Box 47: Cold Case Archive

Calder County hired you to scan the old sheriff's archive before it goes to the shredder. They told you to work fast and not to read. On the first shelf sits a box sealed with tape. On the lid, in marker: 47. DO NOT REOPEN.

You open it.

June 1977. Ruth Ann Kessler, a waitress at Little Nell's Diner, finished her shift at eleven and never came home. The case was closed in eleven days. The file is still here: witness statements, a motel register, a tow receipt, a memo that tells the deputies to drop one name.

How it plays

• Type a word into the archive terminal: a name, a place, a car, a licence plate
• Only the first five matching files show, oldest first, so a vague word buries what you need
• Open a file and read it. Click any word in it to search for that word next
• Every file you read adds people, cars, places and things to your notes
• Pin the right fact to each question on the board. Three wrong pins and the box goes back on the shelf

What's inside

• Six written cases from 1958 to 1994, one county, one story that ties them together
• Real 1970s photographs from the public-domain DOCUMERICA archive
• Redacted words that reveal themselves when you find the right file
• Unsorted boxes: endless generated cold cases with new victims, cars and plates
• A new daily box every day, with a streak to keep
• Collect desks for your archive room
• Typewriter documents, a green-screen terminal and a cork board
• English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Plays offline, no account

Controls (PC)

• Keyboard: type into the records search and press Enter.
• Mouse: SEARCH, result cards, words in an open file, the board and its notes.
• Enter: also takes a story card's button, starts and resumes. Esc: pause / back; on the title it asks before quitting.

The itch.io version

• No ads. No in-app purchases. The full game, once.
• Hint (90-second cooldown), Reveal (150-second cooldown) and one second chance per box are free.
• Double coins is gone, so coins stay at their earned rate.
• A 540x960 portrait window that can be resized.

Linux requires libcurl.so.4 in addition to a working graphics driver.

All people, places and events are fictional.

Credits

Photographs: DOCUMERICA project, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1971-1977, U.S. National Archives (public domain). Paper, cork and desk textures: ambientCG.com (CC0). Music: "Deliberate Thought" and "Thinking Music" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0. Magnifying glass icon by Lorc, game-icons.net, CC BY 3.0. Fonts: Special Elite (Apache 2.0); Courier Prime, VT323, Caveat, Oswald, Noto Sans Symbols 2 (SIL OFL 1.1). Made with Godot (MIT). Crash reports by Sentry (MIT).