How a CASE//ZERO mystery stays solvable.

The canonical case file

Before the player begins, each mystery has a fixed underlying answer: who committed the crime, what happened, why it happened, what was staged or concealed, and which evidence establishes the chain. Suspect dialogue is constrained by that authored truth.

Red herrings must still make sense

A red herring should not be random noise. If an innocent suspect lies, there should be a reason for the lie that fits the evidence. This creates genuine ambiguity without requiring the game to cheat. The player can discover that a statement is false while still needing to decide whether the falsehood matters to the central crime.

Evidence should be cross-checkable

Strong cases use different evidence types that can confirm or challenge each other: access records, video, audio, documents, financial traces and physical evidence. A clue becomes more useful when it can be tested against a second source rather than accepted on its own.

AI performs; the rules decide

The AI interrogation system is intended to make suspects responsive and conversational. It is not the source of the final solution. Scoring and accusation logic are tied to the authored case data, which protects the player from a model changing the mystery during play.

Fiction and identity

CASE//ZERO uses fictional characters, fictional businesses and fictional criminal events. Malaysian locations provide cultural and atmospheric context, but the stories are not presented as real cases. Character names and circumstances are created for the game and are not intended to identify or accuse real individuals.

Updates and corrections

Cases can be refined when wording is unclear, an evidence description creates unintended ambiguity, or interface behaviour makes a clue harder to understand than intended. Those revisions should improve clarity without silently changing the core solution after players have begun investigating.