Casefile

Casefile is a detective game about writing code. You don't pick a suspect from a list. You read the evidence, write a small Python program to sort through it, and let your program name the culprit.

Every case gives you its evidence as data. Witness logs, ledgers, timestamps, access records. You write a tool that reads that data and points at someone. As you play you keep the functions you write in a toolkit, so later cases get easier when you reuse what you already built.

The trick is that the quick and obvious approach usually accuses the wrong person. If you want the right answer you have to look at the data more carefully than that.

What's in it

There are 48 cases, and they cover 17 different kinds of problem. Grouping and counting, table joins, running balances, overlapping time intervals, reachability through a graph, and more. Cases are sorted into easy, medium and hard, and the case picker avoids giving you the same kind of problem twice in a row.

The code runs in a small built-in Python interpreter. There is nothing to install and no setup. You write in the terminal on the desk and run it right there.

How a case goes

Read the file. Look at the shape of the evidence. Write a tool that returns a suspect. Run it, and see if you got the right person or convicted the wrong one.

Built with Godot. Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and in the browser.