- 01Collect checkable facts
- 02Build candidate explanations
- 03Eliminate contradictions
- 04Submit a claim and evidence
Evidence and elimination
Cross-check observations against candidate people, times or events. A conclusion must survive all clues and exclude competing explanations.
The player's decision
Submit the most plausible answer or seek a clue distinguishing the remaining two explanations?
Original scenario
Original setup: three visitors used different rooms. Access logs exclude A and wet footprints exclude B; C looking nervous alone proves nothing.
Start with this prototype
Build one scene, three candidates and four citable clues. Mark exclusions and submit supporting evidence. Correct reasoning wins; wrong claims reveal conflicting clues. Omit a branching story.
Change one variable
Remove one clue to test for ambiguity, then restore it to identify its contribution.
What to observe in a playtest
Can visible facts uniquely support the conclusion? Can random answer cycling bypass evidence?
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Author knowledge is not player evidence. Never require undisclosed lore to eliminate a candidate.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- Return of the Obra Dinn
The investigator assesses a ship without its crew, grounding observation in an investigative role.
- The Case of the Golden Idol
Reconstructing scenes links suspects, motives and weapons across observations.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build one scene, three candidates and four citable clues. Mark exclusions and submit supporting evidence. Correct reasoning wins; wrong claims reveal conflicting clues. Omit a branching story.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.