The Hour of Silence — A Murder Mystery Game

Homicide

Missing Person

Open

County Records · File Copy · Do Not Remove

A father called it in at 4:51 a.m. Three children dead. His wife gone.

Unsolved Seven Days

Every case is generated fresh: a different killer, a different reason, a different set of lies. Some of what you find will be true. Some of it was left there for you. You have seven days before the county moves on.

Name of investigating party

Standing in this town

Case number (leave blank for a new case)

Declare a suspect before the evidence carries and the town will put you on the road out. Name the wrong person and someone who is still free will know you were looking at them.

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Day 1 · 12 hrs left

Attention on you: none

Today's moves

Twelve working hours a day. Nothing is free.

Case —

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Open

Final Disposition

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Orientation · read once, then forget it

How to play

A father called it in at 4:51 in the morning. Three children dead in their beds and his wife gone out of the house. You have seven days and twelve working hours in each of them, and at the end of that the county puts the file in a drawer whether you are finished or not.

Every case is generated fresh. The killer, the reason, the method, what became of the mother, who lies and who only looks like they are lying — none of it repeats.

Pick who you are

State investigator — a badge, the lab, county records, six frames of film and a deputy who will tolerate you. Nobody in this town will relax around you.
Her brother — no lab, no records, and no authority at all. You can put a man against a truck in a parking lot and get an answer in ninety seconds. Do it three times and the county charges you before it charges anybody else.
Her sister — no lab, no records, and the only person who gets invited into the kitchen after the service. Rapport works better in your hands than pressure ever will, and you have an instinct for when somebody is lying that is right about three times in four.
County reporter — records, archives, and a printing press you can use as a crowbar. Everything you run puts your name in every kitchen in the county.

The rooms

You get one visit to each location. When you leave, or when the deputy walks you out, that room is closed for the rest of the case.
Numbered cards mark what the technicians flagged. Tapping one is free. Photographing one costs a frame and twenty minutes, and you carry a limited number of frames.
Not every card is worth anything. Some are a coffee ring.
Roughly forty percent of what is in a room was never flagged at all. To find that you have to say what you are looking at, in your own words, and a vague sweep finds nothing.
You write the caption on every photograph yourself. That caption is what goes in the file.

The interviews

You type your own questions. There is a bank of the questions investigators actually use if you want them, and you can ignore it.
Set your approach — rapport, direct, or hard. Going hard on somebody early, with nothing in your hand, can end that interview permanently.
You can put anything already in your file in front of them and watch what it does.
Nothing enters your file unless you put it there. Every answer gets a Log this, and when you log it you have to call it: straight, evasive, or a lie. Call a truthful answer a lie and you start building a case against an innocent person.
Innocent people lie constantly here. They are protecting a debt, an affair, a sealed record. Evasion is not guilt.
About one answer in eight, something gets past them. It is not marked.

What it costs to be right out loud

Put real evidence in front of the killer, or in front of one of the one or two people in town quietly carrying water for them, and it walks home the same night.
First time: a witness you were counting on recants. Second: something gets burned or buried before you reach it. Third: if she was still alive, she stops being alive.
Three hours buys you the map of who is close to who. It is right about eighty percent of the time and delivered at a hundred percent confidence.

The sheriff

Going to him cannot be undone. A straight sheriff backs you and lowers the bar for a charge. A talker backs you and tells the Cardinal Cafe by six the next morning. A crooked one listens carefully, asks two questions more than he needed to, and by morning the evidence is gone. There is a two-hour action that lets you find out which one he is first. Use it.

Declaring

You name three things: who, why, and what became of her. Declare before day three, or on a file made of talk, and the town puts you on the road out. Name the wrong person convincingly and an innocent goes down while somebody who is still free learns exactly how close you got. Name the right person without the evidence to carry it and they go home and eat supper knowing what you know.

And if she is alive, there is a way to go and get her — but it needs two separate things pointing the same direction, and going without them means searching in the open where everyone can see you.

Service record

Reports

Your file, and where it lives

Data

Everything is stored on this device. Nothing about your play leaves it unless you use sync below, and sync only carries what you send.

Connection

Interrogation and scene-search adjudication run through a model. This checks whether this deployment can reach one, and whether the key actually authenticates.

Backup

Writes your open case, your closed cases, and your settings to a single file.

Sync

Pick a code and keep it. Anything you push under that code can be pulled onto another device with the same code. The code is the only key, so make it long and make it yours.

Import a starter set

A handful of hand-picked case numbers to begin with. Importing adds them to the case-number list on the cover sheet; it does not touch anything you have already played.

Erase

This clears the open case, every closed case, and your settings on this device. A backup file is not affected.

Release history