color-coded color with flat coloring.Exploration doodles of different expressions on Jackson, Robin, and Margaret. Each character is sketched in their color-coded color with flat coloring.

    Most of the backgrounds of this game were planned out ahead of time and created through the use of tile maps, both for background tiles as well as the various props. Because this was done near the beginning of the project, figuring out the proper scale for objects was extremely hard and resulted in some objects such as the double doors for the bank being left mostly off screen. Otherwise some backgrounds were fully pre-rendered illustrations to better fit specific visual needs.

    A tilesheet to build room interiors from along with icons used in the uiA tilesheet used for the town map which includes the tiles used for the terrain as well as the buildings. A tilesheet with all the different object assets created for this game arranged together.
    The sketch for Jay's Home Office Jay's Home Office has green walls with a light brown celling and a dark brown floor. In the middle of the room is a desk and chair. The far left has a door leading outside while the far right side of the screen has a door leading into Jay's bedroom.
    The sketch for the town's local library The interior of the town's local library has a yellow tint to its entirety. There's a table with lamps on it to the left side and bookshelves on the right. The door back outside is in the middle of the screen.
    The sketch for the town square The town square has a green tint to it. The screen is focused on the central fountain which is animated with flowing water.
    The sketch for the Gold Value Bank Gold Value Bank is in grey monochrome outside of the pop of orange at the bank teller reception desk at the far right of the screen. The door back outside is on the far left.
    The sketch for the Swanson Manor's Stairwell The Swanson Manor's Stairwell has a yellow color palette. There's a large central stairwell in the middle of the screen with yellow carpeting and white railings.

    The game opens on Jay standing by his desk in his home office. This is the first location of the game that the player will encounter as they start here. Jay's desk will flash on the first day of gameplay in order to nudge players into grasping the concept of point and click and exploring the screen through moving their cursor.

    Sea Song Piers boasts a strong collection of books covering a variety of topics. There's a handful of rare books which this local library is home to, though not nearly comparable to the amount of rare and valuable books which the late Thomas Swanson had hoarded into his manor's personal library.

    The town square of Sea Song Piers sits in the center of town with a large flowing fountain in the middle of the plaza. This hub is one of Pidge's favorite spots to hang out after running around town to deliver the local newspaper. At night, there's a sense of quiet melancholy about this place while watching the fountain's flow.

    The Gold Value Bank is a well established financial institution which sits near the center of town with a sister branch located in Strata Creeks and aiming to continue its expansion. Several members of the community are employed by Gold Value Bank whose mission is to serve the local community to the best of its abilities.

    Swanson manor's central stairwell where the player can greet Brook after entering the manor. In game, the stairs are on a seperated layer to the background and highlight when hovered over if the player intends to try and go upstairs to the Swanson family's personal library.

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    Jay's Home Office

    The Local Library

    The Town Square

    Gold Value Bank

    Swanson Manor Stairwell

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    Brief Technical Breakdown

    The credits scene from in game. It reads: a game by Clara Yao, created on Godot, assets drawn on Procreate, music created on Garageband, SFX sourced from Free Sound or self recorded, dedicated to my family for allowing me to chase my passions

    This project was a solo development from start to finish through the combination of several different software programs working in tandem. I drew all the assets for my game, composed my own music, found CC0 sounds as well as recorded my own sounds for mixing together this game's various sound effects, and put it all together in Godot.

    I choose to use Godot for this project because it was the game engine I picked up in the spring of my junior year when I initally thought to try out indie game development because I liked that Godot is open source, free to use, and that it has an internal scripting language closer to javascript and python rather than C++ as it's been a long time since I've last coded in C++.