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MANGROVE COUNTYMangrove County Cold Case Initiative · Civilian Review
Somebody closed this file in six days.
A detective game played on real paper. You print the case file, search the county’s own web, and question the people who were there — AI conversations, in your own words. They will lie. Two of your documents cannot both be true. Find them.
Open the free case75 minutes · no card · one tap to start
The world is investigable
A searchable thirty-year newspaper archive, county records, a community directory from 2009. You research and cross-reference. Nobody hands you a clue.
AI suspects who talk back — out loud
Real conversations with the people who were there, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask anything, in your own words — and in every full case, make it a phone call: speak aloud and hear each suspect answer in their own voice.
Built for a table
One purchase seats six. Pick someone to drive the archive and every page they open lands on every phone at once, so the whole table discovers it together — plus a shared corkboard, red string, evidence dealt out so nobody holds the whole picture, and a vote that names the dissenters.
Paper on the table, the same discovery on every screen
One person drives. Everybody investigates together.
Every boxed kit has the same problem: one person ends up reading the good part out loud while five people wait to be told what it said. Pick someone to drive — not to solve it, just to work the search box — and that stops. They open the county’s archives, and every page they open lands on everybody’s screen at the same second, next to the case file you all already hold. Nobody gets the news secondhand. Nobody reads over a shoulder. Six people looking at the same document, arguing about it in real time — which is the entire point of playing this with other people.
- One link, sent onceWhoever drives shares a single link at the start. No group chat, no pasting URLs, nobody asking “which page?”
- Everyone holds the whole fileEvery document your table has earned, sorted by the Part it printed in, on every phone at once. Sealed Parts stay sealed for all of you — the case opens at one pace, together.
- You all see it the same secondA page opens and it is on every screen instantly. Everybody reads it at once, everybody gets the “wait — look at the time on this” moment at the same time.
How a case goes
Six steps, in order. The sheet on your desk tells you which one you are on.
- 01 · paper
Print the file
A real evidence folder: reports on the Sheriff’s form stock, a ledger on green-bar paper, a water-stained planner. Letter or A4. Or read it on screen — it zooms to 4×.
- 02 · the scan
Find the first thread
One document in the packet was never meant to be read by you. Push the scan harder than a photocopier could and it gives something up.
- 03 · archive
Read the town
The Halcyon Gazette, digitised back to 1995. Search a name, then read around the story. Two of the keys to this case are in the small print nobody reads.
- 04 · records
Cross the county
Boats, companies and people all leave paperwork. The records portal is slow and ugly and complete, and it clears suspects as often as it condemns them.
- 05 · interviews
Sit down with them
Six people from 1997 agreed to talk — in the full cases, out loud, each in their own voice. They deflect, they lie, they harden when you bluff. They crack when you put the right paper in front of them.
- 06 · verdict
File the verdict
Who, why, and three things you can cite. Okafor reads what you cite, not what you believe. Five endings; four of them are wrong in a way you will remember.
Three ways in
Start free. Pay when you want the next file.
The first case is free. After that, a case is $14.99 — yours forever — or membership is $12.99 a month.
See exactly what you get →Questions
Do I need to sign up to look?+
No. This page is the whole pitch. Sign-in is one tap with Google or a six-digit code emailed to you — no password, ever — and only happens when you open a case.
How long is a case?+
The free case is about an hour and a quarter. A full case is two and a half to three hours: an evening, not a project. The archive holds far more than you need, and reading all of it is where the best players spend their time.
How do we all investigate together if one person is driving?+
Six people cannot usefully type into one search box, so one of you drives — that is all the role is. Every page they open appears instantly on one shared link for everyone, right beside the case file you all already hold, so you are reading the same document at the same second and arguing about it in real time. Sealed Parts stay sealed for the whole table, so the case opens at one pace, together. Nobody is waiting to be told what it said.
Can I play with friends?+
One purchase opens a Squad Room seating six, around one table or remote. A shared corkboard with red string, evidence dealt out so nobody holds the whole file, and a vote on the verdict that names the dissenters. Friends need only a free account.
What if I get stuck?+
Call Sunny — a retired crime reporter who knows where everything is buried and will not hand you the shovel. She nudges, then points, then says it plainly, with an eight-minute coffee break between each.
How do the AI conversations work?+
Every suspect is played by artificial intelligence working from a detailed character file — their history, their habits, what they are hiding and what they will never say. You ask anything you like, in your own words, and they answer only from what the documents you show them actually say — you cannot talk them into a confession, you have to prove it. In every paid case, interviews are voice calls too: ask out loud and hear each suspect answer in their own cast voice. The free case is text-only — a taste.
I bought the boxed edition. Where do I go?+
There is a sealed card inside the folder with a code on it. Enter it and the case opens — the card is your account.
Is any of this real?+
None of it. Mangrove County, its towns, its newspaper and everyone in it are invented. Cases are built from patterns of crime, never from a real case or a real family.
What is the content rating?+
16+. Cases deal with the aftermath of violence through documents, never graphically, and with alcohol. Never sexual violence, never harm to children.