BLACKOUT
A seven-minute blackout at a private George Town exhibition ends with a dead gallery owner and an artwork that is not quite the one that was hanging before.
Blackout is an art-world mystery with a compact time window. Gallery lighting, storage access, inventory records and artwork authenticity all matter. The visual setting is elegant, but the underlying investigation is about process: who can handle work, who controls records and what can be changed in seven minutes.
The premise
During a seven-minute blackout at a private exhibition, gallery owner Lim Jian Wei is found dead beside a damaged painting. The emergency lights failed only in Gallery 2, and one artwork appears to have been switched before the power returned.
What the player is trying to establish
Use the blackout timeline, artwork records, and staff movements to identify who used the darkness to protect a forgery scheme.
Players need to combine power-controller logs, phone video, inventory data and forensic examination of the artwork. The case is designed to make several people appear commercially suspicious while only one evidence chain fully explains the blackout and the switch.
Investigation skills this case rewards
- Short-window timeline analysis
- Inventory comparison
- Forgery indicators
- Testing staff movement against independent footage
Spoiler-free investigation notes
- A one-digit serial difference is easy to dismiss and difficult to explain away.
- Separate electrical failure from deliberate circuit control.
- Commercial secrecy is common in the case; focus on the evidence that connects secrecy to the blackout itself.
The playable case uses a fixed solution, cloud-saved progress and a ten-minute attempt window. You will need an account so the investigation state can be saved.
Open BLACKOUT →