The New DetectiveOS: A Free Case, a New Desk, a New Look

If you have been here before, you'll notice DetectiveOS looks different. The website is new from top to bottom, there is a free case to start with, and the game itself moved onto a new detective desk. Here is what changed, and why.

The short version: we wanted the site to feel like the cases do. Dark rooms, real paper, real photographs, and a clear answer to the two questions everyone asks first: what is this, and which case should I play?

A free case: Speak Now

The biggest change is that you can now play a whole case without paying anything. Speak Now is a smaller case built for your first evening on DetectiveOS.

At a lakeside wedding in the Finger Lakes, the bride takes the microphone at 23:12 and tells 140 guests that nobody should leave, because at midnight she has something to say. At 23:52 the wedding planner finds her in the bridal suite, stabbed with the knife she cut her wedding cake with. Four suspects, two lies, one key card.

• It's the real game. Same briefing, evidence room, interview room, notebook and charge sheet as the full cases.
• Every exhibit is open. Nothing in the file is held back. The free case is simply smaller, and it is solved without the forensic tools, which come with the full cases.
• It needs a free account, so your progress saves. No card.

The new detective desk

Inside a case, everything now happens on one desk.

• The case wall shows the lead you're working on. Leads open one at a time, and each one you close lands in your casebook with what it proved.
• The evidence room holds the case file: statements, photos, messages and records, in folders, with a reader you can present straight to a lead.
• The interview room is new. You pick a question and how to ask it: straight, gently, hard, or with a bluff. Suspects react, dodge and sometimes crack. When someone lies, you call it out and put the evidence on the table. Some suspects call you back for a second interview once you've caught them.
• Your notebook follows you to every screen. Clip a line from any file or interview, mark what you believe and what you doubt.
• Tip envelopes for every lead, sealed, starting with a gentle nudge. Open only what you need.
• Three looks: Night desk, Precinct and Signal (the original black-and-red look), plus a large-text setting and a reduce-motion switch.

A page for every case

Each of the eight cases now has its own page with its key art, the hook, the suspects, the setting, how hard it is and how long it takes. You can listen to the start of the case's briefing before you buy, the way it will sound when you open the file.

The case library got easier too. Filter by mood (someone vanished, locked rooms, a cover-up, family secrets), or compare all eight side by side. If you own a case, its card says so and takes you straight back in.

Two new cases

Two cases joined the library at the end of September:

• The Wolf Feast: twelve people drank from the same cup at a castle feast in the Highlands. Only one of them was meant to die. You rebuild the high table to work out who could reach the cup.
• Eight Minutes: the heist of the century took eight minutes, at a museum in Lyon. The diamonds were fake.

That makes eight full cases, from the medium The Vanishing to the expert Last Train to Meridian.

Simpler buying

Prices haven't changed: one case is $7.99, and all eight are $35.99. You pay once and keep the case. There is no subscription.

What changed is the way there. You can pick a case before you have an account; create one and checkout carries on where you left off. After paying you land on a page that opens your new case directly. On a phone, case pages tell you before you buy that the cases are made for a laptop, and offer to email you the link for later.

What's next

Case 9 is being written. Beyond that, we're working through the feedback from the new desk, so if something feels off, or you get stuck somewhere you shouldn't, tell us. Every message is read.

And if you haven't played yet: the free case is the place to start. Open Speak Now, catch two liars, and see if you can name the killer.