An online detective game with real exhibits

Every episode is a set of exhibits: police reports, photographs, witness statements and logs. They open full screen on your desk, so you can zoom in on the small print and read the typed text where there is any. The other people in town are not neat, and neither are their statements.

1. Open the exhibits. Open every exhibit in the episode once. That is what unlocks the questions, so you never answer blind.
2. Mark what matters. Draw a box round the line that says it, then say what it tells you in your own words, as a fact, an assumption or a question. Nothing is filled in for you.
3. Build your notebook and timeline. Your marks sort themselves into a notebook. Give a mark a time and it lands on your timeline, where the gaps between moments start to show.
4. Answer the questions. There are a few each episode. Say how sure you are, from Hunch to Certain, and choose the exhibits that prove your answer.

Answers are final once you file them, and they close when the next episode opens. Some results come at once and the rest arrive when a later episode opens. Nothing tells you mid-case whether your theory is right. Finding out is the case.

Want the detail? The How to Play guide walks through every control.

In the final episode you file your closing argument: who did it, and the exhibits that prove it. When the case closes, the verdict page shows how it ended and how you did. A week after the final episode opens, that ending opens for everybody.

Episode 1 of every case is free, and you do not need an account to read it. A free account lets you file your answers and keeps your notebook and timeline on every device you sign in on. The Case Pass opens the rest of the case.

Everything already released opens the moment you buy, so joining late costs you nothing but reading time.

It is for anybody who likes a whodunit and would rather do the reasoning than watch somebody else do it. You can play on your own, or beside a partner or a friend. It works on a laptop and on a phone.