How to Play

The Case Files

Each week a new episode drops: one folder of evidence, and a few questions to answer before the next folder opens. Case Files in the top menu takes you to the current case; each episode is its own page.

Reading the evidence

Every episode has an evidence desk: a grid of files. Photographs, reports, statements, phone records.

• Tap or click any card to open it. You can zoom with a pinch or a double tap, and swipe (or use the arrows) to move to the next file without closing the viewer.
• Once you have opened a file, its card shows a Reviewed check, so you can see at a glance which files you have not read yet.
• Some files carry a Read transcript line inside the viewer. Tap it to read the document's own text.

Copying, and what stays yours

The case material is protected from copying. Select an exhibit's text, a transcript, a tip-line slip or a week's question and the copy comes back as a single line pointing at the site instead of the text itself. It is nothing personal: a case file pasted somewhere that will happily solve it for you stops being a case, and the season is built to be worked out rather than looked up.

Everything you write is a different matter entirely, and it always will be. Your notebook, your timeline, your theory and the answers you file are yours to select, copy and keep anywhere you like, including from inside a case file. If you keep your own notes somewhere else, nothing here gets in the way of that.

Open everything before you answer

The week's questions stay locked until you have opened every file in the episode. A counter above the questions shows how far along you are. This is the game making sure you never answer blind.

A few more things you will meet on the desk:

• The tip line. Depending on your clearance level, some files carry tips from the Bellweather police desk. At Detective clearance you get three calls a week; unused calls pay bonus points. At Observer clearance tips arrive automatically. Investigators work alone.
• One answer each. When you lock in an answer, it is on the record. No take-backs. Pick your confidence level first: a careful Hunch risks nothing, a Certain answer pays more and costs more.

Sending evidence to your timeline

Every card and every open file has a + Timeline button. Press it and that piece of evidence becomes an event on your timeline, already carrying the document's own date.

That timeline is yours: the next chapter shows how to work it.

The Timeline

The timeline is where you reconstruct the night: every event in order, each backed by the evidence that proves it. There are two views of it, and they are the same timeline.

Episode timeline vs. the case Timeline

• On each episode page (under the evidence) you see just that episode's events. It keeps the week's work in front of you while you read the week's file.
• Timeline in the top menu is the whole case: every event from every episode, in date order, with filter buttons to look at one episode at a time. Use it to review the full picture and spot the gaps.

Anything you add in one view is in the other. It is one timeline, sliced two ways. If you are signed in, it also follows you between your phone, tablet and computer.

Adding events

Two ways:

1. From the evidence. Press + Timeline on any card or open file. The event arrives with the document's own date already filled in.
2. By hand. Press + Add blank event at the top of the timeline and fill it in yourself.

The three fields on every event

• When is your own note about the moment, in your words: "Sat, 9:17 PM", "just after the fire". Write anything.
• Date is the picker that places the event on the timeline. It opens on the story's own calendar, so events land in the case's year, not today's. Pick a date and time and the event moves to its place.
• Note is what happened, in a line.

You can also link an exhibit to any event with the dropdown at the bottom of the block, and jump back to that file with one tap.

Moving things around

The timeline keeps itself in date order. Two ways to override that when your theory disagrees with the paperwork:

• Drag it. Press and hold the ⠿ grip on any block, with a mouse or a finger, and drag it where you want. A brass line shows where it will land. Dropping it ticks Override date for you and the other blocks flow around it.

• Nudge it. Tick Override date on a block, then use the ↑ ↓ arrows to move it one step at a time.

Untick Override date at any point and the block snaps back to where its date says it belongs. Blocks with no date at all gather at the bottom until you give them one.

To remove an event, press ✕. To start over entirely, Clear all (it means it, so it asks first).

The Notebook

The Notebook, in the top menu, is where your thinking lives for the whole season: what the evidence proves, what you merely suspect, and the theory you would put your name to this week. If you are signed in it is saved to your account and follows you across devices.

Everything you write is stamped with the episode you were reading at the time, so you can watch your own thinking change as the case unfolds.

The sections

• Facts is for what the evidence actually proves. Assumptions is for what you believe but cannot yet show. Keeping them apart is half the game.
• Questions holds what you still need answered, and Evidence to revisit is your own "look at this again" pile. Any entry can cite exhibits by their labels, and the labels become links.
• Timeline gaps is a small table for windows of time nobody can account for: what is known, what may be missing. Each gap has an → Timeline button that puts it on your timeline, so the holes sit in sequence with the facts.
• Who interests you? is a checklist of the case's people. Tick anyone worth a second look and say why. The + Add to timeline button under a name drops your suspicion onto the timeline, so you can see when you started watching someone.

My Current Theory

At the bottom, one theory per week. It defaults to the episode you came from; the week dropdown lets you re-read (or rewrite) an earlier week's theory. Nothing here is scored. It exists so that at the finale you can see exactly when you first got it right, or how confidently you got it wrong.

One honest warning, Detective: the notebook is only as good as the discipline between Facts and Assumptions. The case has a way of punishing people who file one as the other.