An interactive 3D murder mystery puzzle-book experience where you, the detective, are given access to an archive of strange murder cases, each contained within an otherworldly book filled with clues, anomalies, and glitches.
Your job is to solve these cases by following their supernatural paths and paying attention to the strange signs they reveal along the way. Look closely. Notice everything. What seems like a glitch may very well lead you to the truth.
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Every case begins with a book: old, otherworldly, and not quite right. No one knows where the books came from, why they reveal murderers across time, or why they react the way they do. Curse, karma, fate, or something else entirely, no one has the answer.
They glitch as you attempt to find your way through. It is also why files that should be simple have baffled some of the best detectives out there. The glitches and anomalies are not obstacles.
They’re supernatural paths...otherworldly signs that may lead us to the truth.
A case begins as a book, shut and hanging in the dark. Drag to turn it and read the cover, spine, and back before you crack it open. Not every clue waits on a page.
Double tap opens it, or double click with a mouse. You can also use the book icon in the toolbar to close it again, hit the back arrow up top or use that same book icon. A double tap will not shut it.
These books do not always behave the way books should. They shift. They blink. They swell and drift. They glitch.
An anomaly is something changing where nothing should change. It may appear on a page, on the cover, spine, or back, drift past the closed book, or move somewhere out in the dark void around it.
It is strange, but it is never an accident. When the case changes around you, pay attention. The whole thing may be trying to tell you something. Watch the screen, not just the words.
The clues come one at a time, in order. The file will not give you the next until you have done what the one before it asks.
Work every clue and every anomaly. Together they lead you to the answer.
Your killer, the weapon, or simply your answer depending on the case. Do exactly what a clue says, and only to the names it names. Mark someone it never asked for and the clue stays shut. You cannot force your way through a case by crossing out everyone.
How you eliminate is your choice: highlight, strike, any color, any mix unless specified otherwise. When a clue claims a color for a job, that color belongs to that clue alone. Say a clue wants the short C names in blue. Blue is theirs, and from there you are free to cross out other clue and anomaly steps however you like, once again unless specified otherwise.
Think you have the name? Tap SOLVE on the bottom tool bar and spell it exactly as the file shows it.
Guess wrong and you will have to solve a puzzle to keep your heart. Succeed and the heart stays, and you can keep digging. There is no limit on tries, but every wrong name can cost a heart if you cannot save it. So does a wrong number when a clue asks an answer of you. You carry three.
Hearts are a score, nothing more. They show how cleanly you solved the case. Every wrong name or wrong count costs one. Finish with all three still beating, and you solved the case without a fault.
The timer beside the hearts counts the time you have spent inside the case, and only that. Close the file, or leave the tab, and it waits for you. Come back and it picks up where it stopped rather than starting over.
Your time is recorded the moment the case closes, and it goes on the card you share. Reset the file and the timer goes back to zero with it.
Once the book is open, the toolbar along the bottom gives you what you need to work the case. Turn pages by swiping, using the arrows at the edges of the screen, or with the keyboard. If a page runs longer than the screen, drag it up and down to read the rest. The green bar along the edge is your page scroll indicator. Pinch or scroll to zoom. The page mode button gives you one page at a time instead of two, if you would rather take a closer look. The moon switches the page to dark mode. To work through the list, the marker highlights a name and the pencil strikes it out. Some clues ask for one. Some ask for the other. The color dot allows you to access the color palette. The lock will lock your zoom preference while still allowing you to pan across a page. The eraser lifts a mark without changing tools, while undo and redo let you take back any mistake.
On a narrow screen the bar holds more than it can show. Drag or swipe the bar sideways to reach the tools that are off the end of it. It rests at the Solve end, so the controls you reach for most are the ones already under your thumb.
Once a step is open, it carries its own marks down the left side, under its number.
AAnomaly. The step is something the file DOES rather than something it says. It can happen anywhere: on a page, on the cover, the spine or the back, drifting past the closed book, or out in the dark around it. Watch the whole screen.
CClue. The step is written out for you. Read it and do exactly what it says.
Any marking. This step does not care how you eliminate a name. Highlight it, strike it, any color, any mix. Without this mark, read the step closely: it is asking for a particular color or tool, and the names it names must carry that one. No color is ever off limits. You can use any of them anywhere else in the book, whenever you like.
An open step keeps its own count as you work: 7 of 23 marked. If that line turns red, something is marked that no clue has asked for. Erase it and the step goes on.
The glitches and anomalies are not obstacles. They are supernatural paths, otherworldly signs that may lead you to the truth.
Typeface applies to every page in this case, the way a printed book keeps one throughout.
No art? The cover is typeset from the title automatically. Front and back are portrait (2:3, e.g. 900×1320px); the spine is a tall narrow strip (e.g. 160×1500px); images are cropped to fill these shapes, so anything far off these proportions will lose its edges. Clues can live on any of them.
Random, timed events that fire while a reader has this case open, a detail easy to dismiss that secretly stands in for one of the numbered clues. Each case defines its own set; nothing here is shared between cases.
Engine note: the Stage type is live. It fires on the closed-book screen for real. The other five types still only save as data; they don't appear to a reader yet.
A reader gets three hearts. Each wrong accusation costs one and makes a clue word in this case flicker to a decoy word you choose, never a different suspect, just harder to read cleanly. Nothing here is required; leave a slot blank and that miss just costs a heart with no other effect.
A lost heart stays lost for the whole playthrough, and so does the flicker it caused. There is nothing to set here, because nothing gives them back. The reader's one chance to save a heart is the scramble at the moment they miss.
Body text is where names get marked; every word becomes tappable for the reader's highlighter.
Writes the update behind the ! icon on the header bars. One update at a time: publishing replaces whatever is there now.
The ID is what makes the icon go red. Change it and everyone who already read the last update sees the alert again; reuse it and they don't. Leave it blank and the icon stays quiet, which suits a correction.
Saved in this browser only. To ship an update to everybody it has to go into the file and be pushed.