Lost in Lumberton
An interactive, narrative-driven mystery game inspired by David Lynch’s 1986 film. The game invites players to explore the town of Lumberton, North Carolina. Follow a trail of cryptic clues to uncover the whereabouts of Dorothy Vallens. Designed with a hand-drawn aesthetic, the project reimagines the film’s unsettling storyline that balances illustration, design, through UI object-based interaction.
Concept & Goals
Lost in Lumberton is a narrative-driven 2D game inspired by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. My goal was to capture the film’s unsettling duality: the polished surface of small-town suburban America and the corruption lurking beneath. While rooted in the film’s atmosphere, the storyline branches into an alternate version where Dorothy is kidnapped and the player must uncover where she is being held.
This project was part of an assignment to create a digital piece based on a movie, product, or artist. While most peers designed posters or videos, I challenged myself to experiment with interactivity, something I was not very familiar with at the time. I wanted to merge traditional illustration with digital interaction, creating a project that blurred the line between art and design and reflected the way I often work across mediums.
Process
I reimagined the town of Lumberton as a clickable map of apartments, bars, factories, and eerie fields, with each building tied to a prominent character. The player follows clues scattered across these locations, peeling back fragments of information that eventually reveal Dorothy’s whereabouts. The mechanics borrow from clue-based games but with slower, more atmospheric pacing.
The concept centers on storytelling through environment, using interaction as the medium for suspense. The player is not fighting bosses or collecting points but instead uncovering the hidden layers of a town that resists being understood. Each scene is carefully illustrated and hides objects that could be meaningful to the story. The player must look closely at the images and notice what stands out, gradually revealing the location where Dorothy is being held captive by Frank Booth and her husband.
The project began by mapping out the most significant locations from the film and piecing them together into a drawn map of the town. The illustrations were created with a combination of traditional drawing, Procreate, and Photoshop, and later refined for integration. I built the interactive structure in Figma, cutting out clickable objects from the illustrations and overlaying them seamlessly back into their original positions. This approach kept the interactive elements hidden and less obvious, which reinforced the sense of mystery and forced the player to pay attention to details. Through multiple iterations, I refined how much to reveal versus obscure, making sure the project read as art piece first, story second, and game third.
Outcome & Reflection
The result is a moody interactive 2D experience that allows players to navigate Lumberton, explore its spaces, and uncover a fractured storyline. Lost in Lumberton demonstrates my ability to translate a cinematic mood into interactive narrative design, to build environments that communicate story through visuals and pacing, and to create projects that live between game design, graphic design, storytelling, and illustration.
Despite having limited experience with interactivity at the time, I was able to produce a playable prototype that merges illustration and digital design into a cohesive experience. If given more time, I would have introduced a timer element to heighten suspense and give players the sense of racing against the clock before Dorothy falls deeper into danger. This project pushed me outside of my comfort zone and opened the door for future explorations into interactive illustration and narrative environments.
