Question 1

What is The Offlines?

Accepted Answer

The Offlines is a one-hour social investigation simulation set in real-world towns and neighborhoods.

You enter a divided community after something has gone wrong. You question people, read relationships, follow rumors, test accounts, uncover evidence, and decide what truth you are willing to put before the town council.

This is not a detective game about clicking clues until the answer unlocks. It is a simulation of people under pressure: what they know, what they believe, what they hide, who they protect, who they resent, and how a town reacts when a stranger starts asking the wrong questions.

Question 2

Why call it a social investigation simulation?

Accepted Answer

Because the case is not just a puzzle. It is a town under pressure.

You are entering a social environment: families, rivals, employers, neighbors, old grudges, private debts, public reputations, local routines, people who know too much, and people who think they know more than they do.

The town does not sit still while you investigate it. People have schedules. People know each other. People care who you speak to. Pressure travels through relationships.

The truth is fixed. The way people carry it is not simple.

That is the simulation.

Question 3

How long is a case?

Accepted Answer

One real hour.

That hour maps to a single day in town, from eight in the morning to ten at night. When the day ends, the investigation ends.

People do not wait forever for you. Some are only reachable at certain hours. Some may be busy, asleep, working, avoiding you, or unavailable when you need them most.

Manage your time like it is the only day you get, because it is.

Question 4

Can I pause a case?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Use the Pause button inside a case. The town’s day stops, and it starts again when you return and continue.

If you close the page or lose your connection without pausing, the day does not run on without you. At most five minutes pass while you are gone.

A case is still best played in one sitting. People follow their schedules while the clock runs, and the day still ends at ten at night.

Question 5

What do I need to play?

Accepted Answer

A modern web browser, a stable internet connection, an account, and about one hour.

New accounts start with free credits, so your first cases are covered.

There is nothing to download.

Question 6

What is an Offline?

Accepted Answer

Someone who walked away from an ordinary life to seek truth where systems failed.

Offlines have no badge, no salary, and no authority to arrest or punish. What they have is a reputation: when an Offline names someone responsible, towns listen. You play one of them.

Whether that makes you a folk hero or a menace depends on whom you ask. Some greet you as a conscience. Some see the people who broke everything.

Question 7

What is Veritas?

Accepted Answer

The AI justice system that used to run the world's courts.

Veritas ("Truth") decided the majority of civil disputes and criminal sentencing for years. It was fast, consistent, and trusted. Then people noticed its verdicts quietly favored those who already had power.

The Offlines destroyed it. Not everyone has forgiven them.

The game takes place in the world Veritas left behind: centralized law is fractured, trust is local, and if someone is going to decide who is guilty, they have to show up in person.

Question 8

Is there an Offlines organization?

Accepted Answer

Not the way you might imagine.

There is no headquarters, no ranks, no oath. Just a loose network: names passed between towns, a way to send word when something happens. Whoever is closest. Whoever is willing.

Towns that call for help provide food, shelter, and supplies. It is not payment. It is obligation: the same obligation that lets an Offline ask questions and expect answers.

Question 9

Why does the investigation only last one day?

Accepted Answer

Because staying longer changes what you are.

One day is long enough to gather the pieces and short enough to stay outside the town's politics. The longer an investigator stays, the more entangled they become: owing favors, making enemies, becoming a piece on the board instead of someone outside it.

One day keeps an Offline a stranger. One day keeps them honest.

Question 10

When does this take place?

Accepted Answer

A few decades from now.

The world still looks familiar. People work jobs, check their phones, complain about traffic. What changed is quieter than any apocalypse: after Veritas, no one trusts remote judgment anymore. If truth is going to be decided, someone has to show up and look people in the eye.

That someone is you.

Question 11

What do I actually do during a case?

Accepted Answer

You question people.

There are no dialogue wheels, no fixed interview trees, and no “ask about clue” button. You type or speak your own questions. As people talk, your board fills with evidence you have surfaced and relationships you have learned.

But you are not questioning isolated NPCs in separate rooms. You are moving through a social environment. Who you talk to, how hard you push, what you reveal, and whom you seem to suspect can change how the town responds to you.

The investigation is not about searching every room. It is about understanding people well enough to know what they are protecting.

Question 12

Why are there no dialogue trees?

Accepted Answer

Because people do not speak in dialogue trees.

In the real world, people answer directly, badly, defensively, warmly, vaguely, angrily, too much, or not at all. They misunderstand questions. They dodge the thing you meant. They correct one detail and avoid the one that matters. They tell the truth in a way that still misleads you.

They also do not forget that you are a stranger asking dangerous questions.

You are not choosing from a menu. You are conducting an investigation inside a living community.

Question 13

Can I ask anything I want?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

You write your own questions. You can be careful, blunt, warm, suspicious, strategic, or reckless.

But people are not search boxes. They may challenge a premise, refuse a question, answer only part of it, ask what you already know, or decide you are not worth the risk.

They may also react to the way you have treated others. If you pressure someone’s daughter, employer, lover, rival, or friend, that may not stay contained inside that one conversation.

The freedom cuts both ways. Some choices can close doors. If you insult someone, threaten someone they care about, reveal too much too early, or push a private wound too hard, they may refuse to keep talking. In a town this small, that refusal may not stay private.

Question 14

Can I solve a case without talking to everyone?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

You are not expected to exhaust the whole town. Some people may be unavailable at certain hours. Some are distractions. Some are useful only if you already know what to ask.

A good investigation is not “talk to everyone until the answer appears.” It is choosing where your hour matters most.

The town has more people, more feelings, and more history than you have time for.

Question 15

Does every case have a real solution?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

The culprit, motive, method, timeline, and evidence are fixed before the investigation begins. They do not change because of what you ask, whom you suspect, or how convincing you sound.

You are not creating the truth.

You are trying to reach it in time.

Question 16

Isn’t a mystery with AI characters just improv with no real puzzle?

Accepted Answer

No.

Before your first question, the town is already finished: what happened, why it happened, who did it, who saw what, who lied, who misunderstood, who spread gossip, who is protecting whom, and which evidence can prove the case.

The characters perform the town. They do not rewrite it.

Saying anything does not pass the level, because the level is not the conversation. It is the accusation, judged against a truth that existed before you knocked on the first door.

Question 17

Are the towns real?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

Every case takes place in a real town you can find on a map.

The people and incidents are fiction. The places are not.

Question 18

Can I investigate a place I know?

Accepted Answer

That is part of the fantasy.

A case might take you near home, near a school you know, near your grandparents’ town, near a place you passed through on holiday, or near a road you have driven a hundred times without stopping.

The incident is fictional. The people are fictional. But the place is real enough to recognize.

The goal is not “Mystery Village.” The goal is a town that feels like it could have existed before you opened the game.

Question 19

Are the towns just backdrops?

Accepted Answer

No.

A town is not a skin on top of a case. It shapes who knows whom, who can speak freely, who has power, who depends on whom, and what kind of truth the community can tolerate.

A case in a company town should not feel like a case in a retirement town, a college town, a religious town, a seasonal tourist town, or a place where three families have controlled everything for generations.

The incident matters. The social structure matters just as much.

Question 20

How real are the social structures?

Accepted Answer

The towns are built to feel socially specific.

That means geography, local economy, age mix, class pressure, institutions, family structure, migration, isolation, tourism, religion, industry, and who holds influence can all matter.

People are not just “suspect,” “witness,” or “victim’s friend.” They are tenants, cousins, former employees, church volunteers, business partners, old rivals, caretakers, local celebrities, outsiders, loyalists, dependents, and people who owe each other things.

The game is not making claims about real residents. The people are fictional. But the social texture is designed to feel like it belongs to the place.

Question 21

Is the town actually reactive?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

The town is not a static list of interviews. People have their own routines, availability, relationships, loyalties, and emotional limits.

Someone may know you spoke to another person because they are close to them, work with them, live with them, protect them, resent them, or have reason to watch what happens around them. Someone may contact you because your questions touched something they hoped would stay buried. Someone may become colder because of who you seem to believe.

Not everyone magically knows everything. This is not omniscience.

It is social consequence.

Question 22

Do people have their own schedules?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

A town has a day, and people live inside it.

Someone may be at work in the morning, unavailable at lunch, reachable in the afternoon, or gone when you finally realize you needed them. Knocking at the wrong hour may get you nothing.

Schedules are not just realism for its own sake. They force you to investigate like time matters.

Because it does.

Question 23

How different can cases really be? Is it always murder in a small town?

Accepted Answer

No.

Murder is only one of many things that can go wrong in a town. You may arrive to a disappearance, a blackmail case, a fire, a ruined reputation, a suspicious suicide, a stolen inheritance, a cover-up, a false accusation, or a death that may not be a crime at all.

The town changes too. Some close ranks around family. Some split into factions. Some gossip so freely your problem is not finding information but trusting any of it. Some depend economically on the very person you are investigating.

Then the tone changes the whole shape: quiet tragedy, paranoid knot, bitter farce, warm grief, civic rot, old romance, local scandal.

Same role. Different case.

Question 24

Do I do all the approaching, or does the town come to me?

Accepted Answer

Mostly, you choose whom to contact.

But the town has its own will. Someone may reach out first because you rattled them, ignored them, threatened someone they care about, or came too close to something they hoped would stay buried.

Some hours, nobody comes.

When someone does, it means something. What they want from you is never labeled. Reading their motive is part of the work.

Question 25

Can a character invent a fake clue and waste my hour?

Accepted Answer

No.

A character cannot hand you knowledge they do not hold. They can lie, misremember, protect someone, repeat gossip, exaggerate, minimize, or confidently believe something false.

That is not the game malfunctioning. That is the job.

Your board records what checks out against the facts of the case. Sorting honest confusion from deliberate deception is your work, not your technical risk.

Question 26

Is this one of those AI games where everyone dodges every question forever?

Accepted Answer

No.

Most people will talk, and plenty will talk too much. Some information comes freely. Some only appears if you ask directly. Some requires pressure. Some will never come out of that person’s mouth.

People also hide things unrelated to the case: affairs, debts, shame, loyalties, grudges, private failures. That is what makes the guilty ones hard to spot.

The truth is reachable within the hour. The skill is telling the person hiding a crime from the person hiding a life.

Question 27

Do the characters all talk like the same chatbot?

Accepted Answer

They should not.

Some answer in four flat words. Some bury the important detail inside a long story. Some never say the real thing directly and expect you to say it for them. Some only reveal information by correcting you when you are wrong, so being wrong out loud is sometimes the smartest move you have.

Some resent Offlines before you ask a single question. Some want to help. Some want to use you.

If anyone slips into sounding like a helpful assistant, that is a failure by our standards, and we treat it like one.

Question 28

Do characters remember our earlier conversations?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

They remember what you asked, what they admitted, whether you were decent to them, and whether they walked out on you.

You also do not operate in a vacuum. People notice who you have been talking to. How you treat one person can reach the people who care about them.

Lean on someone’s daughter hard enough and do not be surprised when her mother finds you first.

It is a small town. You are the stranger in it.

Question 29

Can people react to what I did with someone else?

Accepted Answer

Yes, when it makes social sense.

If two people are connected, your treatment of one may affect the other. A mother may hear you pressured her child. A business partner may worry about what their associate told you. A rival may enjoy that you are circling their enemy. Someone who depends on a powerful local may become more guarded if you start naming that person.

The town is not a set of sealed conversations.

It is a network.

Question 30

Can someone refuse to talk to me because of what I did?

Accepted Answer

Yes.

People have limits. If you pressure them too hard, accuse them recklessly, mistreat someone they care about, expose something private too early, or make it clear you are dangerous to their reputation, they may shut you out.

Sometimes that silence lasts a few minutes. Sometimes it costs you the rest of the day. Sometimes the damage is not with that person, but with someone connected to them.

This is not a punishment system. It is social consequence.

Question 31

What if I pressure someone into confessing? Does that win?

Accepted Answer

Pressure is a real tool, with real costs.

Push someone hard and you may see them crack. Some snap fast and recover fast. Some absorb everything quietly until they suddenly stop talking to you. Some leak more when rattled than they meant to. Some cannot be broken at all.

But words squeezed out of a frightened person are not a verdict.

When you accuse, the town weighs whether you named the person who actually did it and whether your evidence truly implicates them. You cannot bully your way to a win the facts do not support.

Question 32

Can the culprit confess?

Accepted Answer

Do not count on it.

A culprit may deny, deflect, minimize, cooperate, accuse someone else, or give you just enough truth to seem honest.

The investigation is not designed to end because the right person eventually breaks and tells you everything. Your conclusion has to come from evidence, contradictions, relationships, motive, and the shape of what people refuse to say.

Question 33

How does the final accusation work?

Accepted Answer

When the investigation ends, you address the town council.

You may name the person you believe is responsible and attach up to five pieces of discovered evidence. Choose carefully. The town does not need every fact you found. It needs the facts that actually implicate the person you are naming.

You can also add a short note in your own words, if there is something the evidence does not say for you. The note is optional.

The result is not decided by an AI character. It is judged against the fixed truth of the case.

Question 34

If I accuse the right person, do I win?

Accepted Answer

Not automatically.

You are addressing a town council, and a council needs proof. Name the right person with evidence that truly implicates them, and the case is confirmed.

If you do not have enough proof, the council will not act. Nothing happens to the person you named, and the town stays split about what happened.

You will still be told how you did. The game says it straight: right person, not enough proof.

Name the wrong person with convincing evidence, and something worse can happen: the town may believe you.

Being right and proving it are two different skills. This game asks for both.

Question 35

Will I know if I got it right?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every case ends with a clear result.

There are four. You named the right person and proved it. You named the right person but could not prove it. You convinced the council to blame someone innocent, and the real culprit got away. Or the council threw your case out.

The result stays with the case. You can see it later in your archive, and on the mark that town leaves on your map.

Knowing if you were right is not the same as knowing what happened. The result only tells you about the name you gave. It does not tell you who did it, why, or how the day really went. That is in the case file.

Question 36

Do I have to accuse someone?

Accepted Answer

No.

You can name no one if you cannot stand behind an accusation. The case stays unsolved, but you do not put a name in front of the council.

Refusing to accuse is not a soft ending. It is a choice.

Question 37

What happens if I accuse the wrong person, or run out of time?

Accepted Answer

The result is final.

When the day ends, you go to the council with whatever you have. Running out of time does not take your accusation away. It only means you cannot learn anything more before you make it.

If you name the wrong person, or cannot prove the right one, the case closes that way for good. There is no retry and no undo.

The town lives with what you said after you leave. So does the person you named.

Failed cases stay in your record, the same as solved ones.

Question 38

If I fail, do I at least find out who really did it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but only if you ask for it.

The result tells you whether the name you gave was right. It does not tell you who actually did it.

For that there is your case file. It names the real culprit, why they did it, how they did it, what happened through the day, how the council weighed each piece of evidence you handed in, and which evidence you found but never used.

The file starts closed. Opening it is your choice, and you cannot close it again. You can open it right after the case ends, leave it and open it later from your archive, or never open it at all. It is free, and nobody in the town reads it.

Opening it does not change the result and does not reopen the case.

Question 39

Can I replay the same case?

Accepted Answer

No.

A case can be played once. When your hour ends and the verdict is recorded, that town closes behind you.

This is deliberate. A mystery only works before you know its truth: every hesitation, lie, alibi, and relationship reads differently once the ending is spoiled. The game is built around new towns, new incidents, and new people, not resetting the same wound until you get it right.

Question 40

Do I need a microphone?

Accepted Answer

No.

You can type everything.

Voice is optional. It can make interviews feel more like interviews, but the game works fully by keyboard.

Question 41

What languages can I play in?

Accepted Answer

English, at launch.

The system that builds the towns can work in other languages, and more will follow. The people of a town should sound like themselves in whatever language you meet them in, and we will add languages as we can meet that bar.

Question 42

What if my connection drops, or something breaks mid-case?

Accepted Answer

Your session survives a reload. If your browser crashes or your connection drops, return to the case and pick the day back up where the town left you.

The clock does not run on without you. At most five minutes pass while you are gone, and none at all if you paused first.

If a case genuinely breaks (not a hard case, a broken one), we will return the credit. You should never pay for a town that failed you.

Question 43

What kind of subject matter should I expect?

Accepted Answer

Cases may involve death, violence, grief, betrayal, coercion, addiction, family conflict, abuse of power, and other adult themes.

Not every investigation is bleak. Some are strange, funny, tender, petty, or warm. But every case concerns people facing consequences.

Question 44

Are the characters and incidents real?

Accepted Answer

No.

The towns are real places. The characters, incidents, victims, suspects, and relationships are fictional.

The game does not depict real crimes or make claims about real residents.

Question 45

Why do cases cost money?

Accepted Answer

Because the people in a case are performed live.

Every reply from every person in town costs money to generate. We charge per case rather than pay for it in the ways that quietly ruin games like this: ads, hidden data extraction, or making the characters cheaper and flatter behind your back.

The quality of the town is the product. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

Question 46

What happens to what I say in the game?

Accepted Answer

Your conversations are stored so your case history, board, evidence, and archive work.

We never sell your conversations. We do not mine them for advertising, and we do not use them to train models. They exist so your investigation works, and for no other reason.

Question 47

Does anyone else see my conversations?

Accepted Answer

The people in town are performed live by AI services. When you speak to someone, your message is sent to one of those services to generate the reply. That is what "performed live" means, and it is part of why cases cost money.

Those services process your messages to run the game, under paid commercial terms; they are not free products that pay for themselves with your data. The privacy policy will name the services we use and the terms they operate under.

Beyond that, our own team may review conversations to improve case quality and investigate failures. We treat them as private records, not as content.

Question 48

What about my voice?

Accepted Answer

If you use voice, your audio is sent to a speech-to-text service to create the transcript the game runs on. The transcript becomes part of your conversation like anything you type.

The exact handling of the temporary audio itself will be stated clearly in the privacy policy before launch.

Question 49

Can I delete my data?

Accepted Answer

Retention and account deletion will be spelled out in the privacy policy before launch.

The principle we are committing to now: your conversations exist for your investigation record, not for us. When your account goes, they go.

FAQ

The basics