Day one
A man who did not arrive, and a message that did.
The case
He had already written down what he meant to say.
Elias Vale founded Atlas Meridian and was selling it. The six people travelling with him are the ones the sale was about — his co-founder, his finance chief, his creative director, his head of operations, his daughter, and a journalist who had been writing about him without permission.
Every one of them has an account of that evening. The accounts agree, at first. What you have that they do not is the message, the documents, and the order things actually happened in.
Six investigations unlock across your sailing. The last two land on the same day, because the case is built so that you believe you have finished, and then have to explain the evidence you are left holding.
Content note
A fictional homicide investigation. No graphic violence, no on-page gore. Written for ages 13 and up.
At a glance
- Genre
- Murder mystery — deduction, contradiction and alibi
- Setting
- A private group aboard your own sailing
- Structure
- 6 investigations · 6 chapters · unlocking across 5 days
- Evidence
- 43 items · documents, messages, timelines, photographs and objects
- Puzzles
- 6 mechanics, one closing each investigation
- Play time
- About 4¾ hours, spread across the voyage
- Suspects
- Six, and the case does not narrow them for you
- Language
- English
- Format
- Physical evidence file + offline iOS & Android app
Structure
Six investigations,
five days.
Investigations unlock by sailing day rather than all at once, so the case keeps pace with the voyage instead of asking for an evening of it. Fits four and five night itineraries.
1 investigation · 6 evidence
Day two
Six people, and what each of them stood to lose.
Day three
An answer that fits. Early, and completely.
Day four
The account everyone agreed on stops holding.
Day five
Two investigations, and the second is the one that matters.
The opening
The first three, by name. The rest arrive as you earn them.
- The Message He Left BehindScheduled before his death, delivered after it.
- Everyone Has Something to LoseSix people, and an acquisition that changes what each of them is worth.
- The Obvious KillerThere is one. That is the problem.
The manifest
Six people had a reason.
Each carries a statement, a stake in the sale, and at least one thing they would rather you did not check.
Mara Voss
Controlled, analytical, and deeply involved in the pending sale of the company. She says Elias had become increasingly unpredictable during negotiations.
Theo Mercer
Once Elias’s closest friend. Their relationship deteriorated badly as Elias pushed the sale forward, and several of the group saw them argue shortly before his death.
Elena Vale
Elias’s daughter. She publicly claims little interest in the company’s future. Her relationship with her father was strained.
Julian Rook
An investigative journalist researching Elias for an unauthorised biography. Elias had threatened legal action if he published.
Simone Hart
One of the company’s longest-serving executives. Recent changes tied to the acquisition have left her own future uncertain.
Caleb Ward
Responsible for several expensive expansion projects, one of which Elias had recently begun reviewing himself.
The accusation
You get one answer.
When the sixth investigation closes, the accusation unlocks. Eight questions: who killed Elias Vale, the motive, the method, when it happened, who was being framed and how, which pieces of evidence converge, and the chain that proves it.
You commit once. There is no reopening it and no second attempt — which is the point, because a mystery you can brute-force is not a mystery. Marking happens on your own device, against your own case file, with no connection needed. Once sealed, the full resolution opens and tells you exactly how close you came.
Ranks
Every question carries a weight, and naming the wrong person caps the outcome however well the rest is argued.
- Master Investigator — you missed almost nothing.
- Case Solved — the right answer, properly evidenced.
- Correct Conclusion, Incomplete Proof — you were right, and you could not show it.
- Partial Case — some of it held.
- Case Unsolved — you named the wrong person.
Case file 001
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