Every report, statement, phone record and photograph the detectives had. Nothing highlighted, nothing explained. Read it all, find the lie, name the killer.
17 complete investigations, one free and 16 premium, from 1958 to 2023. Fictional, solvable from the documents alone, and checked so that exactly one answer survives every record in the folder.
Every plan includes solo play and rooms of up to eight; guests never pay.
You get exactly what the original detectives had. Nothing more, nothing pointed out.
Seven folders: police reports, forensics, witness statements, photographs, records, personal documents and press. Read every page. A green mark shows what you have opened, that is the only help the interface gives.
Statements are what people say. Records are what happened. Put every time, name and number on paper and check each alibi against a document written by someone else.
Name the killer. One attempt. Right or wrong, the sealed solution opens and walks through every document that convicts.
Same file, two ways in. Choose when you press play.
A quiet evening, a notepad and 24 documents. Your place and your notes about what you have read save automatically on this device.
The host creates a room and shares a six-letter code. Up to eight players read the same file on their own screens, see what the others have opened, talk in the room chat (text only, no links), and vote in secret. The host reveals.
"We have done the boxed ones. This felt the same at the table, except the six of us each had the file open and nobody was waiting for the phone records."
Game night, four players"No hints is the point. I got it wrong, read the solution, and every piece was sitting in a document I had already opened."
Solo, wrong on the first case"Two and a half hours, one phone bill and a State Patrol log. Best free mystery game I have found online."
Solo, correctCold Case Online is a detective game in the tradition of the boxed case-file board games: you are handed the paperwork of an unsolved homicide and asked to do what the original investigators could not. Read all of it. Build the timeline. Find the one person whose story the records will not carry. The genre started on kitchen tables, with printed dossiers such as Unsolved Case Files and Hunt A Killer, and it works because real investigations are solved on paper. A phone record contradicts a statement. A receipt places a car somewhere it should not be. A log entry is in the wrong ink. This is that board game, in digital form: the same folders, the same deduction, no box, no shipping, and a room mode so up to eight players can investigate together from their own phones.
The cases run from the 1970s to the present day. Older files turn on telephone toll records, transmitter logs and tide tables; the modern ones on smart-lock events, cell-site data, rideshare receipts and email audit trails. Each is a self-contained mystery game of two to three hours, written so that a careful reader can reach the answer from the documents alone.
Cold Case Online takes that format and removes the box, the postage and the waiting. A case opens in your browser in seconds. Each file is built the same way a real one is organised, in folders for reports, forensics, statements, photographs and records, and each is written so that one suspect, and only one, is contradicted by at least two independent documents. Innocent suspects are cleared by a specific record, never by a feeling.
We deliberately leave out the things that make a mystery game easier and less honest: hint envelopes, detective notebooks that summarise the evidence for you, bold text on the important line, and "now read this" prompts between pages. If a boxed kit is a guided tour, this is the file on the desk.
| Cold Case Online | Boxed case-file kits | |
|---|---|---|
| Start playing | Now, in the browser | After shipping |
| Price | Free case; then $9.99 a case or $14.99 a week for all | $30 to $40 per box |
| Group play | Room of up to eight, each on their own phone | One folder passed round the table |
| Hints | None | Sealed hint envelopes |
| Replay with friends | Host a room, guests play free | Buy another box |
Plans: single case $9.99, all cases $14.99 a week or $39.99 a year. Read the longer version in Online case files vs boxed murder mystery games.
The first case file, Static on Channel Nine, is completely free with no sign-up: 26 documents, six suspects, solo or in a room. Further cases are $9.99 each, or everything for $14.99 a week or $39.99 a year. There is no free trial that turns into a charge.
No. Everything runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer. There are no downloads, no printing and no PDFs. The file opens like a real case folder and you read it on the screen.
No. There are no hints, no detective notes, no highlighted passages and no "look at document 12" prompts. Nothing in the file points at anything else. You get what the original investigators had and you find the contradictions yourself. That is the entire game.
Press Accuse and name the killer. You get one attempt. Whether you are right or wrong the case closes and the full solution file is added to the folder: killer, weapon, motive and the sequence of events, with every document that proves it.
Yes. Choose Create a room, share the six-letter code, and up to seven friends join from their own phones, so eight people in a room. Everyone reads the same file, sees which documents the others have opened, talks it through in the room chat, and votes in secret. The host reveals the votes and the case closes for the whole room at once.
No. If the host owns a case, everyone who joins the host's room plays that case free.
One email per new case. Nothing else, ever.