Case-file murder mystery games come in three shapes: a box you buy once, a box that arrives every month, and a file you open in the browser. The evidence inside is similar. Almost everything around it is different.
| Boxed case-file kit | Subscription mystery box | Case file online | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it arrives | One box in the post, with the whole case inside | A new box every month, often one chapter of a longer story | Opens in the browser in seconds; nothing to ship |
| The evidence | Printed reports, statements, photos and clippings | Letters, maps and props, sometimes with puzzles or ciphers | The same kinds of documents, sorted into police-style folders, often with a printable version |
| When you are stuck | Usually hint envelopes or an online hint page | Usually online hints for each box | Depends on the site; this one has none |
| Playing as a group | One copy, shared around one table | One copy per box, passed around | Each player can read on their own phone, together or apart |
| After you finish | Can be passed on to a friend | Builds into a collection over the months | A solved case stays solved in your browser on that device; a printed copy can be reused by your own group |
| How you pay | One purchase per box, plus postage | A recurring subscription | On this site: first case free, then Premium from $19.99 a week (every case online), or one case PDF for $14.99 |
Paper. There is a particular pleasure in tipping a stack of documents onto a table, sorting them into piles, and sliding a statement across to someone with your finger on the line that matters. A well-made box feels like evidence: different paper stocks, carbon copies, a coffee ring on a report. It also makes a good present, because there is something to wrap and hand over.
The trade-offs are practical. A box has to be shipped, so the evening has to be planned days ahead. There is one copy, so a group of six spends part of the night waiting for someone to finish a page. And once the case is solved the box has done its job. You can pass it to a friend, but you cannot play it again.
Anticipation. A story told across several boxes gives you something to look forward to each month, and the longer arc leaves room for bigger turns than a single case can carry. Subscription boxes also lean further into props and puzzles, which some players love.
The price of that is commitment. You pay over months, a chapter can end without an answer, and the puzzle elements can pull the game away from pure deduction. If what you enjoy is reading testimony against records until a timeline closes, a single self-contained case is usually the better fit.
The obvious change is speed: you can decide to play at eight and be reading the incident report at five past. The less obvious one is how a group works. When everyone reads on their own phone, nobody waits for the single copy of the autopsy, and the quiet player who reads every line becomes as useful as the loud one who likes to accuse people. In a room on this site, each player sees which documents the others have opened, everyone votes in secret, and the host reveals the votes at once.
What you give up is touch. A screen is not a stack of paper, which is why every case here also comes as a printable PDF with the solution sealed in a separate file. Print it if your group likes to spread the evidence out; stay on screen if you would rather start now.
We built this site around the parts of the genre we think matter most: documents that read like the real thing, a cast in which everyone has a reason, and a rule that every conclusion rests on at least two independent documents. We left out the extras. There are no hint envelopes, no guided objectives, no ciphers and no companion app. A case here is one folder, sorted the way a police file is sorted, and at the end you name the killer. If you want to know how to approach one, start with the timeline method.